Anyone else feel it?
The sign of a dying game or just more of the same?
I love PVP, it was really close to being really good! It always has been but they just don’t care enough about it to make it shine. What I mean…
1: Maps are old and tired.
2: 30-40% of the time the wors map of all time pops up. Seething Shore. Why!!! Why is this the go to map and EVERYONE hates it!!!
3: The game is so fast now, damage is comical and so out of balance, why do we still have random 30 second timers??? I mean, you practically allow people to take flag and move across the map faster than mounted speeds but we cant spawn in say, 15 seconds???
4: Same OP classes… Same boring outcomes…
5: 25 minute queues… in 2023… Absolute sin.
6: EBGs last 45 minutes but you know its over within 2-3 minutes on most maps.
people are still playing pvp, its just rated pvp thats kind of dying out. and even then thats only really true at the top end. theres still a lot of 2s grps at lowish ratings for example.
Also, what is with all the “slows”? I mean this micro stuff that is always on you?
I am cool with fears, stuns, slows, etc… But the constant “walking in mud” isnt fun
and it kills the speed, so bad, that it mimics lag.
I haven’t seen so many people complain about lag since the 2000s… Its not lag, its all those micro slows that makes the game feel like its chugging.
Do you have data to support your claim that only rated PvP participation is down? My feeling is that rated PvP is the top of a pyramid that is rotting from the bottom up, as devs seem to work harder each expansion to convince casuals to stop doing PvP.
PvP peaked in WoD. It’s been downhill ever since, as devs who know little or nothing about PvP keep trying to experiment on the playerbase to turn it into something that better fits their PvE POV.
nobody has data on that other than blizzard. you dont see complaints about long random bg queues though, and in my experience they seem to be about the same as they always have.
What did people think would happen? They’ve been trying to balance pvp around the top of the ladder and casual bg heroes that don’t do objectives. Because those two communities are the loudest.
Why are we surprised that most people in the middle are losing interest?
Let’s see. In BfA PvP was designed so the team with the best PvE gear was guaranteed the win. Mid-expansion, on release of essences, they introduced party sync, so elites could form premades and farm low levels for honor to get legendary essences on all their alts. It was very imbalanced.
Come shadowlands, a massive amount of honor was needed to buy and upgrade honor gear. Even at that point it was useless against the glads who were farming honor for upgrades and paid carries that meant they didn’t even need to have real jobs. Oh, and requiring fully upgrading conquest gear to do mythic raiding in season 1, nice touch. They turned what used to be known as casual pvp into a currency dispenser where geared players were farming undergeared ones as though the casuals had queued to be the mobs in Island Expeditions.
And covenant abilities that those high levels were able to use for the first half of shadowlands, especially in party sync on low level victims of theirs. Again, nice touch.
I guess this intentionally borked matchmaking was supposed to inspire casuals to start mythic raiding so they could be the evil ones farming low brackets.
That’s great and all, until the 50% of players who like PvP but aren’t sweats realize they are just queuing up and not getting anything for it.
So they stop playing.
Leaving only the sweats. Then 50% of the sweats realize. “Gee, I’m hard stuck at 1600 when I used to be able to get 2400. Not only does that feel bad, but I’m locked out of most of the rewards. So I’m gonna stop doing this and play a real PvP game.”
And the pattern repeats. Until rated is where it’s at now.
Blizz needs to stop with this failed e-sport elitism nonsense and give rewards for bad players to chase. Fill the vendor with cool rewards you get for winning 10, 20, 30, 40, 50+ matches at any level. Make them things that feel good in and of themselves to go for.
That will get more bad players to play, allow folks to play dozens of games at 800 rating and feel like their time wasn’t wasted… and it’ll help the sweats by creating room to actually climb their sinking ladder.
Both rated and unrated PvP need a complete rework. Unrated PvP, including leveling brackets, should use templates that permit players to tinker with a stat budget on basic gear. Party sync should be out of PvP. Matchmaking should be designed to match up teams that are more or less equivalent, not reward overgeared premades using queue sync for “playing with friends” by putting them against full teams of solo players.
Ratings being “a bit lower” is the understatement of the century.
I guess if that’s the “literal only thing wrong” with PvP, then there’s no issues with matchmaking itself (RIP healers), no issues with premades roflstomping people in randoms, no issues with Blizzard’s communication about PvP issue, no real deflation turning people off, no queues that take 30+ minutes, no issues with a lack of new BG maps, yada yada
Yeah, the only thing wrong is rating is “a bit lower than usual”
