So, I was thinking of how sad PvP can be sometimes in Era. 80% of the time its fun but like AV weekend you become acutely aware of the downsides. So the next step would be separating casuals from hardcore players to create environments both thrive, right? Most would point to arena, but its my personal belief this small person mode holds more responsibility for the classes becoming homogenised than given credit. It was the move away from PvP being balanced as a group activity.
Why not try rated BG’s? On retail I know their success is limited but even arena ended up with a solo shuffle queue. In a game like era where group play is the focus, I think this could really be the go-to for high end pvp.
I am also bias in that on retail during cata/wod i spent most of my time in rated BG’s having fun.
There’s nothing to fix or to be changed in Era other than a handful of weird bugs like Nef head never resetting. If they change the honor system at all it should be reverting the change they already made to normalize honor caps.
I would personally love this, but then you gotta get all nitty gritty with the rules, and you would likely need to homogenize character hit boxes because not all the characters can do all the WSG jumps, and then there is the matter of do we allow consumes / eng?
Then there is the matter of certain trinkets that would be 100% stacked, and then there is the matter of Paladins being way too damn good in organized PVP and shamans being kinda trash in organized PVP even tho they’re godly in VS disorganized groups who don’t know what they’re doing.
Then there is the matter of the PVP player pool already being small, like small enough that we literally need more people to Q up, but they don’t because they would rather buy gold and get loot from GDKP rather than do PVP of any kind, let alone the people who’re “Rankers” only and effectively avoid the PVP component of the game by stacking their team with as much anti-PVP as possible.
How to fix the problem??? Not sure, but I know one thing for certain; we need more people to Q up and I think that’s just problem of the ranking system is antithetical to actual PVP taking place. There are ways to fix that problem, but Rated PVP, man I don’t really think that’s a good idea at all even if I personally love rated PVP.
Would not work in Vanilla at all. I love arena but Vanilla is designed and balanced for larger scale PvP, not small skirmish pvp like arena where Comp, spec and gear are each worth an easy 200 rating.
Cata S1 arena may go well, but S2+ will be scuffed trash because of PvP gear being pitiful when compared to PvE epics, and dont even get me started on the trinkets.
Arena is fun, but if you dont play the meta you’re way behind no matter your skill level. That meta isn’t just a class spec or comp, its itemization and where your comp is on the ladder.
TL;DR Arena is scuffed, and everyone knows it but few of us admit it.
Era/Vanilla BGs already are end-game PVP gear reward bearing, so in that sense at least, they are rated BGs.
I think they could just embrace premades, and either allow full premades or disallow solo queues, or both.
AFAIK, they already have matchmaking logic to prefer matching groups of groups over groups of solos. Perhaps they could do some MMR calculations as well, but meh…
This is a very good point also. I think it would be difficult to point to virtually any change and make a reasonable argument that is has been better for the game.
I never really enjoyed rated BGs. It’s like coming up against a premade in a regular BG, except all the time! I realize that’s the point but what I’m getting at here is that I feel like Blizzard’s matchmaking system just never worked.
All of my experiences in rated BGs in Vanillas were coming up against almost fully geared out and coordinated teams in the lowest brackets, so you never really got a chance to learn how to play. The main reason, at least at the time, was because people tank their rating so they can farm easy wins to either finish out their gear, gear their friends, or blatantly sell runs.
People do this in arena too and it still sucks there, but at least it’s only 1-2 people, your game is over quickly, and it’s only every now and again. In rated BGs it seemed to be all the time. There was just no room for a casual discord pug trying to play in the lower brackets.
Because WoW, I guess… Blizzard always dangles a reward carrot in front of PvP and instead of playing the game, people will abuse it in any way they can so they can get their gear. So they could put rated BGs in Era but I promise you, it wouldn’t be fun. If you want fun in BGs, your only real option is War Games with like minded players.
I’m more or less in the camp of only changes that are needed to fix something broken. I’m not sure the change to the ranking system was actually good, for example. As sweaty as the original system was on high pop realms during peak phases of the game where there is a ton of people ranking, it also scaled down better.
The main thing I see about Rated BGs for Classic is the consumes and professions are much higher impact than later versions of the game. They basically have to implement all the fixes to maps, timers and other changes that came much later in the game. The meta being to abuse the flaws in the maps is not a good look for rated PVP.
Yes, thats what vanilla wow is. Some people just simply do not like “the game”
They killed premades in sod and now theyre lucky to have 2 bgs open on weekends. Where are the “majority” at now?
I was for RBGs too, but this is the second season we have seen that literally anything new blizzard does just makes the game worse, so I rather them not
I get what you are saying but it frankly just isn’t true. A very skilled player (multi glad/R1) using the worst class can beat an average player (1600) playing the meta class.
That’s the role of MMR so that these super coordinated groups with max gear aren’t playing in the lower brackets for long. What you are complaining about is exactly why rating and ladders exist.
Me: “The MMR system doesn’t work because geared players tank their rating so they can fight lower skilled players.”
You: “MMR makes it so geared and coordinated groups aren’t playing in the lower brackets.”
True, but you seem to have missed my point; that in a equal skill vs equal skill regardless of rating (to a degree) the Meta class / comp / gear is gonna win 100% of the time.
Because of that; on its face Arena straight up does not really work in most Expansions / patch versions of WoW.
The only time when I don’t feel comp really mattered as much (yet still did) was patch 5.2 & 5.3. The rest of wow’s history is so comp / gear / spec bias that its not really a competition.
Have you ever thought the game will die eventually with no updates?
Games need updates to keep players engaged
Doing the same content over and over again really starts to lose its interest
Most of you if not majority complain about GDKP because that’s the only thing to do in Era when at end stage the game needs more content.
