I really hate Blizzard after this. They really don’t exist anymore. It’s like seeing a family member you love and care for years comes back and is addicted to drugs/booze.
You want the best from them but they keep breaking your heart. You give them more and more chances, but they continue to upset you.
I hate the lack of communication, its a basic thing. GMs in game didn’t address the issue with the honor. I was hoping but they don’t care about anyone’s time or effort and they are ok with them being screwed.
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It’s sad but when they announced rating requirements on arena gear that never had it, like in season 1 and 2, that was it.
Even people like me who met the rating requirements for stuff before but just want to play more casual with friends now, I didn’t even bother.
In original tbc season 4 was kind of a lost season anyways.
They should really be encouraging participation they still are stuck on this cater to the small minority.
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Yup, its silly and harms the game because now you must play with other good players.
as for those who don’t have the skills; they are buying weapons rating and this both kills participation and makes it so you cant play with RL friends and guildies who want to learn.
Worst part for me is the lack of participation makes getting games vs players in my MMR range kinda annoying, I either get zero points for wins vs players 400 points lower or take a L to a very organized team of R1’s that almost always win because they are obviously better.
Not only does it feel bad to exclude friends but it also feels bad to see the ladder is so messed up; the team distribution is all outa wack; honestly think the MMR system might be broken due to lack or participation.
If I were in charge I would do everything in my power to bolster participation; everything from killing outdated bad designs on rating on gear, to making a seasonal set of cool cosmetic only rewards, even some cool mini tournaments that have a special Q that normalizes your item level or something so that even new players can participate.
Blizzard has the tech and tools to do a lot, they just choose to sit on their hands everyday looking for their bum.
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Incoming flame but I mean if you guys can’t even break 1600 then why do you NEED the best pvp gear available ? Am I the only one who doesn’t mind the rating requirements?
I want more participation, the ladder is very dead because rating req cuts the legs off the ladder.
removing rating req on gear to boost participation was 100% proven to work as demonstrated by MoP. never was i offended that new and unskilled players had the same gear I did.
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Of course u weren’t offended because it meant u could steamroll to a win. I remember arena teams would purposely lose to get into a lower bracket to steamroll those teams to avoid the high rank teams.
Arena has always been flawed everyone should expect lack of participation on wrath now to save yourselves from creating these kind of topics in the future.
I have never tanked rating to smoke new players at any point ever.
What i meant was, in MoP when they removed rating req on gear for same item level gear; player participation blossomed and the ladder was insane, it was so full and lively at all times. even better was the fact that if I did end up fighting newer players in say 5’s or whatever because I have never put much into that bracket; it just felt better to play vs people who had the same access and quality of gear; the competition felt better because it was more fair.
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Well the other side of that question. If you are so good, why do you need an additional gear advantage?
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Many people play this game, and participate in pvp for a variety of reasons. Some people want rating, some people just want to screw around with friends, some people just want some points for a couple of pieces of gear. Making more people feel pvp is inclusive to their particular wants only helps grow the pool of participants. You would think a company that reports monthly active users, and looks at things like user engagement in features would consider these factors, rather than cater towards some small set of players at the top.
In my experience during original TBC almost everyone I knew at least dabbled in pvp/arena. During the first 2 seasons when there was no rating requirements on any gear it felt like very accessible content. The better players were rewarded by the much faster gear progression, but anyone could join in and get the gear to feel competitive in pvp. This actually started to die off a bit for some of the people i played with in S4 when they tacked on rating to more pieces. some people dropped alts from their arena rotation, but it wasn’t such a slog to go from 1500-1700 if someone was so inclined. This time around however in classic TBC, far less of the people i know/play with are active or trying to get involved in pvp.
The rating gains this time also do not feel the same, the game wants to push you towards whatever your hidden mmr is. You need to put a fair bit of effort to get to where we even started in original TBC. Sure we do not really lose rating in the early part of the climb, but the game is trying to pin you and match you to what it thinks your mmr is. So you can expect some losses which will just increase the number of games to hit that former starting rating of 1500. On top of that, if you do something to damage your mmr, like screwing around with friends, playing non optimal comps, it actually takes some work to dig out of that hole.
The majority of players are not bothering to hit that former starting 1500 based on the title cut offs. While we the players can’t tell if this is due to people not wanting to put in the effort with the retail system in place, or the current system just not being tuned to push people up that high. Either way I am sure that the bulk of the bell curve of rating distribution is lower this time around than in original TBC. I will say 100% something feels off about the way mmr effects rating gains/losses since it really wants to drive your team rating towards your mmr. Things like beating a team 300+ rating over us, yet only going up 13 points, if recall correctly for the bulk of original TBC beating/losing to a team of the same rating was +/-15, the bigger the rating difference the bigger the gain/loss.
The more I think about it, it makes even less sense to drop the rating on the actual pieces that require arena points (pants/chest) while keeping it on honor pieces. let the bg only/mainly people have their gear. the bulk of the players based on titles will take 4-5 weeks to even get enough arena points for one of those pieces, and they would be better off not buying until the season end discounts anyways with these rushed seasons.
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play the game or deal with it, you don’t “need” +3 stamina from an s4 offpiece. You can farm your s3 pieces right now if you really refuse to even try and hit the s4 ratings, the highest of which is only 1700. if you have time tto post walls of text in this thread you have time to do your HFP daily and queue a couple AVs
Well written. Hope someone with a brain over there will read this.
You say “only” 1700, but that’s rival, or top 10% of the population in classic. Top 10% of arena population to buy something that is ordinarily a bg-only item. The s4 ratings on the off pieces were always a little weird but are even more lulzy with the compressed ladder in classic.
If they wanted to encourage participation in arena they could require something like “50 wins” in arena or something like that. Gating pvp gear has been done a ton in WoW to various degrees and the result is always the same–the more gating the less participation. The most popular pvp expansion by far-MOP–had no gating of gear whatsoever. Blizzard should learn from its history.
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Right, MOP did it right. There were still the “elite” versions of the gear, but it was aesthetic. It was also really easy to gear alts that expansion, I had a ton of fun playing a couple alts in MOP.
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So you can then enter BGs and crush BGers that only have honor gear available to them?
So I can defend myself in BGs against elitist arena players like you that shouldn’t be allowed in BGs if I had my way.
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And get this… you could earn some arena points through regular old random BGs in MoP. Not everyone can access arena freely. BGs should reward some arena points.
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Yup, best PvP wow has wver had at any point ever. Well if you ignore Season 12 petting zoo and TFB warriors, both got nerfed in 5.1 or something and then the game just got better and better.
well they were conquest points at that time because the rated system was more than just arena, but I totally get your point.
Best part was how accessible the gear was actually improved Arena participation that had been in a steady decline since around Season 4 TBC (imagine that) Removing the stupid rating req massively improved the game for everyone.
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I don’t think 1700 rating requirements will affect participation that much. If people wanna get it, they can get it. Even easier if there are more players around who also wanna get it (more teammates to play up to that rating with, as well as more average players who desire it, and are queueing up against you for their 1700). Could go either way, I couldn’t care less whether the rating reqs are in or not; just play accordingly, it’s so minor.
Also keep in mind, we have played 3 seasons without the rating reqs on the off pieces. Would the previous seasons’ participation have been any worse if the rating requirements were already on the off pieces? Iunno, it doesn’t seem like it coulda gotten much worse. Only the 2v2 bracket has ever been alive. It’s like people only have 1 other person to queue with online at any given time. They might have 3 of the right classes online and actually available for for some 3v3 queues like a couple hours a week.
Luckily I farmed the honor but didn’t spend it because I didn’t yet have the tokens, then they lowered it and removed the marks and I was able to buy them. I’d have been absolutely livid if I’d done this on the S3 pieces.
Yes. We want everyone to have as much gear as possible. I know WoW players love a good rock paper scissors, but BGs, Arenas, and open world/pve benefit from everyone having more gear. There is no downside other than gate keeping. FFS its bracers and rings you can’t even see them.
Alts anyone? Returning players who will have to shell out for all the previous gear just to reach rating and farm honor again? 3 month seasons don’t alot for this amount of time, and the ratings in place don’t make sense with this pvp implementation.
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