Over the past few weeks, PvP participation has plummeted, despite the fact that we are still in Season 1 of a new expansion. This is extremely concerning for the short term success of the expansion and the long term health of the community.
Low player retention is caused by serious structural problems within the game itself, which have all been severely neglected by developers. Some of these problems have been ongoing for years.
Below is a list of the most critical problems, which should all be fixed as quickly as possible.
MMR
Problems
At the start of the season, Arena MMR was seemingly “capped” - leading to overall arena ratings being much more squished, resulting in players struggling to achieve specific rating benchmarks
There was one “MMR inflation” event to help normalize ratings between Arenas and Battleground Blitz, but since then ratings have still seemed to stagnate
Starting MMR for fresh level 80 characters is around 1800-1900, which is way too high, especially for newer players
Solutions
Increase MMR inflation more aggressively if needed to help offset lower participation
Normalize starting MMR for new level 80 characters to NOT increase with seasonal inflation
Rating System and Rewards Structure
Problems
The rating system and rewards structure that was put in place in Battle for Azeroth hasn’t seen much change since its implementation
“Challenger” “Rival” “Duelist” and “Gladiator”, can all have drastically different meanings in each season due to the massive fluctuations in average arena rating and participation
Because there is not a robust granular reward system, many players will simply stop playing at certain benchmarks (typically 1800)
Solutions
Revert back to a percentage based title system, so that players have a more accurate way to gauge their progress
Include some form of rank protection within the title system, so that players are less demotivated by losses
Make the reward structure more granular, potentially with more skins of gearsets or mounts
Healer Rating and Incentives
Problems
Healers are only “matched” against 1 other player in the lobby (the enemy healer), which means going 3-3, 4-2, or even 5-1 has the potential to cause 0 rating gains and potentially even rating losses if the enemy healer has substantially lower MMR (note: DPS do not suffer this problem nearly as often since they are “matched” against 3 players at a time)
The healer strongboxes and unique title (Battle Mender) are not strong enough incentives for healers to queue
Healers have a much lower rating cap compared to DPS - the highest DPS are typically 100-200 rating above the highest healers
Solutions
Normalize MMR so that healer ratings are in-line with DPS ratings
Prevent MMR losses from going 3-3 or better
Queue Times
Problems
Because of the problems outlined above, DPS have substantially longer queue times, as there are disproportionately more DPS queueing compared to healers
Having 6 “rounds” creates a much slower churn of players entering the queue system, as DPS are often waiting for 6 or more rounds to end before their queue can pop
Solutions
The long term solution is to offer 1-round Solo queues, so that the churn of players is faster and “losing” lobbies do not feel as punishing
Class Tuning
Problems
Even though class tuning was somewhat regular for a period of time, events like the AWC and MDI are still putting a pause on class tuning, which means some specs do not see any rebalancing for weeks at a time
While game balance has been relatively better now compared to the distant past, there are still obvious overperformers and underperformers across all ratings
Solutions
Freeze the Tournament Realm’s patch so that tuning can be done on live servers while competitions are active
Focus on buffing the current underperforming specs using PvP modifiers and by reworking PvP talents
Gearing
Problems
Although gearing has dramatically improved since the introduction of the Catalyst system, PvP item level crafting sparks, Conquest catchup, and more, gearing is still not without its issues
Since most “best in slot” PvP gear is crafted through Gladiator’s Heraldry, the Bind on Account Conquest boxes are not only a gamble, but oftentimes useless - being able to transfer Gladiator’s Heraldry across your account would help solve this issue
Getting gems slots still feels arbitrarily slow, as the cost of purchasing 1 single gem nearly requires Honor Cap or 20,000g+
Solutions
Allow Gladiator’s Heraldry to be transferred across your account
Significantly decrease the Honor cost of gem sockets, and allow them to be transferred across your account
Maps
Problems
Despite the fact that we are in the 5th season of Solo Shuffle, there has been little change to the map pool. There are still a significant number of maps that are disabled for Solo Shuffle, and others which continue to be enabled despite having some potential balancing issues
Solutions
Revisit the map pools and make un-used maps functional for Solo Shuffle
Lack of Community Events
Problems
While there are several in game events to incentivize participation (ie Holidays, Darkmoon Faire, Timewalking), there are virtually no PvP specific events outside of “Brawls” and “Conquest Weeks” - which are not strong motivators for many players
Solutions
Have a monthly “Community Day” for PvP, including robust rewards that could encourage PvP participation across all brackets
Fully agree with the issues listed. There are of course more solutions than listed, and one that is particularly close to my heart is spec tuning.
Specifically the way I see them do balance changes can be split into 2 categories:
Design changes. This is a hard nut to crack, and basically becomes a question of “How would we like this class to play”. There is no “correct” answer. Most of their balance changes fall into this category, like buffing holy priest serenity by 25%, because they specifically want that ability to be more impactful.
Power changes. This is simple. Examples include “Resto druid healing increased by 4% in PvP combat”. This is very low effort and doesn’t change how the class plays, only how strong its buttons are.
What I would like for them is to spend as much energy as they feel is neccessary to fix the design of classes. I think they did an amazing job with the MW monk rework!
What I don’t like is that we have known for months that holy priests need to heal more. They have been busy trying to figure out why and diagnose which aspect of their kit they specifically need to target for better gameplay. Instead, I believe they should just have buffed all healing by holy priest by 2% in pvp combat every single week, until it is competitive. Then they can take their time worrying about which specs need design changes later.
This could be as simple as asking “What is this spec’s win % at 1800 rating? less than 49% and they get a 2% buff. More than 51% and they get a 2% nerf.”. This would surely not add too much labor on their end, and would result in all specs being decent. And if some specs are too strong at high/low rating, THEN spend effort on redisigning those.
But also the rating system in partiular seems outdated, and largely disincentivizes players from pushing for the first 80% of the season … there are still many specs for which you reach rank 1 (top 0.1% of the ladder) BEFORE you reach elite … that makes it challenging for most players to attain rewards. 86% of the solo shuffle ladder is still below 1800 rating and has received zero rewards - so they might as well wait for inflation, until the last couple weeks.
It would mean a lot to me if blizzard would acknowledge that they have heard us, and give their perspective.
Which of these issues do they agree/disagree with?
Which are they looking into and which are beyond their current scope?
i saw a while ago palumor had an idea of giving % based titles every few weeks as to keep participation throughout the season and making it consistent with what “being a gladiator” means
i’d rather just see crafting gear go away and maybe change the conquest gear. crafting gear doesnt feel very interesting but is a definitive upgrade since its not overly stacked with vers and can have embelishments (which have kind of lost significance since last expansion). being able to send heraldys would just be a bandage fix and i think it would be better if they just made the conquest gear itself better with less vers and more stat options
Great thread, and this specifically would be my most desired change to get me playing more. I pretty much never want to sit in a lobby with the same other 5 random players for 6 rounds. When we first asked for solo queue, I had the most simple implementation in mind: you queue, get matched as 2 dps 1 healer vs 2 dps 1 healer, play the game, exit arena and queue again. Having to play 6 rounds swapping between allies and enemies leads to some very toxic situations I’d rather avoid, which leads to me playing the game less.
Biggest problem is they are taking too long to balance the game. Especially healers, not balancing healers is one of the biggest contributors to low participation. If 2/3 of the healers dont want to play due to their spec not being as good as one of the two viable healers then they just eventually stop playing and so does all the dps that was playing with them.
fully agree with this post. blizzard won’t read but we pray.
the worst part is that blizzard legitimately thinks arena is a failure that no one cares about. that’s why they don’t spend time on it.
the truth is if we just had 1 dedicated pvp dev, arena would grow 10x. the return on investment would go crazy if they just put 1 intern to fully dedicate themselves into making arena better.
they’d rather squeeze the last drops of milk from the cow rather than nourish the dying cow
ust the same story for 4 expansions in a row.
certain specs stay unplayable for whole seasons, others remain god tier for whole seasons.
slow, inconsistent, flat out bad tuning.
mmr terrible as always. a new player starts at rival mmr lmao.
However, I would really like to see solo shuffle be changed to instead que into the normal 3v3 or 2v2 bracket. Where you can que 3s or 2s with 1-3 or 1-2 grouped players respectively.
This would breathe life back into the brackets which would help with MMR deflation and also incentize adding people to your btag when you jive with a person you met while shuffling.
The amount of fragmentation between the brackets is reflected in the wait times.
I’ll add in the suggestions that I’ve been making that have some cross-over here:
1. Attracting New Blood:
F2P PvP Access: How about letting Game Pass users dive into PvP for free? They could create PvP-only characters that would get locked to a dedicated “PvP Island,” similar to setups in other MMOs. PVE players could travel to this island / city to go hang out as well.
Current Existing Solution: We have tournament realms where players can quickly gear up and jump into max-level PvP. Since PvP content doesn’t change drastically each season, it stays fresh with minimal upkeep.
2. Juicier Rewards:
Reward Tracks: Let’s introduce paths where players can earn unique PvP transmogs, or legacy mounts. (2.4 for healers for example?)
Cosmetic Store Items: Adding exclusive cosmetic items and mounts to the in-game store could work quite well with land locked F2P players.
Current Existing Solution: The in-game store and Trading Post let us snag cosmetic items using tenders or cash. Or just flat out getting the season’s set for reaching rating thresholds as it works now.
3. Streamlined Talents and UI:
Simplify Talents: Trimming down the talent trees could make the game more newbie-friendly.
AWC Interface as Default: Making the AWC interface the standard for PvP, along with some tutorials, could help everyone.
Current Existing Solution: The AWC interface is popular and gets updated each season. Adding bot-driven arena tutorials, like “Comp Stomp,” might be helpful. Simplifying talents is a big task, but ideas like Plunderstorm are exploring this. Specs with simpler rotations, like BM, Fury, or Havoc, have been successful. Reducing our reliance on addons could lead to a more stable and future-proof game, especially since we often have to redo UIs each season when support drops.
4. Solo Queue for 3v3 Arenas:
Flexible Matchmaking: Updating the LFG system to let us queue solo, as a duo, or as a trio, with matchmaking pairing similar group types, could cut down on wait times.
Current Existing Solution: Features like Solo Shuffle and Skirmishes address this need. Expanding this system to rated 2v2 and 3v3 arenas would be beneficial. I’d rather play a suboptimal comp than sit around in Dornogal for 30-60 minutes at a time. I’ve started to play other games in that time frame.
Preach brother. I would just like to add that BGs and Epic BGs have been neglected into antique form at this point. We’re going to need an entire Xpac dedicated to bringing BGs back into a relevant play state.
I got my 2100 and stopped healing, went to do pve now, got AOTC, working on M+ mount now. The last 2 weeks of the season is when my team decided we are gonna push glad. Its stupid AF this late in the season that literally rank 1 is 2500…
In my eyes all the issues stem from the lack of rewards. Shadowlands is proof of this. I doubt anyone would say it was a good PvP expansion, but people played because the gear was good.
Even in vanilla we had two armor sets, reputation rewards, and unique PvP mounts. What do we have now? A few rewards that are out of reach of new PvP players and an armor set that’s just a reskin, and a mount that doesn’t get removed so there’s no urgency to acquire it.
BG blitz gets added and there’s no new rewards. Where’s the high res GM/HWL sets? Where’s the new mounts? Where’s the reputation rewards?
They should add a trading post type system to PvP. With a unique reward track for each season. If they started adding more unique transmogs, mounts, toys, pets, etc people would start queueing. If the reward is good enough people will get involved.
Everyone please comment and like this post. As someone who has played arena at all ratings for years, I agree with this post wholeheartedly and it summarizes all the issues perfectly. The negative forum Andys are talking their usual crap. Please just ignore them and instead like and leave comments supporting this post so the devs see this. This is our last chance.
Imagine if they put anywhere near as much effort into each PvP season as they did to the anniversary event! Unique transmogs for every class, battle pets, mounts, toys …
Could be with a currency or as a battlepass.
I’m personally gonna try plunderstorm, for one reason only: I want to see whats in the plunderstore!