Hello Blizzard, please take this post as an opportunity to improve on a fantastic game, in both player community and enhancing your business model. My main concern is how difficult it is for players to gear through PVP.
In my opinion I believe M+ and BGs should be the two mainstream ways of gearing for their respective game type. (PVE vs PVP) let’s take a look at these similarities and differences.
M+: Normally a M+ dungeon takes 30-60 mins depending on the skill level of the group, and the key level they are pursuing. Regardless of whether they time the dungeon or not, the players that participated have a chance at a piece of gear. In addition these players will get a weekly vault item that is a bracket or 2 above the key level that they participated in. This is a good system and I have no arguments against it.
BGs: Normally take 15-30 mins (about half the time of a M+ but also have, in a perfect world, a 50% win/loss rate) This said, in a perfect world, blizzard could give the same RNG% of obtaining a piece of PVP gear as there is in M+ after a BG win. Now there is a couple problems with this.
1: Each M+ dungeon has a few slots that will be available for each class/spec so you can choose to run specific dungeons in pursuit to fill a certain slot, but this cannot be the case for BGs since queue times become too long to queue for specific BGs, whereas M+ search feature is much less time consuming and there are constant groups being formed.
2: not all servers are created equal for each faction in PVP so win rates will vary widely depending on this.
3: How do you choose an item level reward for RNG
Finally for the weekly PVP vault, make this weekly item 1 bracket higher than what their highest weekly rating was for that week. (So if they were at 1805 rating they would obtain one slot at a 2k rated item) This allows players to feel that they are constantly improving for a goal and this mimics exactly how the weekly M+ vault works.
To resolve the 3 problems mentioned above:
1: Allow a drop down where a player can choose, no more or no less than 3 specific slots for the RNG to chose from (in the event that they get a random drop) for each BG they enter. This would be comparable to how each M+ normally has about 3 potential slots that it can fill.
2: Instead of requiring a win, take the M+ RNG% and reduce those odds to half for BGs to account for the fact that BGs take approximately 50% less time. This compares to how a M+ doesn’t need to be timed to still get loot.
3: Use the players current arena rating to give the respective item level gear in that bracket. (This solution could be improved upon due to the fact that not all bg players play arena. (Suggestions welcome)
Arena: I am not sure the average duration of an arena battle but I think the same ideology can be applied. (If the avg arena takes 3-6mins for example give the RNG% to be 1/10 of what it is in M+.)
I know PVE players might have some problems with this but please keep in mind that all PVP rewards will have a versatility stat replacing other PVE stats, so although this will be a separate way to gear, it won’t translate into competitive PVE timed runs or Mythic raiding, but instead allow players that mainly PVP to gear in a way that is true to their love of the game. This will also allow those PVP players to be somewhat viable in M+ at a similar item level gear to continue to progress their character via PVE if they so choose.
Currently, PVP gearing is 3-4 times slower and includes time gates that simply aren’t there for PVE players. I believe this is unfair and part of the reason why blizzard is losing subscriptions from the PVP player base. It’s simply too much time for someone who works a full time job to balance doing all of the dungeons/raid bosses that are required to make their character viable in PVP. It’s crazy to me that blizzard is forcing these players to play PVE when that’s simply not what they want to, or have the time to play. It seems to be multiple hours of PVE so that they can get 1 good hour of competitive PVP. This is also not the case in reverse, where PVE players are in no way, shape or form required to play PVP aspects of the game.
Please let me know your thoughts.