Disclaimer: I skipped the last like 80 messages because it seemed like it was just the same stuff said over and over again and people getting angry… so apologies if I missed answers or solutions to these. Also, I tried to check and make sure the numbers I threw out were accurate, but not everything I read may have been 100% up to date, and I threw together this massive wall of text at like 5 in the morning for some god forsaken reason.
Also, this post grew way larger than I had anticipated unfortunately… it’s a doozy, and I’m more or less just listing off new thoughts as I go along and I acknowledge there are surely plenty of flaws in them, but would enjoy feedback/discussion if anyone is willing or patient enough to make it through it all.
(parenthesis content italicized to help skip my notes/explanations if desired)
Here we go:
Maybe I’m missing something, but how is this worse off for BG only players it was in BFA, like how does this in particular change anything for worse? If you unlocked the PvP chest in BFA it was still based off your highest rating right? So you’d just have gotten mediocre gear at best from it anyway before. Seems like the blue gear I got from skirmishes and normal BGs wouldve roughly hit ~mythic 0 content (got iLvl 83 from skirmishes today, and you get, I believe, iLvl 85 from mythic 0s, but a 100 from end of week 0 rated chest atm, so a 1 tier nerf in that regard from what you could farm out vs what had a weekly gated payout). I realize it was considered “conquest gear”, but it was rather lower end conquest gear. I don’t know the iLvl difference compared to the conquest iLvl gear cap in SL though, perhaps it will be greater then than in BFA, and that’s larger gap is the issue? Even then, it’s probably expected that blizzard will put a cap to how much you can upgrade conquest gear based on your rating, right (just like higher ratings awarded better gear in BFA)? So if someone can get like 1600 rating they’ll probably have 2-3 upgrades on their conquest gear rather than maxed out honor gear (max honor gear iLvl is equivalent to starting conquest gear iLvl)? If that’s the case, that’s pretty similar to how it currently works with 100 iLvl vs 115 iLvl for 0 rated vs 1600 rated players for end of week gear. And again, if that’s the case, then the people that will absolutely have much better gear are the duelist/gladiators, which I’d assume would rather easily stomp the more casual player 9 out of 10 times at least, and it’d probably be the same level of gear disparity as before in BFA between the players of those relative ratings being compared, or am I missing something? If that’s the case, then to me it’s seeming like this change doesn’t hurt casual BG players in any other way, or to any greater degree, compared to how the system was already performing - depending on how high up the conquest gear can upgrade, and with what constraints (this info I can’t seem to find, unsure if it is released knowledge or not).
It feels like a large issue of all of this is that the “casual” PvP content, the entry level content for PvP, is so largely dependent on gear… I’ve never understood why gear needed to matter much for regular BGs and skirmishes instead of nearly or completely normalizing power amongst players because these two parts of PvP content are, as has been mentioned, ENTRY LEVEL (Especially skirmishes, as aren’t those supposed to be practice? Like, shouldn’t those be exactly what should be gear independent?). You can’t choose to do easier content than fighting the (nearly) max geared duelist/glad/raider running around in BGs or skirmishes popping you in .5 seconds.
Just evening out primary and secondary stat distribution to a flat total amount for each (but keeping ratios between each secondary stat, plus maybe a x% increase per iLvl in there if Blizzard absolutely wanted to keep gear level somewhat mattering in) for every player feels like it’d just be leaps and bounds better for many players’ game experience, even people with actually well geared mains that are building up alts.
I also don’t quite understand the “we’ll have to go against highly skilled or elite players” thing for arenas/RBGs because you should be at the correct rating that you’re fighting people on a mostly even level, no? I can understand the not wanting to go into arena as a BG player, but is playing in RBGs actually that terrible in that case? (this is disregarding finding a group for RBGs, which I know can be a pain, and they didn’t make an option for you that’s very accessible)
(This is where some more questionable opinions/ideas come in)
Perhaps a MOBA (as much as I don’t like to even begin to combine these two worlds) queuing system as an option for random players being grouped for RBGs would work as well on a separate ladder than organized RBGs (if the playerbase could support that) (also, this is not suggesting regular BGs would be removed… but again, this could split the playerbase up too much for convenient queue times)?
I can absolutely understand the not wanting to get dumpstered by much better geared players in regular BGs as you don’t have the same gear as them (every time I go to gear after I level a new character it feels hopeless to have any fun whatsoever in the first {insert very large number here} BGs I play… which is the entry level content for PvP, and so I’d rather just have friends help me gear that character in PvE content and then I hop into PvP after as it’s much less demoralizing and tedious). That’s another reason why I just can’t find a reason outside of current playerbase support (and I suppose the difficulty in properly evaluating 20+ players in each match, but even then, BGs are constantly insanely one-sided and it’s at least an attempt at a step in a better direction) that ranked random BGs wouldn’t help keep everyone in them on a much more even playing field, there’d just be that player that is worse than you with a bit more gear, that player that’s better than you with a bit worse gear, or that player that just started playing in it and has to get to the appropriate spot (which hopefully an appropriate system would be put in place to help manage the time in that phase being as minimal as possible, although I understand ratings for being tossed into 20+ player battles would likely be very difficult to determine).
Tl;dr - sorry, there isn’t really a great one for this, it’s just a bunch of questions for if a lot of the complaints I have read about this change causing a worse scenario for players are valid, or if I am misinterpreting stuff - as well as including my gripes with how the current system handles PvP and gearing, as it relates to issues a lot of people are having/expecting to have that dislike this change anyway.