PvP Feels Neglected from the Top Down

PVP Arenas
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PVP has always, ALWAYS, been neglected by blizzard. It’s why I didn’t even bother buying this latest expansion. They think throwing out a new arena map each expac is sufficient… it’s not.

Players should absolutely not start over at 0 rating each season- just to stomp their way through the low brackets again each time. A zero rating start should only happen at the beginning of the xpac.

Gear sets feel awful, too. Each season you have to grind for the same exact set of gear you had from the season before, just with a slightly higher ilvl and in a different color. Why not just let players upgrade their gear from the previous season into the current season? The upgrade mechanic is already there. Remove the tedium.

The last, most awful part, is how absolutely painful it is just to get a group of 10 people together for RBGs. Has to be the most toxic part of the whole game. Blizzard even realized organizing a premade team of 6 was too much of an ask for Overwatch, so why would they think it’s reasonable to demand wow players organize their own groups of 10 players? Use the rating system for matchmaking, enforce a team comp like you would for dungeon finder, and let players queue up for RBGs. If they want increased participation then they need to make it easier to participate.

It doesn’t take a genius to make PvP in wow better. Blizzard simply doesn’t care. And they won’t ever care. We are just screaming into the void here.

3 Likes
54

Inflation has created a lot of problems. More aggressive inflation gives players even more incentive to wait until the end of the season to queue.

The entire MMR system needs to be overhauled.

1 Like
55

Yes, agree. The entire MMR system needs an overhaul. But they can do something to help this season right now in the meantime while they hopefully work on better long-term changes.

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Yea, I’m fine with that, I just wish it was more targeted. Instead of just doing a flat MMR increase that pushes the entire ladder up, it should really targets specific MMR ranges to help alleviate some of the pooling in the mid brackets.

57

Buff unholy

5 Likes
58

the only thing we have to consider about % based rewards is that i won’t be able to get glad ever again, so maybe we should just leave it as not % based

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If I have to go back to my roots of being a permanent Challenger II for the good of the arena community, I glad give my pound of flesh.

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Great post, great ideas. +1

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Everything is catered for pve. Until they put some real resources into pvp, it won’t change. Every pvp decision has to go the pve department, that’s why it take so long to get changes.

2 Likes
62

Eh not really? I think the same team that does the pvp changes does the pve changes basically. There is no “PvP team” as far as I know. They may have people on the team that does balancing that are more knowledgeable than others when it comes to PvP. But things don’t have to really go through the PvE team per say since they can make PvE changes and PvP changes not affect one another.

I quite honestly think the PvPs rank system on top of the minimal attention PvP gets at least compared to PvE/World content is the biggest factor. The ranking system is outdated, and is having issues from season to season for even the modes that have been around since it was introduced. Then add in more modern solo queue type modes and the system doesn’t seem to work. Or has a lot of issues anyway. I also think PvP is sometimes made or tried to be made to competitive, when things like BGs and world pvp type content should get more attention in an MMO game. Arena is there to be the top end of everything competitive in WoW, and that is fine. But it doesn’t seem MMO player bases in general want super competitive PvP in general. Fun and rewards seem to be the driving factor.

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Yeah, my source is more reliable that “trust me bro”. Not that is a good source but better than just assuming.

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My statement was made based off some of the conversations I have had with a few people I know that work there. So it wasn’t a “trust me bro”.

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Must’ve been Biebz dad. Anyway, conflicting statements from 2 different sources. Regardless, there would be no reason to delay changes if they were made by the same people. Not like they getting no feedback.

1 Like
66

I mean I agree, it shouldn’t take as long as it does for some of these changes. Especially ones that are having a drastic affect on PvP. Not going to argue that.

I do know they have PvPers working for them. So maybe your source is correct. I was never told one way or another. I generally just give feedback and not ask to much about inner workings. Again just what I gathered from conversation.

67

Great ideas, I really hope Blizzard reads your thread.

2 Likes
68

Before I go into my post, I just want to post this quote from the George Velev interview before War Within Launched.

“* Season specific titles are a nice idea, though the team is currently focused on making Rated Battleground Blitz and the Ravine as great as they can for launch. They also have plans to evaluate the greater PvP reward structures following launch, but nothing they can publicly share right now.” ANY UPDATE NOW??? PLEASE???

For the most part, I agree with the post. The WoW team is shooting themselves in the foot and their lack of pvp focus because of “participation” is a self fulfilling prophecy. If they spend an iota of thought and time into this, it would bring a ton of new life into this part of the game. But I guess they need people in the department to actually add things. It has been mentioned, but here is my (large) 2 cents on the reward structure that needs to be fixed.

TLDR, we need to attract the casuals and new people. This in turn will bring back old players.

Ever since Legion IMO, the quality for PVP has gone downhill. Multiple factors here I think are the cause. Introduction to Mythic +, which was a new fun game mode that doesn’t require a lot of people like raiding that can be done for Endgame. Legion introduced a very poor version of stat templates. While I know there are players that like the idea, it didn’t allow for much freedom, and my friends and I actually did not PVP that whole expansion. The other double edge sword was the new Honor Level reward system and gear acquisition. The Honor level system is a good system to help getting PVP participation, (more on that in a second), but the gear acquisition is when they stopped putting it on vendors. In legion, because of the Stat templates, they put PVP gear in the boxes for completing Bg’s, arena, etc. It was completely random. Other then the Honor level system introduced, PVP took a huge hit here that I don’t know has ever fully recovered.

I could go into the details of BFA and Shadowlands, but that’s by the by, let’s focus on what we can do HERE AND NOW.

I made a post about this a year or two ago at this point, but the Honor Levels need another overhaul. Here is what I propose.

  • Cap Honor Level at 2,000.

The amount of people even close to this is only a handful, but still large enough to engage people who are up there.

  • Pouring more rewards into the current system, even backtracking the current 1-500.

Add more rewards every, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 levels. Honor BOA tokens every 5 levels that can help with current Gem acquisition or alt gearing. A new set or “series” of rewards for 500-1000, 1000-1500, 1500-2000. New style of mounts every 100, new pets, throw in new PVP tmog, could be class unique or armor type.

  • New use for Marks of Honor

At this point since their inception, Marks of honor are almost exclusive to buying old TMOGs. The more dedicated pvpers will have all the tmogs already. Let’s make a new PVP vendor. This vendor could have new tabs that will unlock once you hit a certain honor level. So while you PvP, you could get these rewards in any order you want that is unlocked on the vendor.

  • New type of reward.

The Dragonriding mounts and the Dirigible was/is popular because of their customizations. Let’s get a PVP exclusive style of mount that can have a bunch of different customizations that can be obtained for Casual Honor levels and Rated PVP. These type of rewards can be like skulls or trophies. Different armor colors, a flag with current rank in the brackets. It would be like reintroducing vicious mounts but more interactive and customizable. Sprinkle these in among the different rating thresholds.

  • Consider putting old elite set items into the rewards.

A little bit controversial, but I think generally the populace is for this. Can either put it at the rating that you needed at the time or make it 1800 but have it be % based on wins, just like vicious mount so it allows longer participation. A ton of people have never seen these or were playing at the time, let them get some love again.

This would be a tremendous start on getting more people interested. Of course we need more BG’s, class balance, MMR fixes, but I think fixing the overall carrot to get people engaged is what’s needed. I’ve seen some people suggest like a Renown track per season. This could work, but I don’t want it to create more FOTM then we already do.

side note I also don’t think the 5 different game versions separating the player base, helps but can’t really do anything.

1 Like
69

Hello, chat

Dhs arent getting any buffs anytime soon

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Although most of us agree with you, you’re just speaking into the wind, basically for no good reason. You know that they are not going to do anything about this.

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It’d be nicer if the hidden matchmaking metric were, lets say for variety’s sake, -hidden-.

Slap us with the good old Bronze to Grandmaster track, tack on a battlepass. Keep raw dps data and track a CC metric and have some intern analyst run balance on the weekly.

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ChatGPT from a content creator fishing for likes. Sad.

4 Likes