Hello everyone. It’s that time again where I whip up word vomit that no one reads because I not only have time, but am also hoping that blizzard might actually do something for the better for PvP. Despite knowing that PvP is a 2nd class citizen group of people, is a mini game, and has rarely been cared for xpac after xpac.
First and foremost we need what retail has in regards to looking for group, for PvP. The custom tab is garbage. At the very least, we should have a PvP Tab. A step up from that would be to have an Arena tab, and a Rated BattleGrounds tab.
I don’t know if the reason why we only have a custom one is to lump all the groups together so the game doesn’t look as dead even though anyone who does Ranked PvP knows that it’s barely alive. Having said that, Cata arena is still very fun, and I’d still like to throw my 2 cents in to maybe have something change for the better.
Second is solo queue. Literally just let people be able to queue for ranked arena or ranked battlegrounds. Even if it is some half baked attempt where it’s 2 dps 1 healer with no care for comp, i’d rather just be able to play the game than sit in stormwind for an hour or two just to log off without actually being able to play.
I love arena. Honestly it’s why I even play this game. There is no game like WoW arena. Like sure, i’ve played overwatch, got to masters, played LoL and got to emerald. But I don’t always want to play those games. I want to play WoW arena because WoW arena scratches that itch. Or maybe it’s an addiction. I’m too far gone it’s hard to say.
Third is an introduction for rating decay for 3s and RBGs for 2200 and above rated players. Right now the game is facing an issue it has faced in the past. Good players push really high rankings early on in the season, sit the ladder and never play until the last 2 weeks when everyone else begins to play and que dodging + sniping becomes impossible.
For those who are unaware, i’ll explain why this is bad. Once higher skilled players stop playing, there are no more higher rated teams to face. This causes the que times at the higher end to go up. This is especially true for RBGs. Additionally, those higher rated players will then log on alts, and play games at a lower rating. This does two things.
High skilled, but low rated teams will inevitably queue into the teams that are on the cusp of being high rated, but are 1-400 rating short of it. An example right now is being 2k in RBGs is artificially more difficult because there are so few 2k teams and quite a few higher rated players playing alts at around 1800.
These lower rated, but higher skilled teams will most likely get to queue into them after the 2k team sits an 8+ minute queue, and wins. This means they gain a significant amount of points, while the higher rated team loses far more than they should. This means that the higher rated team will struggle to climb because they are facing players above their skill level, but being punished as if they were fighting players below their skill level. This creates an artificial gate keeping, as well and secures the spots for the higher rated players mains since the competition will never climb to their rating. The higher rated players can also secure their rating by simply not playing after they get so high, either. Nothing to risk, and everything to gain.
This also creates an unfun environment where the risk is greatly higher than the reward, and because the population pool is soooooooooooooo small, the chances for a lower rated, but higher skilled team to CONSISTENTLY QUEUE into a team that is sitting a 10 minute queue because there are simply no other teams around them to face goes up dramatically.
Essentially, this is sniping. And although sniping is not completely unavoidable, the biggest issue right now is people simply refuse to play the game unless they know that the other high rated players are not playing the game. This refusal to play also makes the game even more dead than it appears since people are deliberately being picky when they want to play games.
As it stands, hitting 2200 in RBGs is actually, maybe for the first time in a long time to the best of my memory, harder to get than 2200 in 3s because there is no incentive to que main team when alt team can secure main teams spot.
Not to mention the fact there will only be like 20 spots for Hero of the Alliance / Horde. So realistically speaking, there is no reason for some of these higher rated players to sit because they won’t get it despite being a multi Hero player. Yet, collectively as a community, they do still sit.
So I believe the proper solution is to deduct 20 rating, per day, unless 1 game is played for that day PER CHARACTER. While also allowing playing up to 14 games to secure the next 14 days without fear of rating decay. This will allow a player to play 14 games in as little as one day, while keeping the next 14 days safe from rating decay.
I think having rating decay after 1 week is too harsh. People should be allowed breaks, vacation, and real life stuff to happen. However, for the sake of a healthy competitive environment, something does need to happen for the higher end of the ladder to be playable again.
Please keep in mind that this rating decay will affect less than roughly 1600 players in 3s, and less than 200 players in RBGs. Source is Ironforge Pro Cata PvP Leaderboards. Not to mention a lot of these players are alts. So the real number will be even less.
Fourth I think is to add gladiator, rank 1, and Hero to Btag/account. Exactly how they have it in retail right now. That way people who have alts in that range can free up, if only, 5-10 more spots for other players. Back in WoD, a relatively controversial xpac, there were over 1200 gladiator spots for S18, warmongering season. In the last season of Wrath classic, there were less than 500 amongst 3 brackets.
There is realistically no reason why someone who hits rank 1 / Gladiator / Hero on more multiple characters should take up multiple spots. Even overwatch made people add phone numbers to reduce the amount of duplicates to top 500 spots. So even if you were in range, but didn’t have a phone number, you were not eligible for the reward and prestige icon of the top 500.
Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.
