Shadowlands arena participation is among the lowest it’s ever been but okay.
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Based on this graph, it looks like arena participation was really high at the start of SL with 13.5% of all level 60 characters participating in 50+ 2v2 rated games. And RBG participation has been huge with lots of groups constantly forming in group finder. RBGs was a ghost town in BFA.
Made this post the other day but yea this would be a good thing.
Ilvl gap in pvp is bad for pvp
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Because that was the first season in a very very long time where pvers felt forced to PvP so that they could PvE? Thats changing in 9.1 with gear scaling. I assure you there weren’t that many more pvpers getting into the game. SL season 1 was the first time my PvP friends list didn’t light back up (Tbc brought it back a bit lol). Legitimately, 9.1 is gonna be deader than it is now I assure you.
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No it won’t, the mmr nerf caused this dead ladder.
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really feels like they should have made better cosmetic rewards and much smaller milestone power goals at 1800/2200 like shoulders/weapons in the past
current gearing system sucks
all it does is punish casual players that WOULD q all season
reward pve players that WONT play past week 4
and is nearly irrelevant for players that play >2100
‘rEcOrD pArTicIpAtiOn’
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Like the first month will have the slightest of upticks. Still won’t get anywhere near 9.0 levels because there won’t be any pvers interested. Not to mention the number of people at an expansion launch is far greater than mid expansion. You honestly think mid season 2 is going to be any better than now?
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Unpopular opinion time
I actually do believe that pvp gear being good in pve does have some positive effects. It does drive people to pvp. Back in bc i started doing arena because i wanted better gear that i could use in raids.
It’s pretty undeniable that the pvp gear being good in pve drove up pvp participation at the start of the expac. A chunk of those stopped once they got their raid gear but some of them probably would of stayed if mmr didn’t get destroyed.
I don’t think pure cosmetic rewards at least not transmogs are enough to get newer players interested in pvp. That said we can’t have the gap between 226 and 200 like we do now without scaling this is unplayable.
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i don’t really think this is an unpopular opinion
it’s undeniable that conquest gear being somewhat useful in pve DOES drive participation
i mean even in mop/wod getting conquest pieces while gearing for pve was impactful even though it wasn’t specifically good gear for pve
just wish there was a better way to handle the ilvl distribution
atm it just feels like we gain initial participation + potential lingering participation at the cost of consistent casual pvp focused players since the game is so miserable for them without access to realistically competitive gear
this is hard to quantify but true, there’s a pretty decent handful of PvE focused players that only arena’d in bfa because it was widely acknowledged that several PvE pieces were really oppressive in arena but then ended up staying and becoming really invested in arena
so i agree forsure
almost feels like if they just cut off the 2100 rewards, moved up the base conquest ilvl by 1 tier and had 1800 be current 2100 tier the gap would be bridged easier
imo they moved max ilvl azerite from 2100 to 1800 in bfa s4 and it was one of the best feeling changes they made all expansion
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Yes, because right now the ladder is extremely dead due to a mid season mmr nerf. What are you not getting about this?
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Thats what I’m not getting. Literally unaffected by any sort of MMR deflation. Plus rating locked gear has non of the casual population caring to que. Or competition focused people like myself who stopped playing long before the MMR nerf.
Trust me, I’d love to be wrong, but with the current changes to PvP gear I highly doubt it. Keep living those pipe dreams though.
If you keep gear locked behind a rating while also allowing those with ilvl 220+ to fight in brackets with players capped at 207 or 214 you reinforce barriers for players that aren’t easily broken if it all - that doesn’t translate into fun for a lot of people paying a monthly sub. It’s also probably the single biggest reason for the expansion of boosting services - players hit that wall and either quit after a while or they buy tokens to then pay a booster to get them over 1800 or 2100 or whatever. That’s not a healthy pvp system based on competition, that’s just pay to win.
The easiest solution is lock titles/cosmetics/achievements/mounts behind the rating and fully embrace the currency based system they’ve half implemented where skill and time invested become the drivers. That still allows players to get good gear and also work towards those things they want at higher rating while not hitting a ceiling - especially on alts. Plus it would reduce boosting or at least turn it into an achievement/cosmetic industry. Alternatively, create rating thresholds where once you hit 1800 or 2000, etc you’re no longer able to match against people below 1800 or 2000 even if you artificially tank your rating - which is what boosters do.
If that’s not an option - which apparently it isn’t - then dealing with the power differential and/or scaling gear down based on rating are other solutions.
9.1 doesn’t have much in terms of changes for gear except maybe some narrowing of power gaps which seems to be a good start and perhaps will be better then it sounds on paper. But based on player feedback on these forums and elsewhere it doesn’t appear to be enough.
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That’s a really big post for not a big problem.
It’s not ideal but when I see 2100 rbg players with 800 games at 1100 in arena it’s rly hard to feel bad for people so incompetent they couldn’t gear one character in half a year.
Why were so many people able to get geared in pvp quickly if it’s so impossible according to the forum/ reddit crowd?
Rsham with 62 games played hitting 1800 before he even has gear to upgrade. It’s not impossible by any means. Even if you’re bad at pvp just do rbg like everyone else in your boat did.
There’s far more people that were capable and figured it out than people who couldn’t. Crying is just loud
Maybe mmorpg pvp is just not for you?
190 to 226 is too much. Honor gear starting at 190 and being upgradeable to 207 in a reasonable time and the gap from 207 to 220 is reasonable. Especially if conquest started at 213.
No idea why the vault does not reward trophies for pvp players instead of stygia.
I actually like to see how good you are i would duel you and win xD This my first season i would laugh so hard if i won.
It’s not impossible - saying that is just hyperbole and doesn’t contribute anything meaningful.
Some people will gear up quick because they’re awesome and have tons of time to play and that’s fine but why would locking gear behind a rating even matter to those people if they are already going to get it that quickly? It probably doesn’t. And that’s the point -creating a sustainable pvp system where people want to keep playing mains and alts for a long period of time. Just because people have the same ilvl in pvp doesn’t make it less challenging but it probably makes it more fun for a lot of people if they aren’t gated behind a rating. Whether its purely skill or lack of partners or time available to play the goal should be to keep as many people as engaged as you can throughout a season.
I realize I wrote too much for you to read but there are many solutions besides removing the gated gear - that just seemed to be an easy one to test out. Narrow power gaps would be fine too.
I think everyone would be super impressed if a ret paladin beat an unholy dk in a duel right now
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they nerfed MMR?
are they undoing the nerf for 9.1?
It’s exhausting rehashing this argument over and over again. I should probably just go through my old posts and make some kind of google doc I could link to that permanently give my thoughts on why gear disparities in PvP are horrible for the game.
I disagree with this. Forcing people into PvP that don’t want to PvP just to get the PvP rewards they want for the content they actually want to do is not good for anyone. It just leads to what I would call “artificial” participation numbers which are used to show “pvp is fine”, overall customer dissatisfaction, encourages the devs to design the game in a way where they will do the same to PvP players again (forcing you to PvE to PvP), and just isn’t a nice thing to do. Could it lead to someone finding out they enjoy PvP? Sure. Is that enough of a trade off? Would that person really never otherwise try PvP? No and I doubt it.
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If my eye beam isn’t literally cutting someone in half, my immersion is gone
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