It’s disingenuous to compare requested 1v1 arena to current duels.
1.) Instanced PvP like arena, have different rule sets than world PvP.
No consumables, some abilities are disabled, some abilities / effects have reduced effectiveness in instanced PvP versus World PvP. Also you can’t frost shock or eye beam a critter with 1-2% leech and get a 11k-20k heal. Dampening is very important mechanic and completely unique to arena. As well as shadow sight eyes that reveal stealthed players.
No waiting for cooldowns after every duel.
2.) Consistent Opponents / Quick queues
Currently you have to have players in your shard who are actually willing to duel. You might go to duelotar or duelwynn right now and see a lot of players, but that doesn’t mean they’re all dueling. Alot of players just chill at those spots to chat or wait for queues. I don’t wanna spam duel people trying to chill that’s annoying af.
I see a lot of players upset about things like raider io or people who sell carries and boosts in arena. The main reason I think they complain is because they are logging in to play and they end up spending 30+ minutes sitting in group finder then logging off. Similar to how Torghast is going to provide a space for players to just hop into alone and play without group finder, 1v1 arena will do the same for the arena players. It’s something that no matter what shard or time you log in on you will be able to just queue up and be fighting in a matter of minutes.
3.) Detoxifying the PvP community / Mental Illness / Player Agency
A sizeable portion of this player base have mental illnesses ranging from minor to severe. There are people who use this game as a type of therapy. That means they might be logging in because they aren’t in the most cooperative of moods. There is no way for these people to self filter. Why are we expecting people to try and fit this happy go lucky digital socialite player mold. It’s unrealistic. I feel corporate blizzard fantasizes that their player base all has Taliesin and Evitel levels of positivity. When in reality a more accurate description of the player base would be rats and fiends (myself included).
Duels don’t offer this opportunity to self filter to anywhere near the levels 1v1 Arena would.
4.) Personal Goals / New and Long term Players
1v1 arena gives players an avenue to set personal goals that they can work towards on their own. That means they can completely own the sense of accomplishment when they meet that goal from top to bottom. There is going to be a huge difference in the sense of accomplishment a player feels achieving a benchmark rating, or simply improving their rating verse beating a player in a duel.
A structured environment with ratings and mmr would give new players coming into PvP a much more modern and grounded pathway to becoming further invested in 2v2 and 3v3 arena. This would be extremely different to what we have now where some players are having to pay coaches or sub to a streamer to get help learning. A player who goes from 0 - 1800cr in 1v1 arena is in a much more favorable position to move into 2v2 and 3v3 arena as opposed to a player who has gone 40-19 in duels, but has no arena achievements.
Simultaneously, long term experienced players now have a space where they are able to experiment and practice in a much more controlled setting without the influence of team members and without risking said team members cr/mmr with their experimentation. Having rating and MMR ensures to some degree the quality of enemies to test and practice on.
Duels offer no such thing.
In Summary
After really looking at what can be brought to the game by doubling down on a long time favorite past time of the PvP community, in retrospect I don’t think anyone can honestly say that duels = 1v1 arena.
P.S.
1v1 Arena would also provide streamers a space immune to trolling when hosting 1v1 tournaments.
grats on bfa achieves heckin you’re a very good player! I bet you could beat rogue even if he opened on you with eye. Give em the suc.