I’ve been glancing around the Underbelly at everyone’s arena ratings, and everyone is hard stuck around 1400 except the occasional priest. If this continues, people who are casual and prefer BGs will max out their hateful gear very quickly (with the deadly gloves if they broke 1400) and then promptly stop playing arenas in just a few weeks because they amount of perceived returns available for ten games a week will be low.
VoA is not really a factor here because that is not actually a player playing arenas. They could get 1400 and then just go to VoA forever.
Make cosmetic items, give more mounts, do what you need to to give incentives to top bracket players, but as it is only a third of the arena playerbase can even get deadly gloves and full deadly off-pieces and this is with all playing S-Tier comps.
EDIT: Did not clarify - everyone with a “high score” is stuck around 1400. Yes, there are people far below that - over 60% of the playerbase in fact.
Arena teams were part of the Wrath PvP experience.
Savage Gladiator wands, librams, idols, etc. were not part of the Wrath PvP experience.
Starting at 1500 was part of the Wrath PvP experience.
Having high arena participation was part of the Wrath PvP experience.
Being 2008 was part of the Wrath PvP experience.
You can feel it is wrong, but I do not find it entirely out of line to make more changes once Pandora’s Box has been opened, but what changes are made depends on the goal.
Is that goal to keep rating requirements, or is it to have higher arena participation?
It is not going to be like the original Wrath PvP experience no matter what Blizzard does. Certain people are either going to drop out after getting their obtainable gear in 2-3 weeks, or 12 weeks, depending on the path they take. I am simply pointing out that, if arena participation is the goal, they need to make changes. If keeping arena ratings is the goal, they can leave things as is.
Yup, i was saying this from the start of season 1 that arena point gains across the board would be too low for the majority of players. They FINALLY adjusted that in season 4, only to completely ignore the issue of rating requirements for 90% of the gear that was all based on a start at 1500 system
In previous seasons, challenger cutoff was 1400+ which means 65% of the arena population is sub 1400 this is not a “get good” situation, its a sum 0 rating system issue. If everyone suddenly got better, the cutoff would still stop 65+% of the playerbase from getting even the first piece of rating gear
It doesnt matter how many, even if they all started trying to push rating, the way mmr systems work is that it sorts players at ratings based on a spread of fixed rating amongst the pool of players.
There are two ways to increase the bracket cutoffs: Add more players into the pool, or increase the starting rating.
Previously, it was those people who paid to reset their rating every week that inflated the cutoffs, they would keep adding arena rating into the pool, and slowly increase cutoff ratings. But with the way things are now, the ONLY way to increase the cutoffs is by higher participation, and clearly people arent interested in an uneven playing field that requires a massive grind to even get your foot in the door
Unfortunately, it does not matter when fresh points cannot be pumped into the system each week. As Tira has pointed out, the only way to inflate the pool is to increase participation, and the current system points to participation decreasing, not increasing.
This first season will look okay due to people trying it out. The people at the top are not going to know the difference as they get their titles and such, but for the next three seasons participation is going to be a disaster and it will show at the top.
I got my Resto and Ele sets in 12hours of AB weekend for the blue sets. I started with 75k carried over from TBC and bought the 40 WG helm like 2 days ago.
Did about 30 games in the two weeks and bought full hateful with the arena points since saving for weapons is pointless.
Did you forget leveling 1-80? Most people who want to pvp arent interested in pve, and 1-80 is at least 100 hours, plus the level 80 grind for gear, which includes having to do pve to get your bis pieces.
It doesn’t really matter if you or I consider it “massive” (I was fine and I had all my gear + WG helm before I set foot into arenas), but I do agree with Tira that there is going to be a sizeable portion of the population who cannot be bothered or will find the experience unpleasant. This is the bottom tier people that need to play to inflate the rankings, you know?
Good point about the leveling 1-80. I know I might have more success on a class I don’t like as much, but I’m not releveling 1-80.