Yeah its crazy they never made more levels,1500 novice or whatever they call it there should be challenger 1750 rival 1900, 2100 duelist, 2200 champion, 2300 elite 2400 gladiator.
I liked the 2200 weapons and thought it meant something in PvP or when you saw them in a BG. You were like okay, playa.
It is and that is why we play. To get the best gear and have an advantage with that gear. At the end of the day we are all Twinks and want to Min/Max and dominate the opposition.
All I know is if you want PvP participation it’s always going to be about GEAR. Players are going to go to where the GEAR is first then PvP after.
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I also think weapons should be rare, very hard to get and only drop in heroic or mythic relations, or 2200 + rating
no normal mode or afk weapons
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A lot of these are very good ideas, however I genuinely believe the single best thing to increase participation is better class/spec design and better balance.
So many specs not being fun hurts pvp a great deal. On top of that power disparity and longevity of these issues just seals the deal.
When you have multiple tier S overlords that haven’t been unseated in over a year, and specs that have been gutter tier without any reasonable changes and a stale meta people either reroll or ultimately leave and the ones left that reroll just turn every queue into an S tier crap fast.
While they should not make kneejerk same week actions, outside of incredibly obvious broken things, letting 1-6 specs run the entire ladder ruins peoples experiences and the longer they let it last the more often people will be apt to FOTM and be rewarded.
If outliers obviously ruining the game were addressed within 1-2 weeks and brought in line, people who spec/class hop are less likely to do so resulting in more fun balance and more varied queues.
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The unique elite armor sets from cata are the sole reason I switched from a pve’er to a pvper.
More unique mog obtainable from higher rating alone is actually a pretty huge incentive for casual players.
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A lot of “casual” player just flat out stop at 1800.
Once there’s no more “obtainable” rewards, people don’t bother. The vast majority of people in this game don’t care about arenas. They just want the shiny, and if they have to put in an insane amount of effort, they just don’t bother.
The deflation on the ladder and lack of progression curve has made obtaining PvP cosmetics “too hard” for the average player. 1500 players used to mostly fight 1500 players, and people would grow out of the entry MMR quick if they weren’t bad. Now, we’re seeing people with Mythic level gear at entry points.
You just simply cannot be a beginner in arenas now without needing to tank your rating, and that doesn’t feel good, and people mostly play games to feel good.
People keep asking for stuff to go to the 2k+ bracket, but frankly, the entire bottom of the ladder is “gone”. Destroy the bottom of a triangle and the rest collapses.
Instead of rating based rewards, I’d actually prefer a currency system where you can grind out stuff to purchase rewards. The higher your rating, the more currency you get, allowing high rated players to get these things faster ontop of the set rating rewards.
Have an assortment of stuff so casual players are actually continually working towards stuff, and only have the currency drop from arenas. As somebody who does a lot of casual premades now, people will go for stuff like recoloured mounts/sets - don’t even need much effort put in. Just something.
Note, this is with changes to the gearing system not being absolutely stupid, and not allowing stuff like destro lock to go unchecked. I was considering pushing again, but between corruption and RMx / Destro comps being the majority of what’s around and it being unfun to play against, no. Maybe next expansion, but probably not.
We have to remember that those who play the game solely for arenas are a niche, especially those that push higher ratings. Getting as many people actually grinding on the ladder as possible is healthy, and we lost that.
I’ll be doing some write-ups for beta in regards to the casual aspect and rewards system once the time comes. Really don’t want to see “hhuehrosd prestigeee restetsss ur talentsss” levels of garbage again.
tl;dr:
put crap in for casuals everybody wins
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Not gonna happen in SL because of covenants, conduits and whatever else we gotta farm for abilities.
cant even play w/ casual friends at low rating because there’s some 480 dh or 480 lock backpeddling doing 50k dps and taking 0 damage
there’s no outplaying raw gear/tuning when you’re just playing with friends trying to play against players on the same tier
This infuriates me.
The majority of my friends are like, 1750 experienced tops. I just can’t play with them because they either don’t want to, or aren’t geared, and that’s the majority of what I do in this game until I decide to go push for whatever it is I want.
Hoping the Shadowlands gear changes fixes this.
This is such a counter-intuitive statement that it makes sense to come from one of the dumbest posters on this board.
Look at the TR signups and people who just want to play without caring about out gearing anybody. Give everybody access to top PVP gear and I guarantee you participation explodes and is higher than it has even been.
I don’t know many people who actually care about gear in PVP; rather, we just want a chance to compete fairly and outplay our opponents.
Go sit in a battleground if you suck so bad that gear is the only way you can win.
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The TR signups are to test gear so they don’t waste echoes and sockets on the wrong BiS. It isn’t because ppl just want to play 
Literally the majority of PvP players because this is an RPG. The reason we play WoW is because of gear progression and then testing our skills with that gear in PvP. This game is nothing without gear and isn’t an RPG anymore. If gear doesn’t matter no one will play because it becomes Heroes of the Storm.
This game and PvP is about gear first and testing your skills with that gear second. It’s a 2 step process. Remove that and it isn’t WoW and that is why Templates were hated by the majority of players because GEAR HAS TO MATTER!!
No one wants plug in play in an RPG game that is what doesn’t make sense. People want gear and for it to make a big difference in PvP and that will NEVER change. Since Vanilla to Now the best PvP has happened during times when Gear mattered the most. It’s a driving force of this game and PvP. It’s undeniable.
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If I wanted to do arenas for the sake of doing arenas, I’d be on the TR to skip the gearing and not deal with having to farm extra crap with vers stats just to not feel like paper.
The people who focus on arenas don’t usually care about the RPG factor of this game.
And this is coming from an actual roleplayer.
Arenas need to be disconnected from the RPG gear grind to an extent, if not, they’ll continue to suffer. It’s just too steep of a grind just to be able to play.
Ladders do not work with traditional RPG setups.
Some of the truest badasses you’ll ever know are lowly smurfs that don’t flaunt their looks. I would be careful if that’s the reason you’d want to PvP for real. PvPing to look good, to look the greatest, doesn’t mean you truly understand the mastery of the sport. I would think that a hefty prize that would pay 1-2 years of whatever life you lead would be the best motivation to be the best.
I’d rather collect a $100k check from Blizzard and/or commercial endorsements than a slew of exclusive cosmetics if I obtained a certain rating or won a tourney. What’s the point in wanting to be the best if it doesn’t amount of anything worthwhile?
This is a fantastic point.
Hey Blizzard, i’d prefer cash prizes for my arena performances. But if you can’t make that happen, I’ll settle for cosmetic rewards.
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It won’t matter in a time not too long from now when Retail WoW will be discontinued. WoW is not going to last forever, so what will? This is where I think the “pixels” argument has teeth: people would complain and QQ about losing but what about the realization that they won’t get to take what they won? I’m surprised we don’t have enough sore winners, unless they too realize we’re all “shadows and dust” to quote Proximo from Gladiator.
Proximo got his freedom and a nice wooden gladius for all his trouble. What are we going to get as equivalent?
Oh you were serious…
You pay to play this game to have fun. Not for anything physical you get in return (except for possibly seratonin, adrenaline, etc…). And I think a lot of people find cosmetic rewards are fun and would like to see more of them.
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I agree. I think social validation is overrated. The journey of getting City Attacker in my own one-man guild was fun. 2,500 honorable cities in the cities by yourself. If 8.3 wasn’t so borked I’d go and do it all summer. “The Hunt” was fun, and it still is.
I’ve done arena seriously a few seasons, and I’ve done it super casually (right now in particular), and everything in between. I think I can sympathize with both crowds when it comes to increasing participation.
Cosmetic rewards cannot be understated. Enchants, gear, tabards, cloak, mounts, etc. It’s all great, but we really need GOOD looking well designed class specific sets again. Hopefully with Blizzard mulling around the idea of class specific sets in PvE again, we can hope for something more in PvP. The enchant for BFA was awful. Dreadflame really does look bad. It’s too similar to Chronos, the particle density is too low, and it just doesn’t stand out on 9/10 weapon mogs. Bloody Dancing Steel back in MoP was a sight to behold, it was literally the first thing I noticed on someones character model when they had it equipped. Class specific sets too. I feel like Primal is the last season Blizzard really nailed Elite Sets. There were some fantastic ones in Legion, but I think a lot of them missed the mark.
But there is also the issue of PvP gear itself, and balance/class design. PvP gear needs to feel good to equip. This is an MMORPG, and even though a lot of the arena forum would argue against this point, part of the fun of an RPG is feeling your character increase in power. This doesn’t need to be borrowed power though (corruption, azerite, busted PvE trinks). I remember getting my Prideful weapon in MoP on my warrior. I felt like a king. It was really really impactful, and tbh the barrier for getting it wasn’t astronomical or out of reach for anyone, it just took a little bit of time and perseverance. Gearing feels good when it’s well designed, and when PvP gear is BiS for PvP, it will attract players.
It’s honestly really simple stuff, and the fact that Blizzard has continuously missed the mark for coming up on four years is a shame, because what they had in WoD was pretty close to perfection as far as gearing goes.
Up the cosmetics/cosmetic design, fix PvP gearing, and stay on top of class balance/tuning. It’s a very simple recipe and although at times hard to implement in practice, when done properly it will help foster PvP back to a healthy state.
All this said though, Blizz has squandered almost all of the goodwill I have for them and I’m sure many feel the same.
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The game sucks that’s why nobody is participating.
Giving bad players participation trophies only further worsens the game. Bad players are rewarded enough through free welfare gear by just participating and now you people want them to be given free cosmetics for just hitting 1800.
The only people who deserve more rewards are the rank 1 players.
I am not a role player. RPG games are gear based games and you should have some deep affection with gearing up if you play one. Diablo, PoE, Neverwinter, Entropia, WoW you name it. These RPG games are based on gear and that is why I play them.
We want to get the best items then own people with them.
The RPG factor is gear and yes players play this game, PvP and Arena because they do want an advantage through items, builds and comp. Arena has a far better participation when Arena gear matters. When you appeal to the PvP players and offer a reward that they log into RPG games for. Which is gear.
IF you did a pure TR Arena realm it would be dead and have a very small niche crowd that just wants to plug in play or practice for tournaments. However most players wouldn’t participate because that just doesn’t interest the majority of the player base or PvP player base in this game.
The interesting part of this game is gearing up, theorycrafting and creating a build that fits your playstyle. Remove that then there just is no reason to play. So if we want Arena to have participation we need to get back to its roots and make Arena Gear rewards matter…A LOT!! If not you aren’t going to get players to try Arena out or participate.
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