Participation seems to have halved from DF, which halved from SL after S1 DF.
What is needed to bring participation back to all ranked brackets?
I think a rework of mmr, rating, rankings, and rewards.
I think i may have been wrong about rating inflation being bad, need to inflate ratings, and raise gladiator to 2700, so MMR can actually do it’s job and make ranked more enjoyable for the entire playerbase, having all skill levels stuck in 2-3 tiers of brackets is killing pvp.
Blizzard put the nail in the coffin by allowing players to amass rating, rewards, and CR they should never have had to begin with time and time again. Now if players aren’t instantly hitting that same peak every season, its an issue with their spec’s design, or balance, or power. Or its an MMR boogeyman. Or booster boogeyman.
They can fix participation tomorrow by giving out the trophies for it. Make 3s mmr be SLS2 level and the game in 3 weeks hits record numbers of people playing 3s. Make M+ less punishing (15s death timer) and more people play it.
Ability to reroll instantly to whatever is OP also helps.
None of that sounds good, or great, or fun. But that is straight up what is needed to hit record numbers in a game like this, or any other. People want the most reward, for the least amount of effort & time invested.
Unique rewards for each bracket giving people a reason to do them all, or consolidating the playerbase into one bracket are about the only things that have a shot at saving the game mode.
The population is too small to split between 3 modes.
Also changing back to character based rewards instead of account wide to put a dent in the whole “reroll to w/e is the strongest in any given patch because it doesn’t matter what I am actually playing in any given season”
It’s because no one wants to play a healer this season unless you’re a disc or hpally. Blizzard doesn’t know how to balance out healers. I’m not going to be playing arena anymore until they nerf those two specs or buff other healers like mw and resto Druid. You can ask anyone, this is by far the worst PvP season to ever exist. The imbalance is atrocious. PvP specifically arena and solo shuffle arena will continue to decline.
I hate to admit it but this is so true… I heard it before and I’ll say it now the awful grinding of shadowlands was honestly a blessing in disguise… it was like a second job so you couldn’t sit down and just fotm to whatever is disguising at the time…
Arthas transmog and Frostmourne for reaching 1800, wearable by all classes
ez
On a more serious note, maybe making the game less PvE-y so it’s less FOTM Reroll-ey could prob be a good start. This would actually keep people playing for longer, rather than quitting once they realize their class is unviable or has been nerfed into unviability.
WOW PVP is the kind of game where if you’re not X spec playing Y race you’re throwing. And sure, maybe you can say “if ur losing below 1800 then its not because of ur racial” and that is true to a degree but you will feel gimped anyways.
I don’t believe it will ever be better though. I think it’s more likely they’ll change PVP completely.
I think blizzard is starting to cater their game to solo queue gameplay options. That’s why they’re moving towards Delves, Blitz and Solo Shuffle. You have a large portion of the gaming population that don’t want to actively fraternize or bond. It’s more of the death of organized PvP and PvE than anything else.
Delete solo pvp. The inflation from season 1 df solo shuffles kinda killed ranked arena. Casual learned you can get the same achievements and rating from inflated SS and now BGB that they no longer do regular arena.
It doesn’t matter what reward structure changes they do, the issues lie with the way the game is designed.
Rigid pve class designs ,punishing encounters centered around group effort rather than individual play. Speed and cleave being the center point around everything pve.
Too many rotational abilities into every class kit, too many cds, thinking this complexity is skill when all it does is create “chore” rotations that do not truly feel good when pressed, everything is watered down( skill expression).
A plethora of movement, defensive, sustain, cc for every spec.
It’s so convoluted and overstuffed that even specs have specs now (hero talents), the glamour of complexity, the illusion of choice.
Forced solo gameplay in a game centered around consistent group based gameplay. Forced retention metrics and timegating.
“What can we do to fix pvp?” , it’s not a problem that can be fixed cause the solution is literally making a new game.
