Participation is just plummeting, has been on a decline since what appears to be week 8. This only factors in the top 5,000, and for reference, that’s roughly 2100 right now. But if nobody is queueing up top, nobody is moving down below. Game is stale and nothing is being done to the ladder. You’re more likely to face way higher rated players at a lower mmr.
I see higher rated players constantly on Twitter asking all day about MMR tweaks for the ladder, we don’t really get any communication, but Plunderstorm gets a weird mmr tuning pass the first week? I know it’s your new baby, but it just appears really tone deaf when something like that happens:
8 Likes
MMR Inflation is surely a route that could be used, but it doesn’t fix the long-lasting problems’ arena has.
Speaking from my perspective (who used to enjoy arena but then dropped off due to the awful attention to it) - for me, PVP Arena is straight up missing participation rewards (besides the saddle each season /elite set) that keep ppl going into the arena even if they never make it to glad.
The Honor level System introduced in Legion was a step in the right direction, but then wasn’t handled afterward, and rewards of that can also be accomplished through casual PvP which neglect them as reward purpose for Arena.
Arena needs a similar reward structure that offers each season long term goals, so even the 100th match on 1700 rating feels rewarding, and you make some kind of progression (even if it is not the rating).
Another way (which is surely disliked by the arena crowd) is the restriction of macro’s and add-ons in arena to make it more accessible - and improvements to the default arena interface alongside those changes (also an in game explanation for DR and the brackets - so you don’t have to read up a guide before playing).
On a side note: PVP needs dire attention, and I hope War Within has some changes in store for arena / rated BG.
3 Likes
I think the main flaw is having these milestone ratings like 1800/2100/2400. They vary so much from season to season, 2100 at the start means something completely different than 2100 at the end. Even 2400 in one season means something different than 2400 in another.
I believe they should go back to % based rewards. They have to have the technology to have live ladder updates so people can know in real time where they’re at. This eliminates the need to add in inflation or adjust it every season because every season is just so different. Especially if we’re having by to wait months and months for them to do anything to the ladder.
3 Likes
I won’t try to speak to MMR; I defer to people with much more knowledge than me, but I do want to throw some thoughts in here since PVP is my favorite part of WoW. It’s sad to see it suffering so much right now when the rest of the game seems to be doing better than ever.
Even something like adding a few more rewards for healers who queue SS would help a great deal with queue times. I am sort of flummoxed that nothing has been done to address this issue, even though it’s been an issue for the entire iteration of SS.
WoW-rated PvP is hard to break into for newbies. SS was perfect in that regard; in theory, it introduced more people to the system. In practice, people who work do not want to wait in a 30-minute queue for one game; it’s not worth it. Everyone knows healers are the bottleneck, we all know why healers are the bottleneck, and people who play healers have been very forthcoming about what it would take to get them to participate more. But so far, the only additional incentive is a bit more conquest. Bluntly, no one needs more conq later in the season. Give healers a different mount to work towards, or healer-specific transmog, or at minimum, don’t punish healers for going 3 for 3 in matches. It doesn’t feel good and discourages them from queueing. It almost feels like the current system punishes the specs we need to queue the most and rewards them for switching to DPS.
We need more people to want to dabble in rated PvP, SS is the perfect introduction, and I still think it could be great, but it isn’t right now.
6 Likes