I know this sounds crazy but hear me out. Blizzard wants arenas to be an esport. That’s impossible when the players aren’t on even playing ground before the match even begins. And I’m talking about the normal players of arena, not the tournament servers.
Think about it- what if in league of legends players did more damage and had more health based on things they did before the match begins? It would turn the game less into battle of skill and more into a battle of who has more time to grind out gear.
I get that people want their gear to matter, so my idea is to have 2 types of areas. One where gear matters and one where skill matters. For that one the gear and item level is the same and the only differences would be talents and actual skill.
I’m tired of having to grind for hours on alts just to have a semi even game. There’s literally nothing in WoW that’s a pure skill match up and that’s what I want to change.
This is not a new and unique or ‘crazy’ idea. It’s been suggested often and people are very aware of the differences it creates in gameplay compared to a game like LoL.
What you’re looking for is another game entirely. This game will never be that. Don’t expect gear to ever go away completely from WoW arenas. It will never happen.
This doesn’t sound crazy at all. Arenas are supposed to be about who is the better player. Allowing gear to matter in rated content just makes them a travesty of what should be fair competition.
People who want PVP where gear matters can do world PVP or random battlegrounds.
i don’t think “Never” is the right word, but Keungkee is overall right, there are things blizzard could do differently… without having to “create” an entierly new game they could just make a Arena/BG realm a bit like some private servers that would be exacly like the tournament realms, in other words, make a copy of tournament realm for casual player that they do not HAVE to pay to log in (if i’m not mistaking) it would also be a great way to trial some classes there.
All pros (or at least a vast majority) don’t even bother do PVE anymore and cry out about PVE gear being overtuned in PVP (and i agree with them). that would kinda fix it… but like the firs law of Alchemy “To obtain something, something of equal value must be lost/sacrificed” that would probably kill the current Arena system in retail as most player would do PVP on that realm since it wouldn’t rly matter in their respective realms…
in other words… there is not much Blizz can do to fix PVP… as an MMORPG Gear AS to matter… i guess they could add back some sort of resilience or make the game more alt-friendly to help out alt gearing…
So maybe there can be a system where in the actual rated arena gear would be equalized but you still get gear from the weekly pvp chest and so on for other things. I agree that gear progression is important in an mmorpg, however there are so many ways to play WoW and have that gear matter like in mythic dungeons, battle grounds, world pvp, raids, arena skirmishes, island expeditions, warfronts. I just want arena to be the one facet of WoW where its pure skill.
While it would be nice to have a completely neutral space to highlight skill instead of gear, I think the general idea of a “gladiator arena” goes back to the Roman implementation. If you remember the movie with Russell Crowe he was often at a disadvantage with size/strength, weapons, cavalry, being outnumbered, but he was still able to succeed due to skill!
Believe me I’m actually at the point where I want templates back. But blizzard has so much love for PvE I don’t think anything will change.
You mean like guild wars 2 where you can choose what gear you want and can choose the stats you want and can change them whenever you want so that the deciding factor is skill?
We could take that approach, but then we should take that approach consistently. In particular, in that case the arena world championships should use clones of characters people play in game.
I don’t dislike the sound of that. Templates had some really positive things about them and I wouldn’t mind a “pure skill” arena. The only problem I have with your post is when you say the only difference would be talents and actually skill.
Let’s take, like you said, League of Legends for example. I haven’t played the game in a while but just for example purposes, let’s say Fiora top lane has a 53% win rate and she’s busted. If she lanes against someone like Kled, who has, again for example purposes, a 46% win rate because at the time he’s a trash champion. The Kled player is going to complain that Fiora is a no skill broken champion and she only won lane because the champ is busted. We would say the same thing about World of Warcraft due to having to level a character. If resto druids, like they are now, are absolutely amazing, and holy priests are trash, the holy priest is still going to complain that the game is not based on skill because the healer he is playing against is just playing a flat out better class.
With both systems there’s good and bad things. At the end of the day, there’s always going to be a meta and there’s always going to be classes that are just flat out better than others, regardless of gear. I like the idea of your post, but there are so many other factors that goes into the game besides gear (even though gear is a major part). If you remove the gearing and put everyone on a “even playing field” that field will still be tilted towards the person who is playing a better class. In which case we will have people complaining that their class is bad and they don’t have enough time to level another one, unlike in league of legends where you can just select a different character and press Lock In.
I mean they have continued to host tournaments all these years, and until recently with the MDI it was the only main event for WoW each year.
I would think if they wanted to continue to promote and brand their game is a top tier player versus player experience, balancing adjustments would be a given. But what do I know?
I had a pally stun me up in a bg the other day…was waiting for the TV smash to begin…he backed up and hit me with a lazor…i dont even know what he used but i looked at my details…and it hit me like 10 times for 14k to 8k …coulda been more,…idk. but No Country for Old Men comes to my mind when i think of the interaction with this pally. All the time you spend trying to get back what’s been took from you, more is going out the back door. You can’t stop what’s comin’, they aren’t waitin’ on you - that’s vanity
