How do we save retail pvp?

What a braindead addicted wow junkie thing to say, why would sane people do that

Imagine telling a new player who just blind rolled a fire mage cause it looked badass, who just hit max level for the first time who also:

  • Read all the guides on how to spec
  • What addons to get and how to install them
  • Farm BGs for 8ish hours to get a full honor set
  • Learn what stats to focus on for gear
  • Learn how to farm enough gold for enchants
  • Learned how to do side things like sparks and crafted gear

That they need to redo the whole process again on a class and spec they didn’t want to if they dont enjoy a 40 minute que time for the only competitive gamemode they are allowed to do with 0 arena experience.

This is why 3v3 and WoW PvP continues dwindle, half bald boomers who think players need to adapt to the needs of the game and not the other way around.

14 Likes

I have a healer with 4x the games played than my DPS has. Doesn’t help my DPS que times.

If only they gave you a priority que token for your DPS that you could stack up by playing your healer… pretty sure this has been said before

4 Likes

huh? the issue with rss queue times is the disparity between the amount of healers and dps queueing

Reread what I said, the disparity exist because healing is not fun. The solution isnt to make people do the unfun thing. Normal people will just quit the game before they do that.

9 Likes

Arenas are far too niche and sweaty for the average longtime player, much less the new players. It’s a dying game mode; has been for some time. People need to accept this.

The way to save wow pvp is to focus more on accessible stuff like bgs. Stuff that “regular” players enjoy. Rated BG blitz will be a great start.

9 Likes

Leveling bgs are a horrible with max lvl players doing party sync. Having a Battleground blitz mode for leveling would be good.

2 Likes

Non issue. Anyone with a keyboard and dollar tree mouse can have up to 31 comfortable ability keybinds.

Ability bloat is only true in a few cases. The classwide tree added some redundant abilities. I don’t need rising sun kick as a brewmaster. Only mistweavers should have soothing mist.

The truth:

Theres not enough players. OW has 10 players per match and gets them going in 3 minutes or less except at the top end of the ladder.

The why:

1)Learning arena (and pvp in general) sucks for a new player sucks. This is a pve game to its core. Despite what these forums would believe, its very hard to have afun and balanced experience across the board.

  1. the progress curve in pvp compared to everything else in the game is unbelievably slow. You will not achieve your season objective, even as a top end player, until a few months down the line. This makes participation very uneven throughout a season. Like the only reason to push right now is for ego and try to 1 up people on the forums. The experience itself is very frutrating for players enjoying seeing their rank progress.
2 Likes

It is an issue though. Thats one of the hardest things to wrap your head around for new players that come from other games and mmos. Why are there so many individual buttons to press when x and y game are functioning just fine with less then a dozen? At this point the sheer amount of keybinds is borderline and accessibility issue when it comes to bringing in fresh meat.

And then that bleeds into the other issues. If it wasnt for the people who have been playing on and off for years if you started fresh you would look at how the gameplay is and think: what is this archaic sh*t?

you get quick pops in 3’s
solo shuffle as a healer is intsa
the problem is the matchmaking system for solo shuffle
not sure how fast or slow Blitz BG’s are doing

1 Like

Game needs pruned or at the least dumbed down. Hate to say it. You see it in what theyre doing with all the stuff like CC reductions, interrupt times, stun durations, healer trinkets, abilities getting multiple charges, etc. All this to me spells out that blizzard thinks the game is too complex and they need these bandaid fixes to make it easier to digest for less advanced players.

You also hear a lot of people talking about addons and stuff. More than ive ever seen people talk about them in nearly 20 years playing this game.

Another example is the levels of copium. Off the walls bass ackwards levels of conspiracy theories as to why people cant break xyz rating. Boosters etc. Like people cant even understand why theyre not succeeding and its broke some of them

I think it really needs to be brought down to simpler methods. Average players dont feel effective.

The question is how? I think the changes i listed initially are blizzards attempt at giving them guide rails to being effective, but i dont think theyre addressing the source which is just the bloat / complexity of our class mechanics at this point.

Game needs to go back to warrior swings axe, health bar goes down. Really simple cause and effect players can understand intuitively. Melee hitting you = bad.

Melee hitting you currently isnt bad unless melee uses honk honk buttons. But some players are too oblivious to recognize the horn or even pick one up for free. (W/A)

Tl:DR gameplay needs to be more intutive to make noobs feel effective regardless of if they are. Training wheels dont fix the lack of game knowledge

3 Likes

How to save retail pvp:

  1. Don’t lock rewards behind rated play. Rated just gets too sweaty and alienates the non-sweatlords.

  2. Mix/match alliance and horde on teams to prevent effective premades.

  3. Transmoggable wigs.

Here’s how you save retail pvp.
Step 1) Rogues do 50% less dmg because they have a ton of cc. They shouldn’t have a ton of cc and have the ability to kill in a stun.

Step 2) dampening effects heals you do on other people if you are a dps/hybrid and not self healing. Healers keep the normal dampening.

Step 3) In 2s, dampening ramps up 50% faster.

Step 4) Melee dps get 2 gap closers max and slows do a max of 60% slow, ranged gets 1 evasive maneuver but get 70% slows that build up from 50 and ramp up to 70% with multiple applications

Step 5) every form of cc should have at least a 15 sec cd. No more spammable fears or cyclones

Step 6) rogues no longer get evasion and evasion with cloak of shadows. Along with this, sap is back to being melee range as opposed to a ranged move.

Step 7) every form of stealth has a movement speed penalty.

Step 8) stealth has a max duration of 15 seconds so certain classes can’t just stealth till their cds are up

Step 9) Make all the gear and cosmetic rewards based on EITHER rating or number of wins you get during a season. Titles can still be rating based.

1 Like

The first and major problem is the lack of healers because by design, healing is completely unfun to play right now. There’s no consistent damage anymore its just random one shots on short CDs…

The second problem being melee aren’t melee anymore. 100% uptime with a million gap closers and kiting is virtually dead. The design is just terrible nowadays. They really need to look at why people loved wrath through mop so much in pvp and emulate it. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel and get back to what works.

3 Likes

Heres how we can save PvP

  1. Cancel and ban all the Real Money Transaction boosters. Those spamming trade offering any rating, any bracket, including shuffles.

  2. Reduce the amount of CR loss from a bad lobby, going 2-4. Should be smaller amount than those from wins, to increase overall gains for everyone.

  3. Increase the amount of CR gains from lobbies, going 3-3 and 4-2, this will incentivize more queueing from all players of all skill potential.

  4. Take away the healer requirement for shuffles. Allow 3 dps vs 3 dps. All out brawls

  5. Incentivize healers with increased mog, mount and CR gains from queuing.

  6. Reduce the subscription fee for PvP players alltogether. Forced to stay within confinement of gladiator Hall and Auction House, can only queue PvP.

  7. Reduce the amount of CR boost and loss potential from MMR, matchmaking lobbies.

  8. REMOVE 1600 TIER TOKEN, INCENTIVIZE CASUALS TO PLAY

Thats all I got for now. But these are just some ideas, im sure ill catch hate. Pce

I don’t like to doom and gloom but all signs point to it just continuing to decline from here on out.

3 Likes

This.
I’ve had WAY more fun in blitz than I’ve ever had in arena since MoP and the only reason I stopped playing DF so far this patch is because there’s no ranked or rewards for doing Blitz so there’s no point in grinding it.

1 Like

I just waited for a shuffle queue asa dps, it took 30+ minutes (granted 3am Saturday)…

Heres what frustrates players like myself.

Shaman healer was clearly sabotaging his matches, or just utterly terrible at his class and role, whereas the priest healer went 6-0.

Every single DPS in the lobby went 3-3, because of the shaman healer… If i had lost 2-4 then I would have lost almost 70 cr because of MMR /matchmaking values within the lobby. I know this to be factual and true, because it HAPPENS EVERY DAY I QUEUE.

Rogue gained 288 CR , 3-3
Spriest gained 201 CR , 3-3
Healer Priest gained 120 cr , 6-0
Healer Shaman gained 0 CR , 0-6
Warrior gained 0 CR , 3-3
Hunter gained 0 CR , 3-3

So only those DPS who went 3-3 are gaining CR because they aren’t close to their MMR. While the healer priest gained CR because he went 6-0.

If any of those players close to their MMR had lost 2-4, they would have dropped a huge amount of CR more than likely due to the healer. Thus resulting in frustrated players, losing more than they can potentially gain within a lot of these lobbies.

How do we fix this? Which would retain player participation and queue times would decrease…

  1. Increase player CR gains even going 3-3, despite MMR. Those who aren’t gaining CR from 3-3 are less likely to continue queueing as it doesnt feel like you can win.
  2. Stop requiring healers to be present within matches. It feels like more harm than good to require healers present. Make it an all out brawl if only dps are queueing.
  3. Reduce losses from bad lobbies, again if dps had lost 2-4 they would lose so much CR, hate to blame the healer again for losses, but when its clear cut that the healer is sabotaging or just not meant to be in the lobby (0-6), dps shouldn’t be penalized with CR losses.

People shouldn’t play WoW expecting it to be like LoL like they shouldn’t play mario expecting it to be like counterstrike. I started PvPing at the peak of class complexity, they’re much easier now. It wasn’t intimidating to have so many buttons. Rather it was inspiring to have so many capabilities, so many things to minmax. It made me want to get good.

The game isn’t fun enough to keep its core audience and isn’t skillful enough to draw players from other competitive games. This is due to a LACK of complexity, not an abundance.

1 Like

Rated solo Q BGs will be the saviour of retail PVP because:

  • BGs are more fun for more people compared to arena
  • BGs are more forgiving in terms of spec composition
  • Healing a BG is more fun for healers compared to arena (so queue times will be faster)
  • Solo Q RBGs require less healers per DPS compared to arena (so queue times will be faster)
2 Likes