Over this last season the two main issues I am seeing is the Sniping/dodging and PvE gear.
For Sniping/dodging I know its more ideal to fight comps you have a higher percentage of winning, who doesn’t want that. It gets quite annoying for many at the higher ratings when you login to que and it just so happens 2 or 3 other counter comp teams happen to login and start quein. Then the moment you switch to another comp, they all of a sudden stop queing. I think a change to this that would help, is to incorporate an invisible/offline mode in game to where they cannot /who or see you online on friends list. To further it, maybe it creates your own layer that way addons can’t just scan and find you some how with /target since we all have seen the amount of lvl 1s sitting by the que NPC’s. It is a bit absurd to see everyone abusing the Weakaura to snipe and dodge or better yet the few twitch channels that broadcast it for everyone to see on multiple servers.
Second, I think being able to min max with pve gear is a fun thing. Sadly it isn’t guaranteed though. I know players who raided every single lock out and didn’t get a single drop to use in pvp. To combat this, a fun method could be to create a vendor that sells PVE items only usable in PVP or only scales up in PVP and in PVE the stats are drastically reduced. This vendor could require ratings for certain pieces and to buy could be with arena points or honor. Lets face it top pvpers generally either get carried in the raid by fans to get loot, buy gold or sell boosts and do GDKP’s anyways where they are guaranteed the piece’s most of the time. This also can help pvper’s who are stuck on low pop servers and may not have the schedule to find raids to get said items reliably compared to say Benediction where there are raid times all throughout the day. (or just open transfers to big pop servers again -wink wink-)
Let me know what all of your thoughts are or maybe some tweaks to the idea.
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Thoughtful and solid solution.
Thanks for putting effort into thinking about issues that plauge the game. PvP love baby. With you 100%.
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They could add a timer if you dodge, that normally can be enough punishing.
I think people will just have to deal with pve gear. P2 was kinda worse because they buffed Ulduar but P3 will be more equal.
I kinda thought about something like a randomized timer when you que. As in when you que you can set it yourself to randomly match make you after queing in say like a 15 second to 2 minute interval. So it could match make you at 15s 33s or even 1min 34s kinda would make it harder to be sniped. I have blind qued and always have, I understand getting a R1 or Glad title is big…but at the same time I at least want to feel like I earned it and played the game
Put a 15min timer if you dodge and people will still be able to do it but they’ll lose half their game time which I think is a pretty big incentive to not dodge. Randomizing the time could probably mess a bit, but if they really want to dodge they’ll just dodge that window.
like a random delayed queue after you hit ready? what do you mean by dodge, i thought it’s just not queueing when a tough opponent is not in a match
I like your suggestions especially the PvE gear idea 
The delayed que, the moment you que up it gives it an internal time until it will actually match you up against a team or try to find a team to fight, although im still in favor with the hidden mode in game, it would be nice for not just pvp but other reasons if you are trying to avoid people while playing lol
this needs more acknowledgement. banger takes only.
agreed, would love more interaction and input from the community!
Offline/invisible mode would be helpful. Combine it with the ability to queue arena from anywhere like battlegrounds and I think it would help mitigate people using level 1 alts to spy on the areas surrounding the queue NPCs. I can think of a few ways that particularly sweaty players could still stalk their targets but these measures would make it a lot more difficult and/or expensive to pull off.
I like servers where you can get PVE gear from vendors for use in PVP only, though I’m mildly conflicted on this because most of those servers are instant 80 PVP-only realms. I like a little degree of incentive for people on regular progression realms to participate in all aspects of the game if they want to truly minmax, though people who PVP or PVE only should still be able to compete adequately without going hard on content modes they dislike. The disparity between people who have PVE gear and people who don’t is worse than normal this season because of ilvl tampering… it should be less of an issue in S7 unless Blizz screws with S7 PVP gear ilvls.
All great suggestions, but I also think Blizzard needs to rethink MMR inflation - for a portion of the player base (who only care about titles), there is virtually no reason to queue arenas outside of the two week announcement except doing 5v5 for points. For a large portion of the season it is nearly impossible to play outside of primetime hours, and during these off hours you will almost certainly get snipped or sit 10+ minute queues for +2 points if you are lucky. I think a revision of how the amount of arena points are acquired could be helpful, in that higher ratings in any bracket would actually result in a noticeable difference instead of being forced to get 1500 in 5s and just do 10 games per week in this godforsaken bracket.
Honestly, not that I care about PvP in the slightest, but this is where WoD/retail PvP shiners for varies reasons over classic.
IIRC, WoD brought in standardized PvP ilvl in every BG/arena. So everyone was equal by gear and skill was the deciding factor.
On retail, you can acquire Versa gear in PvE.
As for PvE gear, idk if Ulduar vendor will be any help. But it’s easy access to some 245 weapons and 239 trinks.
PS: by “easy”, I mean you don’t have to raid nor hope for a drop chance nor chance to win the roll. Bust out 4 world tours and get it from vendor.
With or without inflation, we would still encounter the same thing. From S5 to S6, we saw a 50% decrease in participation.
Sadly arena is dying and it’s dying quickly. With the amount of cheating, boosting, RMT, sniping/dodging, and meta of wrath, s8 will have 10 slots open for gladiator at this rate.
Since the start of wrath, many have been advocating of removing gear requirements (except for T2 weapons) so that we can hopefully increase participation. The gate keeping of gear is a major deterrent, alongside of learning how to PvP.
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Well that also always happens whenever something new is released - people try out arenas for the beginning then proceed to raid log and there isn’t any incentives for PVERs to ever PVP, whereas only the opposite is true. Blizzard also didn’t think through swapping the system from teams to player based because they essentially cut the number of rewards down significantly. They would need to multiply each reward by size of bracket to be accurate.
Yes, there is always a drop off, but not even close to what we have seen from S5 to S6. 15-20% drop off is normal, but 50%? It’s unprecedented.
Raiting inflation didn’t kill queues, people not playing killed the queues.
Wotlk had a really big drop off before Ulduar, DF launch just after the start removed the tourists and 5 months of Naxxramas was a poor choice.
You can see the drop for raids on
https://ironforge.pro/population/classic/overall/
Wotlk started way higher which helps. But it’s dropping at a pretty alarming rate.
1. Place a rating requirement of 1400 on uncut gems
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This will do 2 things. First, it gives incentive to most players that dip their toes in all content to play some arenas. Second, it heavily combats botting as battleground bots won’t be able to do anything with botted honor. At worst, bots will attempt botting arena and increase the ladder pool and give some lower-rating humans some free wins.
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Additionally, I think it’s important to tie this rating requirement to an Achievement, not just the rating itself. It wouldn’t be a great experience for more casual players to reach 1400, sit the rating, and then battleground for gems (if that was their only intent). A feat of strength showing that they hit 1400 for the season would unlock the ability to buy gems off the vendor. Then after they hit 1400, they can continue playing each week for a few weeks to get enough arena points to buy all of their gear. With natural inflation from the adjusted curve, they should have enough points to purchase T2 weapons after their rating naturally inflated from the +70 MMR each week through capping.
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1400 is a suggestion. The main forces to balance here is to make it a rating low enough where a player that’s interested in playing battlegrounds can achieve it without having to invest an unreasonable amount of effort, but a bot whose only purpose is to farm gold and sell it wouldn’t be able to achieve it with another bot.
2. Remove rating requirements from all non-T2 weapon items
- The folks that are grabbing 1400 have an incentive to queue beyond just getting 1400. Additionally, if you’re a casual battleground player and are pushing 1400, you’ll eventually get enough gear to reach 1400 by existing with a full set of current gear. ]
3. T2 weapons require 1800 rating to purchase
- This is a way to provide additional incentive to keep queuing. 2200 can be daunting, but 1800 is obtainable if you’re capping each week and naturally increasing your gear. For this to be obtainable by someone who is only capping each week, the season would need to be almost finished to accommodate the arena point need and natural inflation need. Because of this, it shouldn’t impact PvE too much - the “free heroic weapons” wouldn’t really be a thing for most people until the tier is on heavy farm, anyways.
4. Tabards require 2100 rating to purchase
- The tabards would now function as a reward to people who take the content seriously. This wouldn’t be obtainable for most players without being “above the curve” in skill.
5. Introduce the PvP enchant “illusion” system introduced in Mists of Pandaria, purchasable at 2200
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In Mists of Pandaria, Bloody Dancing Steel/Bloody Jade Spirit enchants were added as an “additional cosmetic flare” for distinguished Arena/Rated Battleground players. This system could be lifted-and-shifted into Classic. The way the system worked is by having an Arena vendor sell the rating-locked item in exchange for a normal scroll. For example, the Glorious Tyranny enchant (added in Warlords of Draenor) could be purchased for an enchant scroll/item. “Berserking - Glorious Tyranny”, “Titanium Weapon Chain - Glorious Tyranny”, “Black Magic - Glorious Tyranny”, etc.
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This is a simple system using enchant models that have already been created and function on this engine that gives those players who’ve obtained their tabard - a one-time purchase - to continue queuing. Players who obtain their tabard mid-season should naturally reach this goal with MMR inflation.
6. Rework Gladiator title/achievement/mount to function similarly to retail, granting rewards once reaching an arbitrary rating and achieving a certain number of wins at or above the rating
For example…
- A rating of 2600 in 2v2 along with 50 wins at or above the rating grants title, achievement, and mount
- A rating of 2450 in 3v3 along with 50 wins…
- A rating of 2300 in 5v5 along with 50 wins…
- This would be the trickiest suggestion to implement simply because arbitrary rating cutoffs for prestigious rewards can devalue the rewards themselves.
- The strategy would be to make the cutoff somewhere at high-Duelist (Gladiator is top 0.5%, and Duelist is top 0.5% - 3% - being around top 1% would be a nice cutoff).
- Making sure that the title stays around that 1% mark and requiring 50 wins would be very important to keep prestige associated to the rewards.
- This would influence queuing naturally rather than sitting rating, dodging, sniping, etc. (which I’m sure a lot of you have seen issues about) as you’re not really grasping at ladder positions anymore.
Closing Thoughts
The combination of the first 5 bullets above I believe will be enough to inject life into the current Classic ladder through incentivizing a larger pool of players into participation, while also combating other issues that are present in the game (botting). The 6th bullet is an option to “mediate” the top of the ladder, given that the first 5 aren’t successful in increasing participation to a degree where we’d see a doubling of participation. In its current form, the number of Rank 1 and Gladiator slots have decreased significantly, which has influenced a large spike in general degeneracy at the top of the ladder (huge amounts of dodging and sniping, along with other forms of cheating). Maybe this was always there, but it just wasn’t put under a microscope until the pool volume was on life support.
Additionally, something we’ve seen in retail with the introduction of different systems similar to the above is a sharp increase in boosting. I feel like this would be something we’d see specifically with the gems cutoff (i.e., high-rated players boosting lower-rated players into “gem rating”). Personally, I feel like any change that incentivizes players who haven’t participated in arena in Classic to queue - and continue queuing - is a good change, and boosting would just be a necessary evil of a solution (at least in the short term).
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