Imagine If Chess Followed WoW's PvP Reward Model

[Ephie-lightninghoof (Ephie)]

@Pmpiniseazy-lightnings-blade

mmos need engagement and reason to continue paying.

WoD PvP gearing was one of the few things that kept people invested in that otherwise-terrible expansion.

@Morvollo-boulderfist

throwing everyone on a level playingfield regardless of how much time is invested is theee absolute worst idea ever.

Was tBC-WoD really that bad?

[Robutnick-lightnings-blade]

Yeah, when The Chess MMO comes out I’ll tell you how I feel about that. Until that time, PVPing, or not PVPing does not negate the fact that RPG games are about character building. Building that character entails increasing it’s power from where it was, to where you want it to be.

If you want completely fair and balanced gameplay, where items, gear, and character progression isn’t a thing…play chess. Or Street Fighter.

Or you can go play Guild Wars, I hear they still follow this model. Not sure how well it’s doing though.

[Aith-hyjal]

I’ll tell you why, its actually extremely easy.

PvP is better when the best player or team wins, not the best geared player or team.

[Ephie-lightninghoof (Ephie)]

@Robutnick-lightnings-blade

If you want completely fair and balanced gameplay, where items, gear, and character progression isn’t a thing…play chess.

We had this in tBC-WoD? You got your honor set and then your conquest set. There were awful PvE items that showed up, but MoP-WoD fixed that too.

[Zarvardios-frostmourne (Zarvardios)]

Gearing is fine.

[Voodoodru-zuljin]

@Dotboi-frostmourne

The greater the challenge, the greater the reward. This is reflected in the pve scene, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be reflected in the pvp scene.

So the better you are, the less the challenge and the easier it should be. They should dish up your opponents to you naked so you can one shot them, because that’s what you deserve, and your opponents will keep coming back and continue queuing because they realize they are providing you a valuable service by helping you get gear upgrades that they themselves are blocked from.

Right. Keep patting yourself on the head and telling us how you can never get enough free welfare loot and PvP-free welfare wins.

[Aresula-moon-guard]

@Guru-eldrethalas

And the higher your ELO rating, the better your pieces.

Needless to say, doing so would break competitive chess forever.

But that’s exactly what Blizzard has done this expansion.

Absolutely nonsensical competitive game design. Blizzard’s AWC competition doesn’t even follow it, where everyone has access to the same gear.

Better chess players don’t get better pieces. The Super Bowl winner doesn’t get to draft first. They get a trophy and a title. Those are the rewards for PvP competition in every competitive activity on the planet. Zero competitions make the counter-productive decision of giving the best gear to the best players. Why? Doing so ruins the game.

Unlink gear from rating while you still can, Blizzard. Your design defies all logic, all common sense, all competitive game theory, the history of all person-vs-person competitions.

Yes, give the best players their mounts and their trophies and their titles — well deserved! — but do not break the game by making the best better, especially in an expansion with no scaling, no templates, no PvP Power, no PvP resilience.

Hurry. It’s not too late.

Like I’ve said in the past. I’d be fine if the ilvl upgrades only mattered outside of PvP. In PvP, all PvP gear that is conquest should be scaled up to 223 (or higher) in PvP zones. PvE gear should be lowered in PvP zones. Make PvP gear matter again. Honor gear should probably be scaled to 194 no matter its rank as well.

Once you do that then you can increase the requirements to upgrade conquest gear to 223 by being Gladiator for all I care. I’d rather PvE to get my PvE gear anyways. These upgrades should be bonus little grinds you can do if you want to use pvp gear outside of pvp for whatever reason. As inefficient as it’d be. But at least it’d be your choice.

[Aresula-moon-guard]

@Dotboi-frostmourne

I disagree, the fundemental drawing point of an mmo is reward vs challenge. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward. This is reflected in the pve scene, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be reflected in the pvp scene.

You know all those posts fawning over classic wow because they saw some beastly dude ride past on an epic mount and thought “wow i want to be him”, that’s what people want & blizzard is giving it to them.

And could you not get that same feeling looking at some Gladiator on a Gladiator mount, with Glad enchanted weapons, in the elite gladiator xmog, with the Gladiator tabard?

I’d actually respect that gladiator more if I knew he had to beat all his opponents on an equal and fair playing field. With no gear advantage to give him free wins. Right now any dragonslayer can just pay money for wow tokens and throw gold at mythic raiders to carry them. Get a full set of endgame gear and dominate people trying to gear through pvp means.

The game is literally pay2win now.

[Kayama-ysera]

Rating locking gear is really bad, always has been. I don’t need a gear advantage to beat people, it’s pretty ignorant.

[Catharina-emerald-dream]

100% Agree. PvP should not award the better players with even better gear, it completely removes all fair competition from the game. If you want a fair game, this has to be changed.

Changing this will be a net positive for the game and increase it’s longevity. Ranked will begin to shrink and the meta will suffer as well. Having fun playing an off-meta comp with your friends? Think again.

Now you’re penalized for having fun instead of pushing the meta, this is not healthy. Anyone who plays this way (myself included) will not be playing Shadowlands or will soon be very disappointed. This system will eventually deteriorate the ladder, especially as the SL high begins to thin.

Rich getting richer is never fair or fun.

[Kayama-ysera]

The worst part is, people in here act like fully geared players aren’t stomping around in the 1400-1600 range in the middle/end of the season. They very much are, and if you’re playing alts or just chilling with friends, GL. Rating locking gear literally serves no purpose other than to give people a crutch that they really shouldn’t have.

Also sick of the “muh rpg” argument. You can have your rpg garbage in PvE, so get it out of PvP thanks. Participation was really high in MoP and gear wasn’t rating locked, they removed the rating reqs and T2 weapons for a reason.

[Aresula-moon-guard]

@Dotboi-frostmourne

@Ragarèn-emerald-dream

The reward/ challenge in pvp is fighting an opponent who differs from the last and beating him. It’s adapting to their playstyle, countering it and coming out on top, the reward from that is the victory.

Acquiring better gear for a challenge is a pve and rpg aspect. It does not mingle well in pvp because it’s overall, a very stupid design that increases the gap between players.

This is why all successful pvp seasons and pvp games do not reward superior players with special gear.

You do realize they have matchmaking in arena right? Like the gear sparsity for your bracket isn’t going to be much so more than likely it will come down to skill at some level.

I hope you’re not judging this based on bgs because HOO-HOWDY, no one should be judging anything based on bgs.

Explain how you’re supposed to beat people that are 2100+ in full 223 gear if you’re 2000 or 1900? If you’ve ever actually done arenas before then you know matchmaking isn’t perfect. It’ll match you against teams far beyond where you’ve been yet. You’ll just lose like 8 rating, instead of the usual 10, when you inevitably lose to them.

I mean if they’ve already proven themselves the better players. Why do they need the better gear? Shouldn’t a better player be able to win with a handicap? Giving the better player an additional advantage breaks all the fairness from a competitive environment.

[Kayama-ysera]

@Aresula-moon-guard

I mean if they’ve already proven themselves the better players. Why do they need the better gear?

This. Better players don’t need better gear. Leave that rpg trash in PvE where it belongs, so many insecure people I swear lul.

[Catharina-emerald-dream]

Indeed.

Mists of Pandaria and Warlords PvP did not use this gatekeeping system, it is partly why they are deemed so successful.

[Kayama-ysera]

Careful now, people will quote “Oh my god Wrath participation was amazing and they had rating locked gear1111” lets shut that down before they do. For one, there was nothing else to play in 2008-2009 on PC really, either WoW or CoD. Also MMOs in general were far more popular, but today there’s a million other PvP games that are way easier to get into.

MoP was arguably the best expac for PvP and it had no rating reqs, the WoD gearing system was also amazing too. I’ll say it again, better players don’t need better gear.

[Aresula-moon-guard]

@Dotboi-frostmourne

I already addressed this, the whole drawing point for a mmo is challenge vs reward. This is why people like mmos, play mmos, do challenging content, get phat loot. This is what is appealing to people about mmos. The PvE scene reflects this, there’s no reason the PvP scene shouldn’t. If you’re coming face to face with a 3k rated gladiator in full gear YOU’RE GONNA FEEL IT.

This is what people want. This is what people got. They tried pvp templates and guess what…THE MAJORITY HATED IT.

I don’t know how else I can explain it to you

PvP templates are not what people asked for. PvP templates removed all customization you had in choosing your gear. It made your stats go completely bonkers when going into a PvP environment. You’d walk in with like 40% haste and then suddenly be at 10% haste because “lol pvp template”. Then a stat you didn’t care for would be buffed to like 50%.

Secondly, it didn’t even solve the gear gap. You think fresh level capped players were strong in Legion? LOL! You still got a tremendos stat advantage that grew the higher ilvl you had. People will pay thousands of gold for an enchant that gives you +15 intellect. So having a 10%-20% buff to your stats is insane.

Why is it people constantly assume equal ilvl gear = pvp stat templates? They’re nothing alike.

[Catharina-emerald-dream]

True, although locking a single item is far and away from overall item level; but I was primarily referencing Mists of Pandaria because it is regarded as the best PvP system for any expansion to date.

[Catharina-emerald-dream]

Do you enjoy the concept of the rich getting richer?

This is the heart of the problem that went over your head.

[Aresula-moon-guard]

@Catharina-emerald-dream

True, although locking a single item is far and away from overall item level; but I was primarily referencing Mists of Pandaria because it is regarded as the best PvP system for any expansion to date.

Shocker. When everyone has the same gear potential then it becomes popular to play! The other thing that made it great was how it was the best design in terms of class balance. Carebears cry ‘waaah homogenization waaaah’ but for PvP it was a blast. Everyone felt useful and powerful.

Now we got our precious ‘class identity’ back and we get to enjoy a burst meta where only a couple of chosen by the gods classes can enjoy doing the brust. While the rest of us run around as free kills to our instant burst overlords.

I’m so glad we as a community cried to have class uniqueness back. So we could promptly watch them stack 3 rogues in the M+ races. Where every tank was the same class and every healer was the same class. Where we all know what basically 90% of the current arena teams have. So glad nothing was homogenized! We wouldn’t want people to play what they wanted to play.

Lock us into roles they did, and now this is what you have to play to be competitive and viable. Oh joy. But yea that’s all a discussion for a totally differenta nd legitament topic. I really really wish I had more time to play the game back in MoP but I was a lot busier back then. Now I got all the free time in the world to waste on WoW and my class is rubbish in PvP and the gear is locked behind a pay2win system of pve carries.

[Kayama-ysera]

Ya MoP was really good. Probs my favorite expansion by a long shot.