I have never said that LFG was blameless. I actually pointed toward the death of the team structure as an issue, but that in itself the team structure had its own problems because you were dependent on team players being online to get games.
I have also said that I do not know how to fix the problems in Arena, just that there are so many and I do not know where to start with fixing the whole thing, but I also point out that Solo and as a result selfish play aren’t helping either.
I like many here are frustrated with the existing state of arena because I know how good it can be. I am certain they do also.
I’ve only interacted with you like twice, so I don’t know what you’ve said. The only the I saw you type was about how solo queue options don’t belong in an MMO.
I stand by that to a degree, I am not fully opposed to solo play options, but I do not think they should be the focus of any MMORPG where group play is the key point of the game. I do feel that the further we have departed from Group play and organized play the worse the community has become and the worse the game itself has become as a result.
This is a chicken and egg issue in a way, and I do not know what is the cause. Are the players leaving because the game sucks and the the solo play options are designed to retain players or does the game suck because the solo player options have created the problems?
That kind of happened naturally as the overall population of the game has gone down. This isn’t like in classic WoW where 30+ people, or whatever, gathered to raid. The game population is much smaller and people need to be realistic about this. Because the game population is smaller this means that it gets harder to form groups for many reasons and I’m sure you can think of a few.
Season 2 was the only real active time that I’ve seen LFG active. Season 3 started out fine and then it got progressively worse, which happens as xpacs come to an end and this is reasonable, but season 4 was completely and utterly dead. The last season of DF was not as dead as the last season of SL. Why? Because shuffle solved the issue of people not being able to queue when their friends quit, or do other things.
I also play WoW classic, its actually very populated and has an active PVE community and Battlegrounds. But because it is Classic WoW it lacks Arena and Rated BG’s and that is where I want to see Retail wow be as amazing as it can be, because it use to be REALLY damn fun, and its my opinion that with WoD and the pruning in WoD of casters and the reduction in counter play and the wackadoodle flavor of the month meta that was introduced mid WoD as a method to force re-rolls because of the flavor of the month was so much better than the bottom tier, this was one of the big damage things that happened to WoW over the years. There have been things that have been really interesting or fun in versions since, but I have always felt like since WoD came out they have been playing the flavor of the month game to soak as many hours out of arena players as they can.
I do feel that strategy is a mistake because players want to master a class rather than re-roll the meta. This chase of the meta and the arms race associated with in game informational addons that are far beyond what we had 10 years ago when the most you may see is Tidy plates or rogue power bars in addition to the expansion of the power of macros to secure your casts so that you do not silence or kick a protected cast, these things have all contributed to the fall of arena from its greatness.
All of this is just my opinion, and everyone will have the things that they find disgusting in respect to changes over time, and I do strongly believe the changes over time have reduced the population, but I have no proof because I am not a game developer.
No, participation was fine for it being the last season of an xpac. I’m not sure about BFA, or the xpacs before it, but it was healthy compared to Shadowlands.
And this is why it was healthy. Shuffle solves many of the issues that LFG and 3’s had.
Players quitting and playing other games is a game design issue not a 3’s issue. Players quit because the game sucks not because they dislike Arena or 3’s. I am one of the players who left because the game sucks. I have come back to find Arena is now in a worse state than it was in BFA. That is very bad because BFA was not very good when compared to even Legion or WoD who were both worse than MoP.
Maybe shuffle was a mistake. I don’t know. I’ve enjoy it and so have many other people. It’s normal for people to be divided on this issue because it does introduce different play styles. What can be done now though? It’s too late to go back and LFG still has the same issues. Sure, you can say add dynamic queue, but the boosters still run that bracket, so getting your 2400 would still be much harder without playing with some of the best players in the game, or being incredibly sweaty.
I personally like to have fun and queue and shuffle gives me the option to be relatively casual and still attain the highest rewards.
I wish I had a good answer, I wish it were simple and that we the community could fix it, I truly do because I LOVE arena, its the best thing in WoW history and its in shambles.
Shuffle is not that bad. The worst part about shuffle are the queue times and that has to do with healers not playing. If they buffed healer MMR and let people feel like they were actually gaining something then we’d probably see more healers playing, which would decrease the queue times.
Time on target being too high and the insane number of ways to shut down actual casting in tandem with healers being blamed for every failure do not help. Generally death is a failure of the DPS over extending, failing to use LoS correctly, or LoS’n the healer putting the healer at risk. There are times when the healer is to blame; when they do not understand how to heal and use LoS properly also, but usually DSP tunnel and die and allow their healer to get sat on while they are getting dead. There is a lot wrong with the community and this is something we had less a problem with when we had teams because you got to know the players you played with and you got to grow as a team and improve on helping the healer be peeled and grow to use line properly. I am sure you understand all this stuff, and I preach to the quire, but these are things I see with the community at large in PVP now. I blame that on the lack of team play, but perhaps I am wrong, I honestly do not know.
at least it was kind of fun