Yeah and I can understand why they waited so long to start introducing artificial MMR to the ladder, much to the chagrin of most of the player base.
You really don’t want to end up in a season like unchained where inflation gets so ridiculously high that rewards are almost meaningless…but at the same time you also don’t want to end up in a season where you realize the train is running off the tracks and try to reel it back in and end up with something like sinful where people are sitting safe R1 for 3-4 months without a second thought.
The start slow and tweak along the way is definitely the safest and most logical approach.
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I love the fact that solo was introduced, and for the most part has been fun whenever queues pop.
There are too many instances of lower MMR people showing up in solo shuffle (500+ point disparity) and the usual end result equates to tiny gains/losses for the majority of participants. Overall I’m glad the wow team recognized the community’s comments/concerns/etc, and hopefully more will be done in the future to improve the overall quality of Rated Solo Shuffle.
My only question: Wasn’t it the intent to reward those who didn’t leave during the solo shuffle? Seems like players (especially those that lose a game or two before someone quits) are still getting punished. MMR changes should be null and void imo for those instances.
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Why do players always bring up the absolute worst case scenario? Yes, unchained took inflation too far too fast. But to say that the system is good where you have only r1-caliber players able to get gladiator for the first 10+ weeks of the season is actually insane. There is a very large spectrum of “good” between unchained and crimson.
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I mean, it already happened with shuffle.
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Shuffle is a brand new game mode that doesn’t have the two most prestigious rating-based rewards that 3s has. Comparing the two is mostly meaningless from my perspective.
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It’s important to highlight what we as players don’t want to see happen again, while also acknowledging the current system could use some improvement which blizzard themselves have already acknowledged in this thread.
Will you please consider letting us queue by ourselves in regular 2s and 3s? Just give a drop down or checkbox menu with specs we’re willing to play with and matchmake us with others that meet the criteria within our mmr range. Also, the ability to list in regular arena LFG while in shuffle queue would help a lot of people who want to play regular 3s find partners while also feeling like they can do something with shuffle in the wait time. It takes hours to find and vet partners in arena LFG any more.
Also, consider the possibility in future seasons of starting shuffle MMR at 0 instead of 1500. It’s very easy to gear a new alt for shuffle, and it’s not fair to the people legitimately trying to push through the 1500 bracket when they get someone’s fresh alt (someone who deserves a lot of love and support on said alt) in their lobby for their 1500mmr placement matches. In the case where the person doesn’t know what to do on the new alt, it’s a frustrating experience for them and probably both healers. In the case where the person does know what to do on the alt, injecting them into the 0-1000 mmr bracket will improve the quality of players in that bracket and make it feel a lot less like “elo hades”. Either way, the current system makes your first matches feel way too important and if everyone had to push from 0mmr instead of 1500 at the start, it feels like everyone would benefit.
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The skill level at each MMR should feel similar across brackets. The disparity between shuffle and 2’s is absolutely crazy, like 600 rating crazy. I know this is a hard problem to solve based on participation… but a problem that needs solving nonetheless. Thanks for the post.
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I think inflation also needs to be normalized based on Season length (if that is even possible - which I imagine is tricky due to the randomness of development cycles).
Players who participate in longer seasons have a unique social advantage compared to those who don’t.
You could have two equally skilled players, one who participates only in a short season (less inflation), and the other who only participates in a very long season (more inflation). The one who participates in a longer season will have a unique social advantage later in the expansion, since the inflation model provided a stronger increase to their mean rating. This could result in gaining an achievement that the player in the shorter season wasn’t able to access, simply due to natural inflation.
For prestigious achievements like Gladiator, this is a fairly significant disparity. For these more prestigious titles, maybe it would make sense to revert back to a percentage based title distribution, so that the social capital of players is less effected by season length.
1 Like
Starting the gentle trickle of 20 rating per week inflation at this point, after many casual players (myself included) have all but given up, is too little too late.
I started the season at 1900 in solo shuffle. Now I can’t even maintain 1400 since “lesser” players have quit and only sweaty tryhards remain. At 20 rating inflation per week, it’ll take me five months of waiting to return to the glory of 1900. And before I ever get there, a new season will begin anyway.
The difficulty of pvp in relation to rewards offered CANNOT be calibrated, and it would be nice if rating were decoupled from casual conquest reward upgrades so regular joes (or janes) could slowly upgrade their conquest set’s PvE ilvl even with a sloppy rating.
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Yes, it varying widely between brackets and seasons is a little disorienting.
This is absolutely not true, and how out of touch and unrealistic this system is designed. The average player who ques into a RANDOM BATTLEGROUND, has 0 chance of hitting or gravitating towards 1500. Even the average RBG player may struggle with this goal. Currently as this system is setup, the average Arena player will settle around this rating.
That is a bad system, that discourages trying out arena in the first place. It should be pretty clear to anyone that can look at achievement data/mount acquisition that for some reason PVP rewards are being aimed at significantly fewer players achieving them then Mythic plus mounts, or even raid Mythic mounts.
The title brackets, aimed at these incredibly low % needs a rework. What modern game has functionally 2 rewards, 1 for the average player (1800) and 1 for the top 3%?
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I still don’t trust Blizzard’s ability to combat win trading/teaming/scripters/boosters to even attempt playing PvP in any way, shape, or form. They never solved this issue to any meaningful extent in Overwatch and is one of the reasons I stopped playing that title and refuse to start PvP in WoW.
In fact, I’ve been avoiding doing anything for the DF Great Vault for the past 2 months as well due to the timegate rush to complete weeklies. It works on some people, but for me it’s a freemium game shtick that is meaningless. I do not want to “play the timegate” in any way, shape, or form.
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Do you have any plans to improve the experience for less experienced players? Low rated players quit fairly quickly when they realize how far behind the curve they are, and how little reward their is for them. Perhaps lifting the rating requirement for saddles would encourage non-PvPers to do rated pvp. Not only would this grow the community but it would also likely boost up the slightly below average players as they’d have someone newer to hit.
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They haven’t. You have.
If you’re struggling to break 1400 in shuffle you’re part of the lesser players.
Or here’s a shocking concept. You just learn the basics and get an instant 2400 in shuffle.
You missed the point.
Most low rated players without egos have a fun time. It’s only the ones who think they should instantly be 1800 and have all the rewards who quit.
Saddles are already super free and easy to obtain.
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Will this inflation happen in 2s, 3s, and shuffle?
Love and support. 
They’ve been pretty good about it in recent history.
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Never materialized during my years playing OW. It’s the the point of “never again” with zero faith left. It’s irredeemable at this point.
Also, last I checked the game still doesn’t have a kernel-mode anti-cheat and has an active bot problem at least as far as PvE is concerned.
We understood that but If I can make a suggestion why not do only in 2 vs 2 only double DPS, with some twist like eye straight in the beginning to prevent double stealth also dampening healing begin in 30 % to prevent the self healing that certain class can do
In that way the 2 vs 2 will be much more enjoyable because this in skirmish it’s only double DPS in 2s format I find it much more fun
healer can anyway find DPS pretty fast in LFG in 3 vs 3