There are no new players coming in because the same 200 players are always at the top. It’s literally the rich get richer. There is absolutely no reason or incentive for a new player to even attempt arena. I am hoping it dies so blizzard might actually radically change the game but they won’t.
I was consistently in the 2.3 - 2.4k CR bracket in DF S1, & was even up to 2.6 - 2.7k MMR for a while. In S2 of DF I've been sitting around 1.8k CR on average. The reason my CR is so low now in S2 is because I haven't been PvP'ing or even playing WoW much. When I do play WoW I prefer to spend most of my time in-game PvP'ing, or screwing around with mount farms / Xmog farms / gold-making. There are a lot of time where I genuinely want to play WoW & PvP. The biggest issue for me, by far, is the que times. I don't have all the time in the world to sit & wait 30 mins for a queue to pop, then however long the match takes on top of that. Even when I do have the time to spare, I don't want to sit in 30 minute que's for a solo shuffle match when I can just go play something else that actually respects my time. I can't deal with the solo shuffle que times & with how long it takes to find competent people to run 3's with at higher ratings (if you can find them at all). So much time is spent just trying to PvP, vastly more than the time that I actually spend PvP'ing. Balance is one thing, but no amount of balancing will ever change the fact that I am sitting in 30+ minute que's for a single solo shuffle match. Balancing is pointless when so few matches are being played. There needs to be a shift of development resources towards getting more players queueing & PvP'ing again, then afterwards balancing can be addressed with more in-depth solutions. It's like a fish out of water. You spend all this time reorganizing the little furniture, cleaning the fish tank, making sure the water is just right, & all while the fish is flopping around on the counter slowly suffocating to death. Then, when it finally becomes obvious that the fish is suffocating & slowly dying, they add another little castle or sunken ship to the fish tank, because that will somehow make everything better... There are foundational issues that need to be addressed. We need to be able to just login & play the game. Nothing else matters when a majority of players aren't even able to play because of how long it takes to find matches / partners.
I think a cool feature would be an arena training mode against AI for new players or returning players. They already have the ai in the brawl mode. Its really hard for new players to learn in 2s or 3s without getting flamed like crazy then they just quit.
I agree fighting AI is interesting especially for new players. But think about how much work is gonna be. I don’t think it’s happening considering blizzard employees suck at playing games and lazy
@@Hanharrftw We had this for dungeons before in mop, you were required to complete a trial thing to queue for heroics. I think everyone hated it. I don't think it's particularly easy to use AI to onboard players for this game, especially in PvP. There's a huge amount of spells, situations etc to learn. AI ain't that good yet :D
@@zerkish9869 I'm not on board with going against AI, unless they're really good. I'd prefer fresh alts vs fresh alts. Max ilvl is like 430 or soemthing
I've been wanting this for a long time, would love to practice my arena123 macros and stuff when I'm on a new class without griefing a lobby. Would be nice if it could serve as a tutorial for new players looking to get into arena, basic tips about CC types, DRs etc. Even if it's not ai I'd like to be able to go in an arena and fight dummys with arena target properties
1. Stop boosting and Carries. 2. Introduce solo que rates BGS. 3. Award conquest for doing regular BGS. 4. Show people their position in the solo shuffle que 5. AFK protection where If someone leaves your match you can re que at the top of the que 6. 2.5x the rewards for healers for winning / playing games (to gear alts, etc) 7. Add the same conquest rewards for DPS but maybe .5x what it is now (so you’re always making alt progress) 8. Make the PVP trink BIS for PVE, but also allow it be upgraded through PVE
1. Impossible because boosting will exist until players will buying boosts. 2. Does it change anything? PvP balance / fun - no 3. Maybe 4. Doesnt change anything 5. Could be good if they make this 6 Healers deffo need more rewards for queing solo content 7 nah 8 . what? Why
The whole issue with PvP participation started when they tried to make PvP more accessible. People complained that they can't PvP and no groups would accept them - but there was a reason for that. They weren't good, they didn't have rating, they didn't get invited - it's that simple. Making PvP more accessible results in more people getting in, which results in the pool getting diluted. All of these people are expecting to get rewards. SS gets introduced to CONTINUE making PvP more accessible, which results in 3v3 being slaughtered and 2v2 stagnating. It was fine before we tried to get more participation. All these solutions are not needed if we just take it back to what it was.
I couldn't care less about my rating, and how hard, or easy it is to get it. I stopped PvPing in season 2 of DF for the first time since WotLK. The power shift is more pronounced than ever before. Every new rework to each class shifts the meta beyond my personal interest. They released an unfinished product, and we are the play testers paying blizz to test their game. I've fianlly had enough, and i think others are with me.
It's in their best interest to break classes. If they make X class the new S++ tier for the month, then you'll get a massive wave of players all buying character boosts/wow tokens to get their free rating. Classic gacha game psychology.
There is absolutely NO Solution to this mess when no one is playing the game. There are too many great games out right now taking people away from WOW. I left WOW because the rewards in game were not worth my time.
That is one thing that can help. Give better rewards for the time investment. Nobody wants to spend weeks to get glad gear that isn't any better than the Myth+ gear they could get in a fraction of the time.
100%! Tbh would be nice to have a pvp interview to know what the direction they want to head in.. Right now it feels like they are okay with the situation since it's radio silence..
As someone who played arena on and off since tbc with my friends, all I know is that when friends that are new want to start, it's not even worth considering healer for them anymore. Damage is insanely spiky, the game is way more fast paced than it used to be, there's a ton more cc, micro stuns and interrupts. Playing a healer has been a rough job for quite some time now. The happier dps players are the more frustrating the game is for healers, especially at lower ratings, which is where your new/returning players are. The top players can survive into high dampening but low ratings people die once their immunities are out to the melee train. It's compounded by lower rating DPS taking more damage and making the healers job harder. From a basic new player pov, arena is about killing people, preventing death is the healers job, so in order for the game to be concluded a healer needs to "fail" at their job. If that happens "quickly" then healers won't feel that good about their time in the arenas. I just don't think wanting fast paced games where people blow up is compatible with making more players want to play healers. If you buff healers high rated games are going to turn into endless shitshows most likely. Perhaps lowering both healing and dps to slow the game down could work, letting death be caused by compunding mistakes rather than single mistakes. tl;dr It's a catch 22, most of the player base are dps, so they want the game to play in a way that is fun for them (shit dies) but they require healers to get into the actual games who feel good when they keep people alive, ending up with long queues. That's my take.
its not fun for dps either, dying as fast as we do has ruined the game. pacing needs dropped back, damp needs removed, and more focus on sustain and "pve damage" as the elitist pvpers say. we are in this mess because healers were overtuned in bfa and even legion to some degree (why damp had to exist) when it came to being able to live a dps forever, so they just upped burst instead of reigning in healing and leaving the damage roughly the same so now its feast or famine.
@@abcdgump616 Yep, I just played Solo shuffle for like an hour or so as healer. It's mind blowing how bursty it is. That bracket is absolute cancer to heal. This amount of burst with no voice, people not using cooldowns when you're cced, line of sighting you. Went 6-0, 5-1 and then magically played 2.2k rated players and went 1-5 and 1-5 while being harassed in chat. Why on earth would I subject myself to this? I've played holy pala for 3 days since wotlk and I get to play 2.2k mmr, whats up with that.
its no better in any other form of content pvp wise. 2s, 3s, wpvp, even bgs are an absolute nightmare right now. people just blow up and die so fast that counter play is almost nonexistent. its unfun and causing premades to be a numbers zerg fest with no ability to win unless you counter with a premade. its all around ruinning the game.. @@zerkish9869
Describes me pretty much. Been mostly floating between 2k and 2400 my entire WoW arena career. Never been glad, hardstuck duelist and thats fine. For some reason i can't break 2k in soloshuffle. I think the main issue is that one or two bad games where the lobby just aren't in your favour will set you back several days, possibly weeks of progress. A decent lobby where you win 4 games (which is above average) you'll get like 13 points, buit one game where you go 2-4 or 1-5 and you get minus -50. Going 3-3 (which is average) means you neither gain, nor lose rating so you sat in a 30 minute que, played for 12-15 minutes and have nothing to show for it besides conquest points. That needs to stop. It's infuriating. Just feels like a complete waste of time
i feel with ya ...got 2k4 as survival onetrick in bfa s4 for the first time (2s only) and never got above 2k2 again ...bfa was my first and only xpac with a premade ...sux when u see that some people just get glad like its nothing in their first season cuz they have premades..
Spot on man. The game play is fun, but the rating system just completely disincentivizes players. It is even worse as a healer where a 4/6 game (which is hard against an equally skilled healer) will lead to a rating gain of 5-10, but a 2/6 will be a loss of 20-30. It makes no sense and just make you feel like all your tile played is a waste
One of the worst things for me in solo shuffle as a healer is being whispered with all caps rage from a dps saying all sorts of negative things for something they perceived as a bad play. I feel solo shuffle is extremely toxic towards healers and I haven't been in ss's in a while now because of it. Possible solution for Solo Shuffles ONLY; Names should be blank or just 1, 2 and 3, chat should be disabled because it becomes toxic too easily and frankly can ruin your day and even transmogs should be change so you're not easily identifiable after the match. Let's be honest, how many times have you left a solo shuffle and then whispered a player saying lets play again? I haven't. I think that's what blizzard thought would happen and it's the exact opposite. I know blizzard has the ability to do this because this is exactly how pvp pet battling works and has for 15 years. You join a pvp pet battle and your mog changes each time even male to female and visa versa, you don't see their name and you can't talk, just duke it out and feel out the game. (Low key, these are actually fun and don't take a lot of time, more ppl should try). Aside from Solo Shuffle: The PVP group finder UI should be thrown out completely and replaced with a new ground up design focusing on players finding players; not just at that moment but almost like a message board with a link to your profile and optional btag where you can put your name, classes you play, 2's or 3's, time to play, relevant rating, goals , etc. etc. and that message can stay up between 12-48 hours like an auction post so the boards don't become flooded with old irrelevant posts and maybe costs something like marks of honor to post (just an idea for currency because I'm sure most people like me are sitting on thousands of these). If you find someone with similar goals on the boards you can submit something to them and start building a list of similarly skilled players with similar goals. There was an addon similar to this back in MoP I can't remember the name of it but it was amazing. Something like dating website but for wow pvp and pve for that matter. So many time's I feel (and I'm sure others do as well) that we settle for a partner or partners with the current system because there just aren't that many people q'ing at the time you're looking and that just leads to a not great experience for you and them. This leads to just not q'ing at all, at least for me.
Im a dps, and i complete agree it you. Dont take more than 1 game to people start bullying someone. Its disgusting play retail with such people. Its a stark contrast of my experience when i go play classic and have the opportunity to interact with people. Retail these days is complete antisocial and makes me sick how those andys in the end of the day got what they wanted, an elitist game, complete dominated by jerks and with low chances of making friends.
It's weird because Blizzard has a great system in place already in SC2, which they carried over to OW, so you'd think it would work well in WoW as well
It's so weird you make all these videos on why people aren't playing pvp, but you never touch on the absolute insane learning curve atm. New people are going up against veterans who's been grinding this shit for a decade. I used to love wow pvp (vanilla r14) but I just can't get into it these day, even after making a serious effort several times. During my last attempt at a comback I got flamed multiple times for using my defensive cooldowns "incorrectly" below 1000 rating. So it's not a super welcoming environment. All the mandatory addons are ultimately what kills it for me though. It's just an absolute garbage game mode now with everyones ability to monitor used/unused cds constantly. The arena feels like an UI monitoring mode, and it just sucks the fun out of the game. Veteran players will always have an edge ofcourse, but the addon-game just compounds this so hard.
My thoughts exactly. Feels like skrims could almost be a less sweaty mode of arena, but the game itself isn't valuing skrims at all. Everything surrounding PvP points towards the higher end of the rated arena as the only PvP gamemode of value. Like, everything in-game and even surrounding the game externally points towards that: from splash pages of exclusive mounts and weapons and titles from official informationals, vendors full of restricted gear in red icons, the Vault reward requirements, even a much-lauded mechanic like upgrading your gear will hit rating restrictions within a week of playing BG and skrims. And if the wall of getting into the level of arena the game seems to be expecting of players is insurmountable, then the players will feel frustrated and hopeless and unwanted. Going back into BG after the reality-check of arenas is tough. Like, you're a reject that can't even do the bare minimum of what the game thinks you should be able to do. So it's just easier to drop the game and start playing any other PvP games that are much more facilitating towards new players
I tried retail after a longer pause and the gameplay is insanely overcomplicated. I have more buffs solo than in dungeon or even raid groups in older expansions. Most are from 10s procs which should make the gameplay more interesting but they make it unnecessary complex and annoying. It's the same thing with debuffs. There is no reason to autoapply 3 debuffs with a basic attack for gameplay mechanics, mostly for more procs. Some classes have way too much cds. Watch arena games of wotlk and retail to see how bad it got. Your mmo gamedesign is bad if Starcraft 2 is more watchable and more playable / easier to understand for new players. Get rid of most of the procs. It's bad gamedesign.
There's a really really easy way to solve this. Scrap rating all together and just have '% position on ladder'. That way it doesn't matter if last season you were 2.4k or this season you are 2k, your % stays the same.
As a new-ish commit to retail, I love that PvP rating is super difficult/deflated. Gonna sound weird but conversations are more positive when the ratings are deflated. Conversations are “dang 1800 with how difficult it is to climb is great!” Whereas people non-stop hate on whatever that shadowlands season was where glad was “free”. It’s like hatred is more aimed at blizzard when rating is hard. And if rating is easier, hate/toxicity is aimed at insulting others for being “free”.
Yeah I think all the old players are just losing there minds cause they don't know how to adapt to changes, I started week 1 Df and I hit rival 2 in solos and I'm about to hit duelist, finally found some buddy's to push pvp with and have 1800 in 2s and 3s already. Old players are just sad they can't win the same way they have been for 10 years.
@@MissIllLil This would make sense if it didn't, it's not about adapting to changes, Warcraft players have been doing that since the beginning. Blizzard just keeps fucking up that is the issue. I've played Arena at launch got Glad during Wrath and quit the game til DF that is roughlly 15 years later because I was told it was so much different now and it was. This game was amazing at the start of DF but they continue to ruin it. Ret Paladin rework are a prime example of that.
@@Kanoog The only reason they change so often and nerf and buff so much is because of how people complain. People complain instead of adapting. They throw fits, write 20 post reddits crying about how their class sucks, how this class is too strong. No wonder blizzard can't balance, no one is ever happy. Play the game or don't but don't cry and ruin it for everyone else.
Its the barrier to entry. A player who plays an mmo IS NOT a casual video gamer. You cant just log in and pvp in rated arena. Mmo pvp is just dying in general not just in wow. Its just so much easier to log in and smash in a moba or fps game, to get your pvp fix.. no waiting, no lfg, no bullshit fuckery by devs with mmr every season. I was really hoping for big things with solo shuffle, played the shit out of s1, got to 2.9k on my rogue... but there is just a plethora of issues, long q inclued, that has not even made me slightly tempted to come back.
The main problem is: Every expansion there is less and less players participating. Because most players DO NOT CARE about arena or any arena modes (of course most people here will care, its an arena channel after all). We need people, so you add more pvp modes for people to get INTO PVP for starters. Pvp in this game is: Join a 50 mins queue to play a stressful game for 8 mins. People with real jobs (most people) can't keep up with this. Sadly THIS modes are the only way to progress your characters in pvp wich is IDIOTIC. Blizzard devs are clueless.
I think they need to make it easier to climb on healer. I've been hard stuck 1800 and been getting into games 2,400 mmr games with other healer being 1800 same as me. I went 4-2. They went 2-4. they lost like 30 mmr and I would go up +3. or something low. then the dps would go the same and they would lose a lot less and gain a lot more.
The biggest issue of the moment is that participation is so low. Long queue times, getting matched with 0cr healers in a 2200 lobby-these are happening because no one is playing. We could come up with the most elegant solution, but it won’t mean anything if people keep not participating. Blizz needs to do something to boost participation, needs to do something big and do it soon. Once participation is up to a decent level, then they can implement more elegant changes. And the goal needs to be making the various rating levels feel consistent from season to season. We shouldn’t be in a situation where we have to do multivariable calculus to figure out what someone’s past rating in a different inflated/deflated season.
They already made their money this expansion. All they will do is market their asses off for next expansion to once again pump and dump their own product.
Good video, everything is pretty spot on. My few points: - They need to reduce the CR loss for healers to keep them motivated to play. Make it even more rewarding to play healers so people reduce queue times and have an easier push to get rewards - Give a mount from Shuffle, even if it's 2400 + 100 wins instead of 50 it gives people a reason to play. One of the largest problems with 3s has always been the elitist nature of people not wanting to play with people a little lower, the casuals just want to play and get rewards. - Why are people even allowed to AFK out of Shuffles, people are doing it on stream and without any repercussions. "I don't want this guy to get rating" is directly griefing everyone in the lobby, don't let /afk work. People would just stand in the starting area, but at least that gives the opportunity to kill them to balance out the losses. Waiting 30-40 minutes for some idiot to just leave is a reason I stopped queueing after 2100. - The Elite weapon transmogs this season are so bad I knew I wasn't going to try that hard. - You have unspent Dragonriding Glyphs.
YES! Healers have a much less fun time in arena, just to get LESS reward! I can get 2400 much quicker on a DPS spec than I can as a healer spec, and HAVE MORE FUN DOING IT! WTF is blizz thinking?!
Arena gameplay is too way confusing for new players (tracking all the cd's, cc, positioning etc) but in RBG you can ignore most of that stuff and still do fine.
The only way to save pvp is by putting forth actual new pvp content. 5v5 or 6v6 small objective based modes would be significantly better. Can also incorporate people wanting to play tanks in pvp. We already have gamemode blueprints from Overwatch; yeah OW is in the dumps right now, but OG Overwatch competitive modes would be incredible on WoW.
I think the direction retail PvP would need to move is to solo queue rated BGs. With an easy to understand tiered ranking system (like you described, bronze - diamond). I think BGs need the investment for a few reasons, 1 it would solve queue times to an extent because you are allowing the DPS to Healer ratio to come closer to optimal. The other BIG thing about BGs is that from a viewer standpoint its MUCH MUCH easier to understand that people are playing capture the flag or some version of "territories", and the game is struggling to bring new players on (evident by the observable decrease in player base each expac) so having game modes that focus a little less on the micro-gameplay of arenas and more on the macro-gameplay of a Battleground could make PvP in general more easily accessed. Few things they could do to improve the RBG scene: 1) Implement a rating system people are more familiar with and keep it consistent. (LoL seems to have a system that works pretty well in that players who achieve lets say plat, end up in plat pretty consistently. Where in wow it seems like depending on ladder / season / participation your ratings fly all over the place.) 2) Shrink the maps - AB, EotS, and Deepwind Gorge are all imo too large. (Maybe I have a short attention span but dying waiting 30seconds to be back alive and then having another 45second mounted travel time to get back to the action just feels a bit jarring, maybe having some sort of birds eye death cam or something while im waiting that I feel like I'm still in the game a bit would help... dunno but the amount of time out of combat in RBGs can feel really disruptive to the flow of the game - it's why professional sports- think American Football, has limited very short time outs, its just bad to a viewer and as a player.) 3) Ban Tanks (This opens the door for an even better dps to healer ratio and also removes specs that tend to be pretty anti-fun in a rated setting) 4) A big thing would honestly be getting symmetrical map design, my personal favorite map is WSG (seems to be a crowd favorite) and I think part of this is because nothing about it favors one side over the other like you have on Silvershard Mines and AB. Typically in other successful Esport quality competitive games if maps favor one side over the other its also typical for the game to facilitate both teams getting to play from that side in their match. (maybe after you cap a flag on Twin Peaks there is a board swap, 30sec break and now your team is on the other side and it plays like rounds?) - something like that could also work. 5) Rework rewards... I think this could be said about the game as a whole, the saturation of mounts and armor has gotten to a point where I am not excited about a glad mount anymore it has lost its prestige..(maybe its like the whole.. you want a nice car but once you have it the luster of the car decays? idk) I think some notoriety would be cool, some display in the main city that once you get into diamond or whatever the leaderboard starts displaying your name in the game and maybe a statue for each season is erected so if you make it to the top 5% or whatever it is you get to leave your mark on the history of wow. That seems better than another mount to me, idk. 6) Lastly - The in-game voice comms are actually not awful, they should be building an interface to make this HEAVILY under utilized tool of the game a more prominent feature akin to that of any major FPS competitive game. I would even take proximity chat inside pvp zones tbh.
They should just use their hots maps in wow and make it soloq and rated, i was a big fan of hots and game always reminded me of wow bgs, probably millions worth idea for little to no effort, would bring tons of new players to wowpvp, but hey im not blizz developer...
i love and agree with all of this... except for one thing: please don't make it SoloQ only. WoW is a MMORPG, I want to play with my friends, I want to meet new people so I can play with them in the future too. It should really be a flex queue where you can queue with up to 5 people. Maybe on the highest ranks this needs to be reduced to 3 people so that it's not impossible to play without a full 5-man-team. But for the lower ranks, let's be honest, coordinating with a few people doesn't matter at all. i truly feel like rated BGs should be the future of WoW PvP. i miss doing BGs, did them a lot back in the days. but nowadays they're so unplayable. every time i play them, you either have 2-5 people AFK from the start, or whenever something goes slightly wrong and it looks like you could possibly lose, suddenly half of your team quits and nobody wants to keep playing. so what you get is boring stomps. either you win, or the enemies win, it's just a coinflip. but whatever side you are on, you're definitely not having fun. introducing some stakes to BGs with a rating system, where people get a Loss and a timeout if they leave (which increases if they continue to leave), could really help revive BGs :)
For faster solo ques, they should do it like skirmishes. If there is not a healer within you rating, do 2 v 2, 3 rounds, with only dps. Ques would be faster and the rounds will go faster and you don't have to worry about having a healer that is not at the same skill level as the dps. Not perfect but I think it would be better.
@@thehardcorecasual9444 I think it would feel horrible for a lot of classes. Prot lobbies are almost 3 dps vs 3 dps and it feels really bad on certain classes... but maybe you have to do it because it's fked either way.
The problem is, it takes upwards of 100 hours of gameplay to even be an entry level arena player in WoW. So the only people who are going to play are people who have already done that grind. And if the last time they did that grind was 3 expansions ago, then they're almost back at zero. I love that WoW keeps innovating its class design every x-pack, it's one of my favorite parts, but the bloat gets to be so insane that at some point you've just permanently missed the boat if you haven't kept up in a while. Dragonflight looks like a really cool expansion to me, but I still haven't touched it because I just absolutely don't want to download a dozen addons, re-learn complex rotations, bust out gear spreadsheets, and, mostly, I don't want to play GCD-locked, sweaty rotations in every single gameplay mode available. I did it before in my early 20s, I know what it takes to be 'good' at WoW, and I just don't have it in me anymore. Classic Era looks like fun as well (f*** WotLK honestly, what a sh*tshow), but I continue to pass on that as well because the community basically wants you to pay real money for every piece of gear that drops from every dungeon or raid. An obvious over exaggeration, but the gatekeeping is REAL. I don't know what else to say, retail WoW seems like it's designed for the top 1% of players, and the Classic community pretends like the game is only for the top 1% of players.
i dont know if this is a good solution or not but i think that a "problem" that has occurred in df is since they removed a lot of the self sustain from many classes and gave all that power to healers (which is also awesome and has benefits i wont deny) whenever u get a bad healer in a shuffle it feels just that much worse cuz you cant do nearly as much as you could in the past to carry past that
That's DEFINITELY NOT TRUE. They have increased self-sustain! But(!), they also at the same time increased consistent damage, interrupts, micro-cc, dampening and even MS. It's a balancing act, and right now they're trying to design the game to be easier somewhat, so in SS especially it's chaotic and practically random. BUT the problem is the classes and (for casual to average players) the hidden systems are still complicated which makes for a confusing experience. Basically this: "So these things interact a hundred ways that I need to know and keep track of, but while I was thinking this thought I already died cause I wasn't 100 ontop of everything already".
I would love solo rated BG that bases it off your spec only. Give rating at the end of the week based on performance. Think rating based on objectives, damage, deaths, kills, and wins vs loss compared to other people of the same spec.
The problem is that damage, deaths, and kills have nothing to do with actually winning an RBG. If you can spin a flag for 5-10 minutes with a tank and a healer, and just keep spinning, you're going to have insane damage, 0 kills and 0 deaths.
The expectation for my group was to get 2.4k in season one DF bc we reach that in SL. Hard stuck at 2k everyone quit and haven’t came back. I can attest.
6 players teams 2 heals 4 dps.. redesign every single bg to fit this mold in terms of map size and objective placement..and then make a ranked pre-made version..balance for it and then add a solo q ranked version also for when your team isn't on
The pvp rating system hasn't made any kind of reasonable sense for years. probably since Legion, maybe if you grade with a curve since BFA. Given the complicated algorithms of today's AI driven tech, Blizzard still largely bases their rating system on 1950s chess. Essentially they are stuck on a stone knife and bear skin tech level. It's really and truly a pathetic joke. The MS deal, going forward, should greatly help mitigate this on-going issue with the pvp rating system. Changing the ranking system to something more state of the art tech-wise will most definitely help, but the real underlying issue is Arena itself. For years, Wow pvp held tremendous potential (off the charts) yet Blizzard never even came close to touching the heels of that potential, the real question is why? Answer: no spectators (relative to the overall scope of the game). In order to understand the intricacies and nuances of Arena Pvp, you pretty much need to be personally engaged in arena. And, how much of the overall player base does that make up? 25% would be a very generous allocation. If you made Wow Pvp competitive with "objective based competition," in other words BGs with relatively smaller maps and 6vs6, in the words of Batman "things will change." This accomplishes (5) very significant and important things: 1) you open up a lot more viable comp possibilities. 2) create a product that engages viewers and greatly widens your audience. 3) more viewers equals the potential for higher overall pvp participation rates and better promotion opts for streamers and the game. 4) The non-wow player or even hardcore raider no longer need to understand nor fully grasp the nuance of Arena Pvp and watching is a hell of a lot more engaging. 5) Competitive gets a hell of a lot more sizzle and sauce. In the current state of arena, the sizzle and sauce happens once, maybe twice in a match (especially to the less Xp'd). But, if you add in a point system (something everyone with a semblance of a brain immediately grasps), now there are 3, 4, 5 or more opts for sizzle and sauce. Other things factor into this equation, but I don't want write a novella here. Yes, hardcore arena players will be pissed. But then again, no one says arena needs to completely go away. Offer objective based 6vs6 (capture the flag and node type of BGs. Smaller maps than the regular BG or even larger maps than the existing arena maps. Let this mode replace RBGs, They've turned into a complete joke anyway and happen to be less popular than Arena. Let the participation #'s speak for themselves before any sort of drastic change occurs. I am 100% confident the overwhelming majority of players will be remarkably surprised at the result.
You had some great suggestions here ven! I want to explain another time that this situation happened - rocket league. The current highest rank is SSL, but it used to just be grand champion. They tried one season to lower inflation and it upset EVERYBODY. So their new solution was a new reward tier and it worked very well. If 3k becomes the pro bench mark and your rewards only go to 2400, then you need to add a 2800 reward.
The game is not accessible for new and returning players. Tbh gameplay feels over complex and a bit of outdated. Its hard to follow what's going on with so many add-ons, abilities, buffs, debuffs. The fact that you need to download and setup dozens of add-ons to be even able to play. Surely revamping the whole ranking system and making healing more rewarding would help, but in the long run it's not the game-changer.
Casual pvpers, which for obvious reasons make up the majority of the pvp player base, have no reason to stick around and play WoW. Most of the rewards are locked behind ratings that are largely unobtainable for them. On top of that, all the casual pvp game modes have been turned into mere means to gear up for rated gameplay, so once you are done with gearing they feel absolutely pointless. If you want more players in your non-casual game mode, you need a previous, worthwile environment for casual players to transition over.
Exactly. The elite weapons are locked behind glad (which you need 15 years of experience to obtain atm) and they should be like 2k max IMO. There could definitely be more rewards throughout the whole span as well.
I started playing again in Shadowlands season 3 and saw that the gladiator mount was more common than it used to be and it sparked a hope that I would be able to obtain it eventually. One and a half year later of PvPing that dream feels so dead. The reward system really needs to be reworked. The elite weapons should not be gated behind Glad. At tops 1950/2100. Does rank 1 players really need half of the rewards from PvP? They should just hyperinflate to almost Shadowlands levels just to get more people to play. That and rework reward system, might even bring in PvE'rs wanting transmogs. Then for 10.2 they can rework the whole rank system.
Fixing MMR only affects a small percent of players, from my perspective catering to a small percent is why I stopped playing. Ladders are deflated due to participation, fixing MMR is cool and needed but is it really the priority?
Reason for me stopping to play PvP is that hey cut development on it. Nothing to look forward to and since I am not the only person that could feel that way the crowd playing it had to decrease “die off”. As you said, it’s fun but we need new modes/BGs and effort in PvP content
Solo shuffle 2's: 4 rounds, rotate teams. Gives DPS a spillover place to wait for their 3s SS to pop (so it'd mostly be 4 dps lobbies). Solo shuffle 5's: first team to 2 kills wins the round. 2 ppl who died go to separate teams, highest damage from winning team goes to losing team
I played pvp in shadowlands. I am a terrible and completely unskilled player. I mostly played battlegrounds, but shadowlands was the first time i really got into arena. In SL i was 1300-1400. I know garabge, but i feel like i am probably part of the majority of players who could potentially play the game. If the devs want a broader appeal for pvp, then i think SL's inflation was the best way to go. The worst thing to do was drastically reduce inflation after the high inflation of SL. SL inflation set PVP up for failure because when the new expansion did not deliver that same inflation/popularity people dropped out. When i started arena again in DF i played probably 10 games... maybe. My team was rated something like 400-500 and we were facing people way better than when we were 1300. It discouraged me a lot. It was no longer competitive or fun. I don't care about rewards as much as the competitiveness. You're not going to attract players with awards. You're going to attract them with a high rate of fair competitive games. People start playing sports because they are fun and competitiveness is fun. They stay for the continued promise of competitive games, improving themselves, and lastly awards.
The worst part about all of this is the complete and utter lack of communication from the devs. It’s nothing new of course, but it’s just salt in the wound. And we all saw it coming when Holinka announced his departure.
Imagine it from the Priest's perspective. Here you are just starting out and you instantly get que'd into a 2200 lobby, your first thought is, "Well, I'm effed" and the stress levels are instantly high. The entire rating system needs to be revamped, we need to be able to progress it not get shoved into the fire. Sometimes I think Arena was bad for the game.
Usually nobody agrees with me, but I still think role MMR should not be a thing in shuffle (there is no role mmr in other arena formats, why here?). I also think glad mount should not be 3v3 exclusive. I understand 3v3 is the most skillful arena mode, but without the mount / proper rewards there is no reason to play/push high rated other formats. I never had the chance to find a proper 3v3 group, but I always admired the glad mounts, I would like to obtain one of them. In DF season 1 I hit 2400+ rating solo shuffle, It was a big disappointment when I realised I can not keep the title and there won't be any mount regardless of the rating.
@venruki I don’t know why no one mentions this but I believe the core issue with wow is the add ons and data mining. The add ons cause the game’s difficulty to be inflated because the devs know the players are using them so the difficulty goes completely vertical. It’s the same for pvp everyone has the game played for them by having things screamed at them, imagine how many more casts would go off if you didn’t have an air horn and an alert message fly across the screen. This also inflates rating bc people are getting better simply by downloading an add on. Then factor in new people they won’t know about add ons and will get clapped in both pve and pvp.
Rating inflation is worthless, it's fundamentally a lie to most players, and was only designed to prevent ladder camping. Nobody cares about their numerical rating, they care about their percentile ranking. 1800 is respected in the first week of a season, because its a high percentile rank, 1800 is a joke at the end of a season because its low rating after inflation. I want the old percentile ranks back, I don't want my rank to be determined by how much inflation a season had, I want it to be because of me. Fix shuffle queue declining too btw.. There's literally no punishment for queue sniping in order to win-trade in shuffle. Blizzard allow you to leave the queue pop with no consequence, that is effectively allowing queue-sniped-win-trading. All you need to do is pause the queue for half an hour then you can deliberately queue into whoever you want to, and if it doesn't hit, you decline. Proving grounds is the most popular queue pausing method, and healers don't even need to do that, they can just snipe with insta queues and decline if it doesn't hit. It will stay like that until you lose rating for declining the queue. (like all other rated modes)
The reason World of Warcraft (WoW) is declining can be attributed to two key factors. When WoW was first launched, particularly during the Burning Crusade expansion, there were more players than in the current expansion. This was because all the content, especially the 25-player raids, was challenging yet attainable. In other words, all the gear on everyone's wishlist was accessible. As WoW continued to release expansions, they progressively made content more difficult, introducing heroic versions of raids, then mythic, and so on. This shift in design is the primary reason why WoW has experienced a decline. It may seem straightforward, but this is precisely why many players left. If players were happier with obtaining new gear, even if they had to pay for a subscription, there would likely be more players. The second reason WoW is struggling is closely related to the first. As content became more challenging, a significant portion of the player base left the game. This exodus has resulted in fewer PvP (Player versus Player) enthusiasts since the overall player population has dwindled.
I think slow balance fixes in PVP and different games being avaliable have knee-capped my interest to play retail PVP like I did in SL. Edit: I actually didn't consider the queue times, but they are actually the strongest reason I've lost interest. Private Warhammer online servers have a 3 minute queue. I have no idea why WoW ones are so long by comparison.
At least 3 of the big private WoW servers are in the same boat. Sub 2 min queues. It kinda makes it sadder having the comparison to retail pointed out...
@Fabolousyo with tanks you already know the 2 tanks will never be targeted for anything but CC. At least with 3 dps it opens up more burn options. Also shorter games and hopefully shorter queues because there's always more dps than healers
Summarized my rant post pretty well. I personally think this is a huge contributor. Fast paced games where shit blows up makes for stressed healers that quit playing or reroll.
Good healers do in fact carry games.( especially in 3v3, not necessarily shuffle, since damp is so fast and mana is rarely a win condition)Issue is there are only a handful capable of doing so
@@ziggs123 well that's the point. Everyone won't git gud. Just above average is attainable for people who put some extra effort in. If average healers can't heal average games then healing is too hard for average players and shit aint working.
The problem is that they mix a skill based system (elo) for match-making purposes with a progression based system for rewards. It is totally fine to make negative progress in the match making if the number of players go down or your new team comp doesn't perform well, your class got nerfed. All that is important here is that you are matching with opponents so that you'll get approximately 50% winrate. That is the goal of elo, that all have fun and win and lose the same amount. But mixing it with a progression based system for rewards that are supposed to be extrinsic feels frustrating and demotivates, especially if there is no chance of ever making progress again (besides negative progress). There should have been always two numbers, where one can influence the other, but they can still work towards their own purpose.
Healer shortage has been a huge issue since basically forever. I'm not sure how they fix that without making healers just ridiculous. I think the PvP player base is small and spread incredibly thin. There's overlap of 2v2, 3v3, Shuffle, Rated BGs, and Random BG enjoyers all playing at any given time. I know that sometimes I just hop in random BGs or 2v2 because I don't want to wait for shuffle or 3v3 in LFG. We desperately need new blood in pvp, especially rated pvp. I think this has been one of the best expansions for a PvP only enjoyer and yet the participation is low. It's possible they could go with a full redesign of classes or pvp talents in an effort to make the healer role unnecessary. I remember being able to survive a lot longer without getting healed in older expansions like MoP. I don't see this as likely because it would take a ton of effort and also leave healer mains in a weird spot. They won't even ban tanks so there's no way they would get rid of healing altogether.
The game has become extremely complex, you need so many add ons to track and alert cool downs. You need to understand each class and spec. Gear, enchanting and sockets gems. For a new player the entry level is so high and facing people with 10+ years of pvp experience is demoralising. I think gearing is easier in DF but definitely not the best expansion for pvp, the class balance has been all over the place and don't get me started on the Ret rework. I don't think that Blizzard will care enough to do the required actions to fix it, only a small percentage do pvp and they balance the game around the top 1% of AWC. I left start of S2 along with 3 RL friends after 11 solid years. Reaching 2300 in 3s and 2210 SS on two healers. We reached glad in SL, BFA, Legion and WoD. If you asked a 15 year old kid now if they wanted to play fortnite or a MMO its going to be fortnite most of the time.
I don’t know if they’ve ever directly said as much, but it seems obvious that they’re trying to avoid a situation where people hit their rating target in the first two weeks of the season and then stop playing. Of course, they haven’t really solved that problem, because right now it just makes more sense to start playing in the last two weeks of the season and not at all in the beginning. Probably they need *some* kind of carrot-on-a-stick that encourages people to keep playing throughout the season. I don’t really know the best way to accomplish this in a way that doesn’t also make people feel like they *have* to play consistently through the whole season, but they need to spend some time figuring it out. A thought I have is, what if there are some rewards that do require a grind, but you make progress much more quickly at high ratings? Say, if you’re at 2400, you gain progress 3x faster than if you’re playing at 1400? That gives some benefit to people who are playing at a high level, but still makes people at a low level feel like they’re working towards something even if they don’t feel like they’re improving fast enough to hit 1800 or 2100 or whatever their goal might be.
RBGs need to be re-evaluated. Especially the rewards for it, as of right now their is no reason to ever do RBGs after you get 2400 and Hero. All the RBG mounts are bought with saddles and then became season rewards. I think RBGs and a 5v5 mini BG or arena would be a fun mode.
The big issues to me that need to be fixed are: -Ban tank specs from all arenas -give healers incentive to actually want to heal dps even if they are brain dead instead of droping match in solo -reduce cc ( since burst is so high for alot of classes this patch) - enable a player social rating so that toxic people lose more rating gain less honor based on this rating so that toxic pvp mindset can die out and they can just leave match with penalty or suffer in silence like the rest of us
Give a weapon that is equally strong or better with the top tier PVE weapon, give more achievements, different mounts and pets and PvP specific rewards. Hey, even organise some more frequent events with money like Fortnite does. People will be back to it, in no time.
The most elegant solution would be to simply bring back the Tournament realm with rewards that directly feed back to characters on the live servers in real time. No convoluted barrier to entry with zero risk of negatively impacting the PvE side of the game. Jump in and play with no strings attached and grind to your heart's content. Might even give SoloQ half a chance at flourishing if playing a healer is three clicks on character creation and a couple of vendors away instead of being arbitrarily gated behind levelling + Honour gearing + Conquest gearing + whatever campaign elements that Blizzard decide to enforce on the day. There's a reason that the system on the old Arena Tournament realm worked far better than the nonsense that Blizzard has provided us. I personally still don't think that retail is conducive with an enjoyable SoloQ experience but at least it'd have two good legs to stand on instead of being kneecapped right out of the gate. Not that modern Blizzard would ever commit money to dedicated arena/BG servers. I could reach my hand down the back of my sofa and likely come out wealthier than the solo intern responsible for PvP balance.
In regards to the discussion with Mes: Blizzard actually does a VERY similar system with Hearthstone Battlegrounds. Every season, the MMR Resets to 0. Top 4 placements in the mode are considered a win, bottom 4 a loss. Once your at your MMR and your CR Matches, you will have a swing of about +-80ish CR per game. They have ranked floors up to 6k MMR. The average player, which would probably be rival level in this system, is about 6k MMR, which is where the last floor is. You can set Rank floors Until Rival 1, aka Elite gear appearance. At the start, you win a ton of MMR to get you up to your CR, and loose very little. At the VERY top of the Chain, you have to grind like hell to keep your top spot as anyone can take it with the way the system is designed, provided they win enough games. Right now the Top of the pile is about 17k MMR per season, with the top 20ish rounding out at about 14k. The Floors encourage you to push yourself further, knowing you won't ever be that far away from your goal. It also allows you to experiment with different partners and comps, since you can't loose past your floor. It helps lessen rating anxiety. Honestly, If they kept the numbers in the system the same, but implemented rating floors up to Whatever rating they feel is comfortable, They would likely have a larger casual base as they know that if they grind enough they can hit the next rating tier. I am a 2100 player (for the last 4 seasons) and I play a healer. If they put a duelist rank floor in, so I can't loose CR or MMR at that level, I would queue up non stop for shuffles to try and hit 2400. As it stands, the rating system is far to volatile for that, which actively discourages the way I would like to play. Finally, I would like to see them implement a Warband queue system for Shuffle/BG Blitz, where your entire warband can Queue up. So If you have 3 toons in your warband, lets say 1 healer and 2 DPS, the queue continues and places your DPS at the top as you play your healer games and then prio takes the DPS queue when it would eventually pop. Allow you to choose which toons and what prio you want to put them in. I could queue disc for games and then switch it up when my destro queue pops after 15ish minutes, or 1/2 rounds of disc shuffle. Would be AWESOME and give people a way to incentive playing healers while they wait for their DPS queues to pop without loosing their spot.
The problem is the inflation system, it incentivizes people to honestly not give two fucks about 90% of the season and then when the ladder is at its juiciest moment you do an end of season push.
PVP spiraled when they pushed everything to arena. Bring solo que to rbgs, remove the cap on conquest for normal ques. Give you 150 conquest for normal bgs everytime for wins. Double it for epic bgs. Give legit reason to do play normal arena games that arent rated. Make conquest gear easier to obtain with regular content. Make pvp gear easier to level to mythic raid gear levels or very close. Hard cap rating to 2400. Boost the increase on an arena win based on how long you get stuck in que. The fact is everyone who ends up at the top of the ladder are the same people every single season because theyre an exclusive group in the end the same group thats always existed mostly with few changes. Participation among common players does not exist. Add seasonal awards that are cosmetic for wins at the cap of rating. They could add a conquest level system like they did the honor point system. Reset it with new rewards every season where participation in rated and normal content counts. Make rbg wins where you always get an item by about 3 wins. The whole copper, silver, etc stuff is people trying to argue what works with other games that does not work with wow. It is a terrible idea. The problem with solo shuffle arena is it is relying solely on the balance of the game and that very niche group at the very top since blizzard bases the entire game on who are not the majority of their customers. We see the same issue with pve but i think they have taken some good steps against this. They could easily add a system like i said and just make conquest gear upgradable with conquest points. Make honor gear at level up with honor right at the bottom of conquest levels. Remove the rating requirement for upgrades. (like literally the top level of honor gear is the very first level of conquest gear). They need to approach the casual audience to hold that carrot into rated content. Seasons long ago you could farm normal content easier to get conquest gear. You could get gear that was usable in pve. You could spend a night or two a week a few hours to deck out a character in conquest gear casually by having fun. I never understood why they changed this. Also, they need to stop treating pvp progression on gear like pve progression. its never going to be the same nor should it.
Why do you need to reinvent the wheel? Just do it like modern competitive games. You keep your same ranking you ended the last season as. Ended the season at 1900? You start at 1900 next season. At the highest level of the game they will need to cap you below the threshold of last season's gladiator cut-off or right at the threshold, you will also be required to play a certain amount of games per season if you want rewards. So if gladiator cut-off last season was 2400, next season all players 2400 and above will start next season at 2400. There's decay, so if you don't play your ranking will decay and there's a required amounts of games you need to play to get rewards. If you don't win 50 arena games in that season, you will not get rewards. Keep in mind there is hidden MMR. 3k players are going to vs 3k players and so on, but the matchmaker will take this into consideration on how much points you win/lose compared to actual 2400 MMR players. Basically what I mean by that is at the beginning of the season, if you were 3k last season and now you start at 2400, you are going to get drastic gains in points to catch up to your hidden MMR and you won't lose as much points for losses since you are facing other 3k teams to keep matchmaking fair for the true 2400 players.
This might be unpopular and idk how many issues it would solve but a rework of arena is necessary, I think they should combine shuffle and 3s into on bracket. No other game I know has two different versions of the same game mode just for solo qs. Make it so you can join a 3s game with a friend and a random you find through matchmaking.
The minute they scaled pvp away from pve it removed 60% of the players that were pvping from the pool and then the gaps became so large that casuals stopped rated pvp
Venruki I saw the AQ Gates open on Frostmourne as I am Australian. I have only ever played a mage since the game was released. You're spot on with every comment you make about pvp (ret jokes aside) , I log on get my mog and log off if its a bad season, I was actually 2450 last season and this season i stopped bothering after duelist, so you nailed it on the head. All the other comments and Inez's video you previously covered are perfect, i really hope someone in blizzard is listening as you're making some very good points.
@clarke5479 Putting a little more value in strategy over reaction time isn’t a bad thing when the target demographic of the game is men between the ages of 30 and 50. I enjoy the fast paced recent version of the game but you’d have to be insane to think it’s also not what makes it a dead game. None of my buddies play anymore because they just die in a single second.
For real, there’s too much going on now to react to. 15 years ago I was fine when all I would do is play wow but now when you want to spend a couple hours playing you fall behind. I don’t want another job. I think it’s just a lot of the player base is older with other priorities and the mmo model just doesn’t work when you have other priorities. I’ve just stopped and play single player games now. I think the big issue is the demographic that plays wow have changed along with the game changing
i like the gold silver idea. one thing to keep in mind is that you need average joes to participate. problem is, if they cant get rewards,, like season 2 they are nearly unobtainable. they simply wont play. and we back to square 1.
Oh just got to your WotLK experience in the video. I quit wrath for retail because of the terrible time I had trying to find a partner. LFG isn’t cross server OR cross faction. So it’s so hard. Joined retail and made 3 insanely good friends within a week and I haven’t stopped since!
If they had the brackets (copper,silver, etc.) they could actually tie upgrades like in slands to it. But in order for it to not feel awful and to combat “boosting” you don’t fight anyone outside of your bracket. I.e, 1600-1799 only fighting players within that rating/bracket and it always goes off of the highest player in the group. So if you have a 2400 player in the group you only fight people 2400-2699. And the beginning of the season it only drops you back one bracket. So from 3k players drop to the 2.7 bracket. Just examples, obviously with how low pvp participation is, the bracket system won’t really work in terms of time in queue.
The solution to solo shuffle is making it a 1 queue instead of 6 queues. Nobody wants to get locked out with people they deem incompetent for 6 queues, and it also creates imbalanced comps facing each other by design, so facing one such comp is better than, say, 3 or 4. Everybody feels bad losing 70 cr, it's not as bad if you only lose 13 cr like in a normal bracket. And you won't be able to skip rating either, because at this point, if you have enough mmr, you can park yourself to 1.5 and then win a 6-0 and it propells you to almost 2.1, for example I've had myself get propelled from 1.4 to 1.8 on one of my alts for a 4-2. Also, I bet it would incentivize people to actually communicate together.
people are walking away because is unfun, not because of mmr/rating. pvp is to faced paced, people die to fast also if u slow down pacing and times to kill, you could make triple dps lobbies in solo shuffle a thing. healers shouldnt be mandatory to play this game
If you wanted to make queue times non existant, then one compromise would be to only have 1 queuing option for Arena, kinda like how skirms work. If it had proper mmr & rating then those would balance for team/comp advantage over time. I.e. you may be hard stuck 1800 when soloing but get 2k if you get a team. You could also have an option to simply hide the rating display instead of needing a separate bracket for the casuals. Solo shuffle would have to go back to a brawl with good weekly rewards. Its not perfect, but again, there would be no queue time at all.
boosting is a problem, exactly. but you have to face the fact that A LOT of rank1 players and streamers are such "boosters", lowering their MMR/rating on purpose for "stream content" or gold carries (which very often is RMT also...) "helping" others for whatever currency they want. Every time i read "helping" in LFG tool this intelectually dishonest nonsense, I could puke on my monitor. Just try it and whisper those morons in LFG that make these groups with "multi glad helping others" etc. then you will see they don't wanna HELP (helping is a selfless act and doesn't have an ulterior motive behind it, driven by greed for money or gold. They gonna tell you some stupid stuff and lure you into their discord. Solo Shuffel is also plagued by boosting und wintrading like crazy, at least on lower ratings. Its annoying and is one of the major issues people don't wanna play. Beware.. to not talk about these issues on the official WoW forums, you gonna get spam reported by the boosting mafia on there, that deny everything that hints at a bossting problem in the game.
Solo Shuffle shouldn't require a healer. Let trip dps battle it out, and at the higher mmr levels, healers will make their way in. If you can que trip deeps in arena, let them que trip deeps in solo shuffle. Requiring a healer forces a 2k+ comp for people who aren't looking for that. It fixes the wait times if you ignore roles and throw players together no matter what. Let 2k rmp fight 2k blood/prot/sub. Winner gets points. It isn't rocket surgery.
The way i see it. If you want a game with a healthy pvp and pve scene. You need ~2 notable BiS pieces from PvP to bring to PvE and visa versa. Everybody chases the best gear, to have some locked via the other source amd visa versa. That being said, the pvp gear shouldn't be completely gated by rating (perhaps a new system where arena gear gets cheaper the higher rating you have, only gating the BiS PvP only gear behind rating Just my 2c
Ven, yesterday I was farming vaults for my sockets on an alt WW look what happend: Fist Q = 17 minutes, before first round even started the hpal left the game minus 155 rating for him; Second Q = 17 minutes + 28 minutes, after losing two rounds without pressing buttons the holypriest left the game, and guess what? I played the two first rounds with him he let the DH and Boomy die without pressing even a single heal of his. Results for me: 45 minutes in Q to lose two rounds and get less mmr, no honor, no vault ~~
The ceiling feels so heavy not because of skill, but lack of in-depth class spec talent design. If they were to create full PVP talent trees that would encourage more player agency and progress. A rating of how often you win and lose isn't really motivating whatsoever especially when core abilities and talents could be changed from season to season and patch to patch.
What killed it for me was one day I decided to gear up my Ret pally in PvP. Bought him his greens, did a few BGs and weekly quests which eventually lead to a full blue set. So then I felt like I had the bare minimum to at least do a solo shuffle queue for some CQ and vault rewards. First queue was maybe 10min and I won 5/6 rounds. We were all close gear and ilvl. Next queue was an hour and 16min and I was pitted in a lobby with 5 other people at 1800 to 2000 and they all massively out geared me. It was an absolute and total shit show. Then of course I'm the noob etc etc lol and it's all my fault. 😂😂
Here's a problem with it that isnt exactly talked about much but its also common knowledge and i think this may be the biggest contributing factor: theres no people playing ranked arena now (2s/3s) there's just simply not. The rating system as it is has been fine all these years since its introduction in TBC. All these years and the system has been fine, even through Shadowlands, up until season 4, it was fine. What happened in season 4 where it wasn't fine anymore? Nobody was playing. Df s1: nobody playing because rated shuffle exists now, DF s2: same thing, but even less people are playing. The problem isnt quite the mmr system, while yes its flawed and needs some work, the primary problem is that nobody is playing, and this branches off into multiple problems all by itself. 1: because nobody is playing, theres even dewer people queueing at the top of the ladder, so why would top end players try to play there when they can just make another alt and play, rinse and repeat until bored 2: BECAUSE theres nobody playing, people feel this need to now buy boosts in order to get the rewards that they previously could get when people were playing 3: because of people buying the boosts and also because of the countless rank 1s on their god knows what alt (probably like 20th, Venruki is a pitch perfect example of this) thats all these lower experienced players keep facing and it makes it even more difficult for them to climb as well. Your problem is just simply the fact that theres just not a god damn person playing the game. As to how to fix this, hell I don't know, however my best guess would be probably to first fix this god awful fuckin joke of class design since its the primary reason a bunch of people have just stopped playing to begin with. I mean shit, even after 20 god damn years, even i just stopped playing because i can't deal with this shit anymore. The class design is a complete fucking mess and its really unfun. So if you want people to start playing again, that wouldn't be a bad place to start, i mean hell look at Classic WoW, thats where alllll the new players go, and have a great tendency to stay and they all say the same thing, its a much easier game to play and its a lot less stressful. So I'd start there tbh
I'm not a fan of Battle Passes in general but I would make the PVP level thing seasonal (rather than completely irrelevant as it now seems to be) - Could divide it into two tracks, one damage and one healer to encourage people to do both, level up faster winning but also when losing. Could do some bonus xp for particular actions (ie - interrupts) to try and help new players get an idea of good plays. I guess as well some kind of encouragement to add people to friends at end as the social side also needs work. Maybe a prompt then if both sides agree they get added in as pvp friends.
In PvP, bad players bring more to the game than good players do (because they provide punching bags for the good players to feel superior against.) So, the central problem Blizzard should address is how to reward bad players, so they stay engaged.
Assuming 1st season is 0 and 2nd season i 3000, it seems to me that this doesnt actually do anything different. The approach is more like smoke and mirrors lol. I think that people should retain a percentage of their CR from the previous season. So every season your CR just DRs. and then of course have your MMR DR appropriately. This would function a lot differently than the current system.
Imagine: Win = 1 points, Loss = 0 points. Your teams total points in match is 1200. Your opponent is 600. A win for you is 1 point. A win for your opponent is 2 points (why, because 1200 / 600 = 2 (time the point basis). Change the base value to whatever, 5, 10, 1 trillion... the math is the same. If you played players at your level, all season long, 300 games. At the end of the season your rating (assuming 150 games won) would be... 150. If you played against higher rated players your rating could be 450 or more. If you played scrubs, you would be 300. It really is that simple.
That ( rating) is a major contributor to the issue. There are other factors (toxic enviroment etc) as well but another impactful issue is the cheating that has been in the game which one can report but with little to no support not much gets done about it. Scripters have been around for a while. My first encounter was in SL's S2 and once we started passing the 1800 tier my partner and I encountered many. I agree there need to be new content for pvp. Anything fresh embraces if it was well thought out. New content.
At this point wow ranked pvp should just use like a flex queue system and just allow people to queue for 2s/3s arena, as a solo or with group and put everyone in the same pool of players. Just make it so that if you queue with people your hidden MMR starts higher. I'm basically thinking ranked flex queue style. This makes it so everyone has a possible path to getting a glad mount you can technically queue solo and get it, might be harder but still possible. Just remove solo shuffle and add the ability to solo queue into 2s/3s. I know a lot of people will hate this idea because of competitive integrity but i think this actually solves a lot of problems. PvP participation is so low that the last thing it needs is to be more split up.
While although the suggestions in here are good, as far as solo shuffle is concerned, theres a handful of people talking about how shuffle has been hindering them getting ahead yet the better players are still consistently rising to the top in Solo shuffle. Given this being the case and they face the same set of adverse factors that you do while queing, this should tell you something about the individualistic gameplay as opposed to the gameplay as a whole. Is there a lot of imbalance in the game? Yes, absolutely. Are there things that need to be fixed so ques aren't 40 minutes long for potentially adverse lobbies? Yes, absolutely. But for those of you complaining that the shuffle system is holding you back, consider that the better players who are playing under the same conditions as you are still finding ways to persevere and climb. The gameplay is FAR from perfect but people are still finding ways to get ahead.
Change the rating system/mmr. Make Safe points. Example start at 0, hit 1000, you can't go below 1000. Lose every game the rest of the season you won't go below 1000. Next Safe point 1400, same thing. Can't go below 1400. Can say people will get carried to brackets but they do anyways. Something like this would reward sense of progression, and much less sense of negative progression. I actually think gearing is fine atm, as a pvper it's the best it's been in a looooong time. Secondly reward time. Even if you are losing games, specially ina shuffle that you spend 20 mins in to get nothing is bad. Should get some conquest for your time.
People always blame the devs for this. And I think that the devs are largely to blame for what has been happening with WOW, but not only that. Let me give you a small example. 2 months ago retail became unbearable for me, I was stuck at 1700 rating. I decided to give classic a chance again. In the 2 months that I've played classic I've already made 10 friends who I talk to whenever I'm online, I joined a guild, I'm doing raids, pvp events, helping lowbies. I am completely adapted to the server I play on. Since DF was released I have made 0 friends. I didn't know anyone, I was harassed countless times in arenas and solo shuffle. I lost count of the times I logged out feeling bad, questioning my skill and thinking about quitting the game. Let's be real, go to the pvp forum and talk about profound changes in this area of the game. Mention that you want to inflate the rating and that you want to democratize access to the game. Wait 5 minutes and you will be subjected to a virtual lynching. There is no way for there to be changes when those who determine what happens today in WOW are a portion of 0.5% of the playerbase. Obviously I would like to have access to gladiator mounts. And even with all the problems, I think SL was right to democratize access to this type of thing. Ranking high in the arena shouldn't be immensely more difficult than any other content in the game. The truth is that WOW has become a game that offers almost no access to average joes like me. And it is dominated by an elite group of people who dedicate an absurd portion of their lives to it. It's all about me having little toys that you can't have access to. The eternal gatekeeping of you feeling better than others because of pixels. I don't see any sign that this will change. And that won't change because WOW has become a game about collections, about achievements and the name given to this in social theory is path dependence. In other words, the game depends on things being like this, so that the playerbase remains attached to it. The idea of inaccessibility is much more relevant than you think, it is the core of what WOW is today.
I love the idea of going to a more bracket like system of copper, bronze, silver, etc. Almost every other pvp game does that in some form, just using some random rating feels outdated since it means something different every patch or xpac.
The ELO system has been teetering on unsuitability for a while now. It's been propped up by their overcomplicated formula and the population. Contrary to popular belief that "rating doesn't matter" it's the complete opposite, people play for their titles, they always have! Now because of the massive drop in players the algorithm cannot keep up so the "inflation" does nothing as there are not enough players to distribute the MMR around so you have this domino effect of people not queueing and now it's got to an extreme where it's finally broke the ELO system. Time to modernise for sure, new system required with the most important thing about it is that it must feel rewarding to play!
Starting everyone from some arbitrary starting point is almost objectively bad - as a low rated player it's already painful to play weeks 1/2/3ish of a season because you're regularly getting stomped by huge players. The game should be slotting players in at a close MMR to their skill level (maybe with some bias towards the low end to be conservative). But having rating inflation feels better than no inflation for sure - removing the fixed rating cutoffs for titles would let blizzard have a steady inflation
Adding rating decay would make people continually play, however that would require work and players would quit over that too. Rating goes below your gears requirement you cant wear it until you get you rating back up....
Игры
There are no new players coming in because the same 200 players are always at the top. It’s literally the rich get richer. There is absolutely no reason or incentive for a new player to even attempt arena. I am hoping it dies so blizzard might actually radically change the game but they won’t.
Don't forget that the game is nearly 20 years old. When people want to try something new, they will try something more fresh.
I was consistently in the 2.3 - 2.4k CR bracket in DF S1, & was even up to 2.6 - 2.7k MMR for a while. In S2 of DF I've been sitting around 1.8k CR on average. The reason my CR is so low now in S2 is because I haven't been PvP'ing or even playing WoW much. When I do play WoW I prefer to spend most of my time in-game PvP'ing, or screwing around with mount farms / Xmog farms / gold-making.
There are a lot of time where I genuinely want to play WoW & PvP. The biggest issue for me, by far, is the que times. I don't have all the time in the world to sit & wait 30 mins for a queue to pop, then however long the match takes on top of that. Even when I do have the time to spare, I don't want to sit in 30 minute que's for a solo shuffle match when I can just go play something else that actually respects my time.
I can't deal with the solo shuffle que times & with how long it takes to find competent people to run 3's with at higher ratings (if you can find them at all). So much time is spent just trying to PvP, vastly more than the time that I actually spend PvP'ing.
Balance is one thing, but no amount of balancing will ever change the fact that I am sitting in 30+ minute que's for a single solo shuffle match. Balancing is pointless when so few matches are being played. There needs to be a shift of development resources towards getting more players queueing & PvP'ing again, then afterwards balancing can be addressed with more in-depth solutions.
It's like a fish out of water. You spend all this time reorganizing the little furniture, cleaning the fish tank, making sure the water is just right, & all while the fish is flopping around on the counter slowly suffocating to death. Then, when it finally becomes obvious that the fish is suffocating & slowly dying, they add another little castle or sunken ship to the fish tank, because that will somehow make everything better...
There are foundational issues that need to be addressed. We need to be able to just login & play the game. Nothing else matters when a majority of players aren't even able to play because of how long it takes to find matches / partners.
I think a cool feature would be an arena training mode against AI for new players or returning players. They already have the ai in the brawl mode. Its really hard for new players to learn in 2s or 3s without getting flamed like crazy then they just quit.
I agree fighting AI is interesting especially for new players. But think about how much work is gonna be. I don’t think it’s happening considering blizzard employees suck at playing games and lazy
There definitely needs to be some sort of training grounds for fresh 70s. I'm sure whatever system they come up with will work.
@@Hanharrftw We had this for dungeons before in mop, you were required to complete a trial thing to queue for heroics. I think everyone hated it. I don't think it's particularly easy to use AI to onboard players for this game, especially in PvP. There's a huge amount of spells, situations etc to learn. AI ain't that good yet :D
@@zerkish9869 I'm not on board with going against AI, unless they're really good. I'd prefer fresh alts vs fresh alts. Max ilvl is like 430 or soemthing
I've been wanting this for a long time, would love to practice my arena123 macros and stuff when I'm on a new class without griefing a lobby. Would be nice if it could serve as a tutorial for new players looking to get into arena, basic tips about CC types, DRs etc. Even if it's not ai I'd like to be able to go in an arena and fight dummys with arena target properties
1. Stop boosting and Carries.
2. Introduce solo que rates BGS.
3. Award conquest for doing regular BGS.
4. Show people their position in the solo shuffle que
5. AFK protection where If someone leaves your match you can re que at the top of the que
6. 2.5x the rewards for healers for winning / playing games (to gear alts, etc)
7. Add the same conquest rewards for DPS but maybe .5x what it is now (so you’re always making alt progress)
8. Make the PVP trink BIS for PVE, but also allow it be upgraded through PVE
Should they also make BIS PvP trinket from M+?
1. Impossible because boosting will exist until players will buying boosts.
2. Does it change anything? PvP balance / fun - no
3. Maybe
4. Doesnt change anything
5. Could be good if they make this
6 Healers deffo need more rewards for queing solo content
7 nah
8 . what? Why
The whole issue with PvP participation started when they tried to make PvP more accessible. People complained that they can't PvP and no groups would accept them - but there was a reason for that. They weren't good, they didn't have rating, they didn't get invited - it's that simple. Making PvP more accessible results in more people getting in, which results in the pool getting diluted. All of these people are expecting to get rewards. SS gets introduced to CONTINUE making PvP more accessible, which results in 3v3 being slaughtered and 2v2 stagnating. It was fine before we tried to get more participation. All these solutions are not needed if we just take it back to what it was.
@@Venruki I think that be fair. But the M+ system would have to let you buy it from a shop like we can in PvP.
Points 2 and 3 I especially agree with, I feel gearing is a big barrier to entry with arena and BGs can help
I couldn't care less about my rating, and how hard, or easy it is to get it. I stopped PvPing in season 2 of DF for the first time since WotLK. The power shift is more pronounced than ever before. Every new rework to each class shifts the meta beyond my personal interest. They released an unfinished product, and we are the play testers paying blizz to test their game. I've fianlly had enough, and i think others are with me.
There was way more busted shit in other expansions, besides 10.1.5 ret pala
Yes game is in worst state ever, classes are all same, just spaming buttons non stop, classes lose uniqe feel. We need slower impactfull abylities
You’re late to the party, what do you mean we are with you? Mfker you are with US
Having paid customers as beta tester has been a standard at Activation Blizzard, you must be new
It's in their best interest to break classes. If they make X class the new S++ tier for the month, then you'll get a massive wave of players all buying character boosts/wow tokens to get their free rating. Classic gacha game psychology.
There is absolutely NO Solution to this mess when no one is playing the game. There are too many great games out right now taking people away from WOW. I left WOW because the rewards in game were not worth my time.
That is one thing that can help. Give better rewards for the time investment. Nobody wants to spend weeks to get glad gear that isn't any better than the Myth+ gear they could get in a fraction of the time.
100%! Tbh would be nice to have a pvp interview to know what the direction they want to head in.. Right now it feels like they are okay with the situation since it's radio silence..
So you wanna talk to Activision interns... Okay
They literally dont care
As someone who played arena on and off since tbc with my friends, all I know is that when friends that are new want to start, it's not even worth considering healer for them anymore. Damage is insanely spiky, the game is way more fast paced than it used to be, there's a ton more cc, micro stuns and interrupts. Playing a healer has been a rough job for quite some time now. The happier dps players are the more frustrating the game is for healers, especially at lower ratings, which is where your new/returning players are. The top players can survive into high dampening but low ratings people die once their immunities are out to the melee train. It's compounded by lower rating DPS taking more damage and making the healers job harder.
From a basic new player pov, arena is about killing people, preventing death is the healers job, so in order for the game to be concluded a healer needs to "fail" at their job. If that happens "quickly" then healers won't feel that good about their time in the arenas. I just don't think wanting fast paced games where people blow up is compatible with making more players want to play healers. If you buff healers high rated games are going to turn into endless shitshows most likely. Perhaps lowering both healing and dps to slow the game down could work, letting death be caused by compunding mistakes rather than single mistakes.
tl;dr It's a catch 22, most of the player base are dps, so they want the game to play in a way that is fun for them (shit dies) but they require healers to get into the actual games who feel good when they keep people alive, ending up with long queues. That's my take.
its not fun for dps either, dying as fast as we do has ruined the game. pacing needs dropped back, damp needs removed, and more focus on sustain and "pve damage" as the elitist pvpers say. we are in this mess because healers were overtuned in bfa and even legion to some degree (why damp had to exist) when it came to being able to live a dps forever, so they just upped burst instead of reigning in healing and leaving the damage roughly the same so now its feast or famine.
@@abcdgump616 Yep, I just played Solo shuffle for like an hour or so as healer. It's mind blowing how bursty it is. That bracket is absolute cancer to heal. This amount of burst with no voice, people not using cooldowns when you're cced, line of sighting you. Went 6-0, 5-1 and then magically played 2.2k rated players and went 1-5 and 1-5 while being harassed in chat. Why on earth would I subject myself to this? I've played holy pala for 3 days since wotlk and I get to play 2.2k mmr, whats up with that.
its no better in any other form of content pvp wise. 2s, 3s, wpvp, even bgs are an absolute nightmare right now. people just blow up and die so fast that counter play is almost nonexistent. its unfun and causing premades to be a numbers zerg fest with no ability to win unless you counter with a premade. its all around ruinning the game..
@@zerkish9869
Describes me pretty much. Been mostly floating between 2k and 2400 my entire WoW arena career. Never been glad, hardstuck duelist and thats fine. For some reason i can't break 2k in soloshuffle. I think the main issue is that one or two bad games where the lobby just aren't in your favour will set you back several days, possibly weeks of progress. A decent lobby where you win 4 games (which is above average) you'll get like 13 points, buit one game where you go 2-4 or 1-5 and you get minus -50. Going 3-3 (which is average) means you neither gain, nor lose rating so you sat in a 30 minute que, played for 12-15 minutes and have nothing to show for it besides conquest points. That needs to stop. It's infuriating. Just feels like a complete waste of time
i feel with ya ...got 2k4 as survival onetrick in bfa s4 for the first time (2s only) and never got above 2k2 again ...bfa was my first and only xpac with a premade ...sux when u see that some people just get glad like its nothing in their first season cuz they have premades..
Spot on man. The game play is fun, but the rating system just completely disincentivizes players. It is even worse as a healer where a 4/6 game (which is hard against an equally skilled healer) will lead to a rating gain of 5-10, but a 2/6 will be a loss of 20-30. It makes no sense and just make you feel like all your tile played is a waste
One of the worst things for me in solo shuffle as a healer is being whispered with all caps rage from a dps saying all sorts of negative things for something they perceived as a bad play. I feel solo shuffle is extremely toxic towards healers and I haven't been in ss's in a while now because of it.
Possible solution for Solo Shuffles ONLY; Names should be blank or just 1, 2 and 3, chat should be disabled because it becomes toxic too easily and frankly can ruin your day and even transmogs should be change so you're not easily identifiable after the match. Let's be honest, how many times have you left a solo shuffle and then whispered a player saying lets play again? I haven't. I think that's what blizzard thought would happen and it's the exact opposite.
I know blizzard has the ability to do this because this is exactly how pvp pet battling works and has for 15 years. You join a pvp pet battle and your mog changes each time even male to female and visa versa, you don't see their name and you can't talk, just duke it out and feel out the game. (Low key, these are actually fun and don't take a lot of time, more ppl should try).
Aside from Solo Shuffle: The PVP group finder UI should be thrown out completely and replaced with a new ground up design focusing on players finding players; not just at that moment but almost like a message board with a link to your profile and optional btag where you can put your name, classes you play, 2's or 3's, time to play, relevant rating, goals , etc. etc. and that message can stay up between 12-48 hours like an auction post so the boards don't become flooded with old irrelevant posts and maybe costs something like marks of honor to post (just an idea for currency because I'm sure most people like me are sitting on thousands of these). If you find someone with similar goals on the boards you can submit something to them and start building a list of similarly skilled players with similar goals. There was an addon similar to this back in MoP I can't remember the name of it but it was amazing. Something like dating website but for wow pvp and pve for that matter.
So many time's I feel (and I'm sure others do as well) that we settle for a partner or partners with the current system because there just aren't that many people q'ing at the time you're looking and that just leads to a not great experience for you and them. This leads to just not q'ing at all, at least for me.
imagine letting shit talking offend you. lmao. weak
Im a dps, and i complete agree it you. Dont take more than 1 game to people start bullying someone. Its disgusting play retail with such people. Its a stark contrast of my experience when i go play classic and have the opportunity to interact with people.
Retail these days is complete antisocial and makes me sick how those andys in the end of the day got what they wanted, an elitist game, complete dominated by jerks and with low chances of making friends.
It's weird because Blizzard has a great system in place already in SC2, which they carried over to OW, so you'd think it would work well in WoW as well
It's so weird you make all these videos on why people aren't playing pvp, but you never touch on the absolute insane learning curve atm. New people are going up against veterans who's been grinding this shit for a decade. I used to love wow pvp (vanilla r14) but I just can't get into it these day, even after making a serious effort several times. During my last attempt at a comback I got flamed multiple times for using my defensive cooldowns "incorrectly" below 1000 rating. So it's not a super welcoming environment. All the mandatory addons are ultimately what kills it for me though. It's just an absolute garbage game mode now with everyones ability to monitor used/unused cds constantly. The arena feels like an UI monitoring mode, and it just sucks the fun out of the game. Veteran players will always have an edge ofcourse, but the addon-game just compounds this so hard.
My thoughts exactly. Feels like skrims could almost be a less sweaty mode of arena, but the game itself isn't valuing skrims at all. Everything surrounding PvP points towards the higher end of the rated arena as the only PvP gamemode of value. Like, everything in-game and even surrounding the game externally points towards that: from splash pages of exclusive mounts and weapons and titles from official informationals, vendors full of restricted gear in red icons, the Vault reward requirements, even a much-lauded mechanic like upgrading your gear will hit rating restrictions within a week of playing BG and skrims. And if the wall of getting into the level of arena the game seems to be expecting of players is insurmountable, then the players will feel frustrated and hopeless and unwanted. Going back into BG after the reality-check of arenas is tough. Like, you're a reject that can't even do the bare minimum of what the game thinks you should be able to do. So it's just easier to drop the game and start playing any other PvP games that are much more facilitating towards new players
I tried retail after a longer pause and the gameplay is insanely overcomplicated.
I have more buffs solo than in dungeon or even raid groups in older expansions. Most are from 10s procs which should make the gameplay more interesting but they make it unnecessary complex and annoying.
It's the same thing with debuffs. There is no reason to autoapply 3 debuffs with a basic attack for gameplay mechanics, mostly for more procs.
Some classes have way too much cds.
Watch arena games of wotlk and retail to see how bad it got. Your mmo gamedesign is bad if Starcraft 2 is more watchable and more playable / easier to understand for new players. Get rid of most of the procs. It's bad gamedesign.
There's a really really easy way to solve this. Scrap rating all together and just have '% position on ladder'. That way it doesn't matter if last season you were 2.4k or this season you are 2k, your % stays the same.
Yikes, you make sense.... this is perfect!
As a new-ish commit to retail, I love that PvP rating is super difficult/deflated. Gonna sound weird but conversations are more positive when the ratings are deflated. Conversations are “dang 1800 with how difficult it is to climb is great!” Whereas people non-stop hate on whatever that shadowlands season was where glad was “free”. It’s like hatred is more aimed at blizzard when rating is hard. And if rating is easier, hate/toxicity is aimed at insulting others for being “free”.
Yeah I think all the old players are just losing there minds cause they don't know how to adapt to changes, I started week 1 Df and I hit rival 2 in solos and I'm about to hit duelist, finally found some buddy's to push pvp with and have 1800 in 2s and 3s already. Old players are just sad they can't win the same way they have been for 10 years.
The 20 plus minutes solos Q's are honestly the only issue I have issues with
@@MissIllLil This would make sense if it didn't, it's not about adapting to changes, Warcraft players have been doing that since the beginning. Blizzard just keeps fucking up that is the issue. I've played Arena at launch got Glad during Wrath and quit the game til DF that is roughlly 15 years later because I was told it was so much different now and it was. This game was amazing at the start of DF but they continue to ruin it. Ret Paladin rework are a prime example of that.
@@Kanoog The only reason they change so often and nerf and buff so much is because of how people complain. People complain instead of adapting. They throw fits, write 20 post reddits crying about how their class sucks, how this class is too strong. No wonder blizzard can't balance, no one is ever happy. Play the game or don't but don't cry and ruin it for everyone else.
If you play the objective you should get more honor n conquest even if ur team is a bunch of bots
He isn't talking about honor or objectives here. Nothing about battlegrounds. He's talking about skill based pvp.
@@matthewsprague3382BGs are skill based, nitwit
@@matthewsprague3382it's a suggestion of a change. That's the point of the video lol
I don't think we need a new system. I think we need a new game studio with new ideas and some young talented guys with a vision to make it happen.
the game is too bloated, it needs to end
@pici5533 ans lose all my mounts and transmogs and glad titles?
Lol no
#fireian
Its the barrier to entry. A player who plays an mmo IS NOT a casual video gamer. You cant just log in and pvp in rated arena. Mmo pvp is just dying in general not just in wow. Its just so much easier to log in and smash in a moba or fps game, to get your pvp fix.. no waiting, no lfg, no bullshit fuckery by devs with mmr every season. I was really hoping for big things with solo shuffle, played the shit out of s1, got to 2.9k on my rogue... but there is just a plethora of issues, long q inclued, that has not even made me slightly tempted to come back.
The main problem is:
Every expansion there is less and less players participating.
Because most players DO NOT CARE about arena or any arena modes (of course most people here will care, its an arena channel after all).
We need people, so you add more pvp modes for people to get INTO PVP for starters.
Pvp in this game is: Join a 50 mins queue to play a stressful game for 8 mins. People with real jobs (most people) can't keep up with this.
Sadly THIS modes are the only way to progress your characters in pvp wich is IDIOTIC. Blizzard devs are clueless.
I can only ever 1800 and thats it. Have never been able to push any higher cause one loss feels like is taking away 3 wins
Same. 1800 feels attainable, everything after idk
I think they need to make it easier to climb on healer. I've been hard stuck 1800 and been getting into games 2,400 mmr games with other healer being 1800 same as me. I went 4-2. They went 2-4. they lost like 30 mmr and I would go up +3. or something low. then the dps would go the same and they would lose a lot less and gain a lot more.
Sounds like Hell, no I'm serious, it sounds like if a video game would be in hell this would be the design.
The biggest issue of the moment is that participation is so low. Long queue times, getting matched with 0cr healers in a 2200 lobby-these are happening because no one is playing. We could come up with the most elegant solution, but it won’t mean anything if people keep not participating. Blizz needs to do something to boost participation, needs to do something big and do it soon.
Once participation is up to a decent level, then they can implement more elegant changes. And the goal needs to be making the various rating levels feel consistent from season to season. We shouldn’t be in a situation where we have to do multivariable calculus to figure out what someone’s past rating in a different inflated/deflated season.
They already made their money this expansion. All they will do is market their asses off for next expansion to once again pump and dump their own product.
Good video, everything is pretty spot on. My few points:
- They need to reduce the CR loss for healers to keep them motivated to play. Make it even more rewarding to play healers so people reduce queue times and have an easier push to get rewards
- Give a mount from Shuffle, even if it's 2400 + 100 wins instead of 50 it gives people a reason to play. One of the largest problems with 3s has always been the elitist nature of people not wanting to play with people a little lower, the casuals just want to play and get rewards.
- Why are people even allowed to AFK out of Shuffles, people are doing it on stream and without any repercussions. "I don't want this guy to get rating" is directly griefing everyone in the lobby, don't let /afk work. People would just stand in the starting area, but at least that gives the opportunity to kill them to balance out the losses. Waiting 30-40 minutes for some idiot to just leave is a reason I stopped queueing after 2100.
- The Elite weapon transmogs this season are so bad I knew I wasn't going to try that hard.
- You have unspent Dragonriding Glyphs.
YES! Healers have a much less fun time in arena, just to get LESS reward! I can get 2400 much quicker on a DPS spec than I can as a healer spec, and HAVE MORE FUN DOING IT! WTF is blizz thinking?!
Arena gameplay is too way confusing for new players (tracking all the cd's, cc, positioning etc) but in RBG you can ignore most of that stuff and still do fine.
The only way to save pvp is by putting forth actual new pvp content. 5v5 or 6v6 small objective based modes would be significantly better. Can also incorporate people wanting to play tanks in pvp. We already have gamemode blueprints from Overwatch; yeah OW is in the dumps right now, but OG Overwatch competitive modes would be incredible on WoW.
I think the direction retail PvP would need to move is to solo queue rated BGs. With an easy to understand tiered ranking system (like you described, bronze - diamond). I think BGs need the investment for a few reasons, 1 it would solve queue times to an extent because you are allowing the DPS to Healer ratio to come closer to optimal. The other BIG thing about BGs is that from a viewer standpoint its MUCH MUCH easier to understand that people are playing capture the flag or some version of "territories", and the game is struggling to bring new players on (evident by the observable decrease in player base each expac) so having game modes that focus a little less on the micro-gameplay of arenas and more on the macro-gameplay of a Battleground could make PvP in general more easily accessed.
Few things they could do to improve the RBG scene:
1) Implement a rating system people are more familiar with and keep it consistent. (LoL seems to have a system that works pretty well in that players who achieve lets say plat, end up in plat pretty consistently. Where in wow it seems like depending on ladder / season / participation your ratings fly all over the place.)
2) Shrink the maps - AB, EotS, and Deepwind Gorge are all imo too large. (Maybe I have a short attention span but dying waiting 30seconds to be back alive and then having another 45second mounted travel time to get back to the action just feels a bit jarring, maybe having some sort of birds eye death cam or something while im waiting that I feel like I'm still in the game a bit would help... dunno but the amount of time out of combat in RBGs can feel really disruptive to the flow of the game - it's why professional sports- think American Football, has limited very short time outs, its just bad to a viewer and as a player.)
3) Ban Tanks (This opens the door for an even better dps to healer ratio and also removes specs that tend to be pretty anti-fun in a rated setting)
4) A big thing would honestly be getting symmetrical map design, my personal favorite map is WSG (seems to be a crowd favorite) and I think part of this is because nothing about it favors one side over the other like you have on Silvershard Mines and AB. Typically in other successful Esport quality competitive games if maps favor one side over the other its also typical for the game to facilitate both teams getting to play from that side in their match. (maybe after you cap a flag on Twin Peaks there is a board swap, 30sec break and now your team is on the other side and it plays like rounds?) - something like that could also work.
5) Rework rewards... I think this could be said about the game as a whole, the saturation of mounts and armor has gotten to a point where I am not excited about a glad mount anymore it has lost its prestige..(maybe its like the whole.. you want a nice car but once you have it the luster of the car decays? idk) I think some notoriety would be cool, some display in the main city that once you get into diamond or whatever the leaderboard starts displaying your name in the game and maybe a statue for each season is erected so if you make it to the top 5% or whatever it is you get to leave your mark on the history of wow. That seems better than another mount to me, idk.
6) Lastly - The in-game voice comms are actually not awful, they should be building an interface to make this HEAVILY under utilized tool of the game a more prominent feature akin to that of any major FPS competitive game. I would even take proximity chat inside pvp zones tbh.
this is such a great idea! I'd love it.
They should just use their hots maps in wow and make it soloq and rated, i was a big fan of hots and game always reminded me of wow bgs, probably millions worth idea for little to no effort, would bring tons of new players to wowpvp, but hey im not blizz developer...
And the removal of Seething Shore.
Great take man
i love and agree with all of this... except for one thing: please don't make it SoloQ only.
WoW is a MMORPG, I want to play with my friends, I want to meet new people so I can play with them in the future too.
It should really be a flex queue where you can queue with up to 5 people. Maybe on the highest ranks this needs to be reduced to 3 people so that it's not impossible to play without a full 5-man-team. But for the lower ranks, let's be honest, coordinating with a few people doesn't matter at all.
i truly feel like rated BGs should be the future of WoW PvP. i miss doing BGs, did them a lot back in the days. but nowadays they're so unplayable. every time i play them, you either have 2-5 people AFK from the start, or whenever something goes slightly wrong and it looks like you could possibly lose, suddenly half of your team quits and nobody wants to keep playing. so what you get is boring stomps. either you win, or the enemies win, it's just a coinflip. but whatever side you are on, you're definitely not having fun.
introducing some stakes to BGs with a rating system, where people get a Loss and a timeout if they leave (which increases if they continue to leave), could really help revive BGs :)
For faster solo ques, they should do it like skirmishes. If there is not a healer within you rating, do 2 v 2, 3 rounds, with only dps. Ques would be faster and the rounds will go faster and you don't have to worry about having a healer that is not at the same skill level as the dps. Not perfect but I think it would be better.
or have normal games with 3 dps vs 3 dps, I gave up retail because of the SS queues.
@@thehardcorecasual9444 I think it would feel horrible for a lot of classes. Prot lobbies are almost 3 dps vs 3 dps and it feels really bad on certain classes... but maybe you have to do it because it's fked either way.
Nah tripple dps is a complete shitshow and would make shuffle ladder a joke
@@ziggs123yes It will make some of the class/specs an Automatic loss upon entering
That would actually make me quit shuffle completely. Not all classes work in a lobby like that.
The problem is, it takes upwards of 100 hours of gameplay to even be an entry level arena player in WoW. So the only people who are going to play are people who have already done that grind. And if the last time they did that grind was 3 expansions ago, then they're almost back at zero.
I love that WoW keeps innovating its class design every x-pack, it's one of my favorite parts, but the bloat gets to be so insane that at some point you've just permanently missed the boat if you haven't kept up in a while. Dragonflight looks like a really cool expansion to me, but I still haven't touched it because I just absolutely don't want to download a dozen addons, re-learn complex rotations, bust out gear spreadsheets, and, mostly, I don't want to play GCD-locked, sweaty rotations in every single gameplay mode available. I did it before in my early 20s, I know what it takes to be 'good' at WoW, and I just don't have it in me anymore. Classic Era looks like fun as well (f*** WotLK honestly, what a sh*tshow), but I continue to pass on that as well because the community basically wants you to pay real money for every piece of gear that drops from every dungeon or raid. An obvious over exaggeration, but the gatekeeping is REAL.
I don't know what else to say, retail WoW seems like it's designed for the top 1% of players, and the Classic community pretends like the game is only for the top 1% of players.
i dont know if this is a good solution or not but i think that a "problem" that has occurred in df is since they removed a lot of the self sustain from many classes and gave all that power to healers (which is also awesome and has benefits i wont deny) whenever u get a bad healer in a shuffle it feels just that much worse cuz you cant do nearly as much as you could in the past to carry past that
That's DEFINITELY NOT TRUE. They have increased self-sustain! But(!), they also at the same time increased consistent damage, interrupts, micro-cc, dampening and even MS. It's a balancing act, and right now they're trying to design the game to be easier somewhat, so in SS especially it's chaotic and practically random. BUT the problem is the classes and (for casual to average players) the hidden systems are still complicated which makes for a confusing experience.
Basically this: "So these things interact a hundred ways that I need to know and keep track of, but while I was thinking this thought I already died cause I wasn't 100 ontop of everything already".
I would love solo rated BG that bases it off your spec only. Give rating at the end of the week based on performance. Think rating based on objectives, damage, deaths, kills, and wins vs loss compared to other people of the same spec.
The problem is that damage, deaths, and kills have nothing to do with actually winning an RBG. If you can spin a flag for 5-10 minutes with a tank and a healer, and just keep spinning, you're going to have insane damage, 0 kills and 0 deaths.
The expectation for my group was to get 2.4k in season one DF bc we reach that in SL. Hard stuck at 2k everyone quit and haven’t came back. I can attest.
Idk man. Reading some of these comments with "their" version of "fix this thing and you save pvp" it gonna be a huge obstacle for betterment.
6 players teams 2 heals 4 dps.. redesign every single bg to fit this mold in terms of map size and objective placement..and then make a ranked pre-made version..balance for it and then add a solo q ranked version also for when your team isn't on
The pvp rating system hasn't made any kind of reasonable sense for years. probably since Legion, maybe if you grade with a curve since BFA. Given the complicated algorithms of today's AI driven tech, Blizzard still largely bases their rating system on 1950s chess. Essentially they are stuck on a stone knife and bear skin tech level. It's really and truly a pathetic joke. The MS deal, going forward, should greatly help mitigate this on-going issue with the pvp rating system. Changing the ranking system to something more state of the art tech-wise will most definitely help, but the real underlying issue is Arena itself.
For years, Wow pvp held tremendous potential (off the charts) yet Blizzard never even came close to touching the heels of that potential, the real question is why? Answer: no spectators (relative to the overall scope of the game). In order to understand the intricacies and nuances of Arena Pvp, you pretty much need to be personally engaged in arena. And, how much of the overall player base does that make up? 25% would be a very generous allocation. If you made Wow Pvp competitive with "objective based competition," in other words BGs with relatively smaller maps and 6vs6, in the words of Batman "things will change."
This accomplishes (5) very significant and important things: 1) you open up a lot more viable comp possibilities. 2) create a product that engages viewers and greatly widens your audience. 3) more viewers equals the potential for higher overall pvp participation rates and better promotion opts for streamers and the game. 4) The non-wow player or even hardcore raider no longer need to understand nor fully grasp the nuance of Arena Pvp and watching is a hell of a lot more engaging. 5) Competitive gets a hell of a lot more sizzle and sauce. In the current state of arena, the sizzle and sauce happens once, maybe twice in a match (especially to the less Xp'd). But, if you add in a point system (something everyone with a semblance of a brain immediately grasps), now there are 3, 4, 5 or more opts for sizzle and sauce. Other things factor into this equation, but I don't want write a novella here.
Yes, hardcore arena players will be pissed. But then again, no one says arena needs to completely go away. Offer objective based 6vs6 (capture the flag and node type of BGs. Smaller maps than the regular BG or even larger maps than the existing arena maps. Let this mode replace RBGs, They've turned into a complete joke anyway and happen to be less popular than Arena. Let the participation #'s speak for themselves before any sort of drastic change occurs. I am 100% confident the overwhelming majority of players will be remarkably surprised at the result.
private servers would fix all this because people that play all the time have the fixes for what they want, blizzard doesnt no care.
You had some great suggestions here ven! I want to explain another time that this situation happened - rocket league. The current highest rank is SSL, but it used to just be grand champion. They tried one season to lower inflation and it upset EVERYBODY. So their new solution was a new reward tier and it worked very well.
If 3k becomes the pro bench mark and your rewards only go to 2400, then you need to add a 2800 reward.
The game is not accessible for new and returning players. Tbh gameplay feels over complex and a bit of outdated. Its hard to follow what's going on with so many add-ons, abilities, buffs, debuffs. The fact that you need to download and setup dozens of add-ons to be even able to play.
Surely revamping the whole ranking system and making healing more rewarding would help, but in the long run it's not the game-changer.
Casual pvpers, which for obvious reasons make up the majority of the pvp player base, have no reason to stick around and play WoW. Most of the rewards are locked behind ratings that are largely unobtainable for them. On top of that, all the casual pvp game modes have been turned into mere means to gear up for rated gameplay, so once you are done with gearing they feel absolutely pointless.
If you want more players in your non-casual game mode, you need a previous, worthwile environment for casual players to transition over.
Exactly. The elite weapons are locked behind glad (which you need 15 years of experience to obtain atm) and they should be like 2k max IMO. There could definitely be more rewards throughout the whole span as well.
I started playing again in Shadowlands season 3 and saw that the gladiator mount was more common than it used to be and it sparked a hope that I would be able to obtain it eventually. One and a half year later of PvPing that dream feels so dead.
The reward system really needs to be reworked. The elite weapons should not be gated behind Glad. At tops 1950/2100. Does rank 1 players really need half of the rewards from PvP?
They should just hyperinflate to almost Shadowlands levels just to get more people to play. That and rework reward system, might even bring in PvE'rs wanting transmogs. Then for 10.2 they can rework the whole rank system.
Fixing MMR only affects a small percent of players, from my perspective catering to a small percent is why I stopped playing. Ladders are deflated due to participation, fixing MMR is cool and needed but is it really the priority?
Reason for me stopping to play PvP is that hey cut development on it. Nothing to look forward to and since I am not the only person that could feel that way the crowd playing it had to decrease “die off”. As you said, it’s fun but we need new modes/BGs and effort in PvP content
Solo shuffle 2's: 4 rounds, rotate teams. Gives DPS a spillover place to wait for their 3s SS to pop (so it'd mostly be 4 dps lobbies).
Solo shuffle 5's: first team to 2 kills wins the round. 2 ppl who died go to separate teams, highest damage from winning team goes to losing team
I like that you're making this topic. a lot of players don't come because they want glad mound as they used to try. I hope you continue like that.
I played pvp in shadowlands. I am a terrible and completely unskilled player. I mostly played battlegrounds, but shadowlands was the first time i really got into arena. In SL i was 1300-1400. I know garabge, but i feel like i am probably part of the majority of players who could potentially play the game. If the devs want a broader appeal for pvp, then i think SL's inflation was the best way to go.
The worst thing to do was drastically reduce inflation after the high inflation of SL. SL inflation set PVP up for failure because when the new expansion did not deliver that same inflation/popularity people dropped out. When i started arena again in DF i played probably 10 games... maybe. My team was rated something like 400-500 and we were facing people way better than when we were 1300. It discouraged me a lot. It was no longer competitive or fun.
I don't care about rewards as much as the competitiveness. You're not going to attract players with awards. You're going to attract them with a high rate of fair competitive games. People start playing sports because they are fun and competitiveness is fun. They stay for the continued promise of competitive games, improving themselves, and lastly awards.
The worst part about all of this is the complete and utter lack of communication from the devs. It’s nothing new of course, but it’s just salt in the wound. And we all saw it coming when Holinka announced his departure.
Imagine it from the Priest's perspective. Here you are just starting out and you instantly get que'd into a 2200 lobby, your first thought is, "Well, I'm effed" and the stress levels are instantly high. The entire rating system needs to be revamped, we need to be able to progress it not get shoved into the fire. Sometimes I think Arena was bad for the game.
Usually nobody agrees with me, but I still think role MMR should not be a thing in shuffle (there is no role mmr in other arena formats, why here?). I also think glad mount should not be 3v3 exclusive. I understand 3v3 is the most skillful arena mode, but without the mount / proper rewards there is no reason to play/push high rated other formats. I never had the chance to find a proper 3v3 group, but I always admired the glad mounts, I would like to obtain one of them. In DF season 1 I hit 2400+ rating solo shuffle, It was a big disappointment when I realised I can not keep the title and there won't be any mount regardless of the rating.
@venruki I don’t know why no one mentions this but I believe the core issue with wow is the add ons and data mining. The add ons cause the game’s difficulty to be inflated because the devs know the players are using them so the difficulty goes completely vertical. It’s the same for pvp everyone has the game played for them by having things screamed at them, imagine how many more casts would go off if you didn’t have an air horn and an alert message fly across the screen. This also inflates rating bc people are getting better simply by downloading an add on. Then factor in new people they won’t know about add ons and will get clapped in both pve and pvp.
Rating inflation is worthless, it's fundamentally a lie to most players, and was only designed to prevent ladder camping.
Nobody cares about their numerical rating, they care about their percentile ranking.
1800 is respected in the first week of a season, because its a high percentile rank, 1800 is a joke at the end of a season because its low rating after inflation.
I want the old percentile ranks back, I don't want my rank to be determined by how much inflation a season had, I want it to be because of me.
Fix shuffle queue declining too btw..
There's literally no punishment for queue sniping in order to win-trade in shuffle.
Blizzard allow you to leave the queue pop with no consequence, that is effectively allowing queue-sniped-win-trading.
All you need to do is pause the queue for half an hour then you can deliberately queue into whoever you want to, and if it doesn't hit, you decline.
Proving grounds is the most popular queue pausing method, and healers don't even need to do that, they can just snipe with insta queues and decline if it doesn't hit.
It will stay like that until you lose rating for declining the queue. (like all other rated modes)
why do rewards need to be tied to rating?
why would the bottom of the pyramid of players play if they know the rewards are out of reach?
The reason World of Warcraft (WoW) is declining can be attributed to two key factors. When WoW was first launched, particularly during the Burning Crusade expansion, there were more players than in the current expansion. This was because all the content, especially the 25-player raids, was challenging yet attainable. In other words, all the gear on everyone's wishlist was accessible.
As WoW continued to release expansions, they progressively made content more difficult, introducing heroic versions of raids, then mythic, and so on. This shift in design is the primary reason why WoW has experienced a decline. It may seem straightforward, but this is precisely why many players left. If players were happier with obtaining new gear, even if they had to pay for a subscription, there would likely be more players.
The second reason WoW is struggling is closely related to the first. As content became more challenging, a significant portion of the player base left the game. This exodus has resulted in fewer PvP (Player versus Player) enthusiasts since the overall player population has dwindled.
I think slow balance fixes in PVP and different games being avaliable have knee-capped my interest to play retail PVP like I did in SL.
Edit: I actually didn't consider the queue times, but they are actually the strongest reason I've lost interest. Private Warhammer online servers have a 3 minute queue. I have no idea why WoW ones are so long by comparison.
At least 3 of the big private WoW servers are in the same boat. Sub 2 min queues. It kinda makes it sadder having the comparison to retail pointed out...
@@mirror-ix5568 a big wow private server has soloq for 3vs3 on wotlk and the queue time is like 2 minutes. blizzard is doing something wrong
They need to just let solo shuffle have 3v3 dps. No one wants to heal. Just let us dps go at it and have our way.
@@jeffrafen i actually dont want to play 3 dps. It will be the same crap as playing with tanks
@Fabolousyo with tanks you already know the 2 tanks will never be targeted for anything but CC. At least with 3 dps it opens up more burn options. Also shorter games and hopefully shorter queues because there's always more dps than healers
Let healers carry games like they used to and you'll get more pvp healers 😊
Summarized my rant post pretty well. I personally think this is a huge contributor. Fast paced games where shit blows up makes for stressed healers that quit playing or reroll.
@zerkish9869 the die in a stun in less than a second shit is getting REAL OLD
Good healers do in fact carry games.( especially in 3v3, not necessarily shuffle, since damp is so fast and mana is rarely a win condition)Issue is there are only a handful capable of doing so
@@ziggs123 well that's the point. Everyone won't git gud. Just above average is attainable for people who put some extra effort in. If average healers can't heal average games then healing is too hard for average players and shit aint working.
@@ziggs123 ??? Do you even play ???
The problem is that they mix a skill based system (elo) for match-making purposes with a progression based system for rewards.
It is totally fine to make negative progress in the match making if the number of players go down or your new team comp doesn't perform well, your class got nerfed. All that is important here is that you are matching with opponents so that you'll get approximately 50% winrate. That is the goal of elo, that all have fun and win and lose the same amount.
But mixing it with a progression based system for rewards that are supposed to be extrinsic feels frustrating and demotivates, especially if there is no chance of ever making progress again (besides negative progress).
There should have been always two numbers, where one can influence the other, but they can still work towards their own purpose.
Healer shortage has been a huge issue since basically forever. I'm not sure how they fix that without making healers just ridiculous. I think the PvP player base is small and spread incredibly thin. There's overlap of 2v2, 3v3, Shuffle, Rated BGs, and Random BG enjoyers all playing at any given time. I know that sometimes I just hop in random BGs or 2v2 because I don't want to wait for shuffle or 3v3 in LFG. We desperately need new blood in pvp, especially rated pvp. I think this has been one of the best expansions for a PvP only enjoyer and yet the participation is low.
It's possible they could go with a full redesign of classes or pvp talents in an effort to make the healer role unnecessary. I remember being able to survive a lot longer without getting healed in older expansions like MoP. I don't see this as likely because it would take a ton of effort and also leave healer mains in a weird spot. They won't even ban tanks so there's no way they would get rid of healing altogether.
The game has become extremely complex, you need so many add ons to track and alert cool downs. You need to understand each class and spec. Gear, enchanting and sockets gems. For a new player the entry level is so high and facing people with 10+ years of pvp experience is demoralising.
I think gearing is easier in DF but definitely not the best expansion for pvp, the class balance has been all over the place and don't get me started on the Ret rework.
I don't think that Blizzard will care enough to do the required actions to fix it, only a small percentage do pvp and they balance the game around the top 1% of AWC.
I left start of S2 along with 3 RL friends after 11 solid years. Reaching 2300 in 3s and 2210 SS on two healers. We reached glad in SL, BFA, Legion and WoD.
If you asked a 15 year old kid now if they wanted to play fortnite or a MMO its going to be fortnite most of the time.
I don’t know if they’ve ever directly said as much, but it seems obvious that they’re trying to avoid a situation where people hit their rating target in the first two weeks of the season and then stop playing. Of course, they haven’t really solved that problem, because right now it just makes more sense to start playing in the last two weeks of the season and not at all in the beginning.
Probably they need *some* kind of carrot-on-a-stick that encourages people to keep playing throughout the season. I don’t really know the best way to accomplish this in a way that doesn’t also make people feel like they *have* to play consistently through the whole season, but they need to spend some time figuring it out. A thought I have is, what if there are some rewards that do require a grind, but you make progress much more quickly at high ratings? Say, if you’re at 2400, you gain progress 3x faster than if you’re playing at 1400? That gives some benefit to people who are playing at a high level, but still makes people at a low level feel like they’re working towards something even if they don’t feel like they’re improving fast enough to hit 1800 or 2100 or whatever their goal might be.
RBGs need to be re-evaluated. Especially the rewards for it, as of right now their is no reason to ever do RBGs after you get 2400 and Hero. All the RBG mounts are bought with saddles and then became season rewards.
I think RBGs and a 5v5 mini BG or arena would be a fun mode.
The big issues to me that need to be fixed are:
-Ban tank specs from all arenas
-give healers incentive to actually want to heal dps even if they are brain dead instead of droping match in solo
-reduce cc ( since burst is so high for alot of classes this patch)
- enable a player social rating so that toxic people lose more rating gain less honor based on this rating so that toxic pvp mindset can die out and they can just leave match with penalty or suffer in silence like the rest of us
Give a weapon that is equally strong or better with the top tier PVE weapon, give more achievements, different mounts and pets and PvP specific rewards. Hey, even organise some more frequent events with money like Fortnite does. People will be back to it, in no time.
The most elegant solution would be to simply bring back the Tournament realm with rewards that directly feed back to characters on the live servers in real time. No convoluted barrier to entry with zero risk of negatively impacting the PvE side of the game. Jump in and play with no strings attached and grind to your heart's content. Might even give SoloQ half a chance at flourishing if playing a healer is three clicks on character creation and a couple of vendors away instead of being arbitrarily gated behind levelling + Honour gearing + Conquest gearing + whatever campaign elements that Blizzard decide to enforce on the day.
There's a reason that the system on the old Arena Tournament realm worked far better than the nonsense that Blizzard has provided us. I personally still don't think that retail is conducive with an enjoyable SoloQ experience but at least it'd have two good legs to stand on instead of being kneecapped right out of the gate.
Not that modern Blizzard would ever commit money to dedicated arena/BG servers. I could reach my hand down the back of my sofa and likely come out wealthier than the solo intern responsible for PvP balance.
In regards to the discussion with Mes: Blizzard actually does a VERY similar system with Hearthstone Battlegrounds.
Every season, the MMR Resets to 0. Top 4 placements in the mode are considered a win, bottom 4 a loss. Once your at your MMR and your CR Matches, you will have a swing of about +-80ish CR per game. They have ranked floors up to 6k MMR. The average player, which would probably be rival level in this system, is about 6k MMR, which is where the last floor is. You can set Rank floors Until Rival 1, aka Elite gear appearance. At the start, you win a ton of MMR to get you up to your CR, and loose very little.
At the VERY top of the Chain, you have to grind like hell to keep your top spot as anyone can take it with the way the system is designed, provided they win enough games. Right now the Top of the pile is about 17k MMR per season, with the top 20ish rounding out at about 14k. The Floors encourage you to push yourself further, knowing you won't ever be that far away from your goal. It also allows you to experiment with different partners and comps, since you can't loose past your floor. It helps lessen rating anxiety. Honestly, If they kept the numbers in the system the same, but implemented rating floors up to Whatever rating they feel is comfortable, They would likely have a larger casual base as they know that if they grind enough they can hit the next rating tier.
I am a 2100 player (for the last 4 seasons) and I play a healer. If they put a duelist rank floor in, so I can't loose CR or MMR at that level, I would queue up non stop for shuffles to try and hit 2400. As it stands, the rating system is far to volatile for that, which actively discourages the way I would like to play.
Finally, I would like to see them implement a Warband queue system for Shuffle/BG Blitz, where your entire warband can Queue up. So If you have 3 toons in your warband, lets say 1 healer and 2 DPS, the queue continues and places your DPS at the top as you play your healer games and then prio takes the DPS queue when it would eventually pop. Allow you to choose which toons and what prio you want to put them in. I could queue disc for games and then switch it up when my destro queue pops after 15ish minutes, or 1/2 rounds of disc shuffle. Would be AWESOME and give people a way to incentive playing healers while they wait for their DPS queues to pop without loosing their spot.
Would allowing triple dps for solo queue be a bad thing? That might fix queues, but would it be worth it?
The problem is the inflation system, it incentivizes people to honestly not give two fucks about 90% of the season and then when the ladder is at its juiciest moment you do an end of season push.
I think reset the honor level system every season with rewards for certain level milestones to keep people playing would help
PVP spiraled when they pushed everything to arena. Bring solo que to rbgs, remove the cap on conquest for normal ques. Give you 150 conquest for normal bgs everytime for wins. Double it for epic bgs. Give legit reason to do play normal arena games that arent rated. Make conquest gear easier to obtain with regular content. Make pvp gear easier to level to mythic raid gear levels or very close. Hard cap rating to 2400. Boost the increase on an arena win based on how long you get stuck in que. The fact is everyone who ends up at the top of the ladder are the same people every single season because theyre an exclusive group in the end the same group thats always existed mostly with few changes. Participation among common players does not exist. Add seasonal awards that are cosmetic for wins at the cap of rating. They could add a conquest level system like they did the honor point system. Reset it with new rewards every season where participation in rated and normal content counts. Make rbg wins where you always get an item by about 3 wins. The whole copper, silver, etc stuff is people trying to argue what works with other games that does not work with wow. It is a terrible idea. The problem with solo shuffle arena is it is relying solely on the balance of the game and that very niche group at the very top since blizzard bases the entire game on who are not the majority of their customers. We see the same issue with pve but i think they have taken some good steps against this. They could easily add a system like i said and just make conquest gear upgradable with conquest points. Make honor gear at level up with honor right at the bottom of conquest levels. Remove the rating requirement for upgrades. (like literally the top level of honor gear is the very first level of conquest gear). They need to approach the casual audience to hold that carrot into rated content. Seasons long ago you could farm normal content easier to get conquest gear. You could get gear that was usable in pve. You could spend a night or two a week a few hours to deck out a character in conquest gear casually by having fun. I never understood why they changed this. Also, they need to stop treating pvp progression on gear like pve progression. its never going to be the same nor should it.
Why do you need to reinvent the wheel? Just do it like modern competitive games. You keep your same ranking you ended the last season as. Ended the season at 1900? You start at 1900 next season. At the highest level of the game they will need to cap you below the threshold of last season's gladiator cut-off or right at the threshold, you will also be required to play a certain amount of games per season if you want rewards. So if gladiator cut-off last season was 2400, next season all players 2400 and above will start next season at 2400. There's decay, so if you don't play your ranking will decay and there's a required amounts of games you need to play to get rewards. If you don't win 50 arena games in that season, you will not get rewards. Keep in mind there is hidden MMR. 3k players are going to vs 3k players and so on, but the matchmaker will take this into consideration on how much points you win/lose compared to actual 2400 MMR players. Basically what I mean by that is at the beginning of the season, if you were 3k last season and now you start at 2400, you are going to get drastic gains in points to catch up to your hidden MMR and you won't lose as much points for losses since you are facing other 3k teams to keep matchmaking fair for the true 2400 players.
This might be unpopular and idk how many issues it would solve but a rework of arena is necessary, I think they should combine shuffle and 3s into on bracket. No other game I know has two different versions of the same game mode just for solo qs. Make it so you can join a 3s game with a friend and a random you find through matchmaking.
The minute they scaled pvp away from pve it removed 60% of the players that were pvping from the pool and then the gaps became so large that casuals stopped rated pvp
Venruki I saw the AQ Gates open on Frostmourne as I am Australian. I have only ever played a mage since the game was released. You're spot on with every comment you make about pvp (ret jokes aside) , I log on get my mog and log off if its a bad season, I was actually 2450 last season and this season i stopped bothering after duelist, so you nailed it on the head. All the other comments and Inez's video you previously covered are perfect, i really hope someone in blizzard is listening as you're making some very good points.
They also need to stop the .06 second reaction time you need or you die… slower paced arenas games were always better
L take
@@clarke5479 explain then gladiator 🫡
@clarke5479
Putting a little more value in strategy over reaction time isn’t a bad thing when the target demographic of the game is men between the ages of 30 and 50.
I enjoy the fast paced recent version of the game but you’d have to be insane to think it’s also not what makes it a dead game. None of my buddies play anymore because they just die in a single second.
For real, there’s too much going on now to react to. 15 years ago I was fine when all I would do is play wow but now when you want to spend a couple hours playing you fall behind. I don’t want another job. I think it’s just a lot of the player base is older with other priorities and the mmo model just doesn’t work when you have other priorities. I’ve just stopped and play single player games now. I think the big issue is the demographic that plays wow have changed along with the game changing
i like the gold silver idea. one thing to keep in mind is that you need average joes to participate. problem is, if they cant get rewards,, like season 2 they are nearly unobtainable. they simply wont play. and we back to square 1.
Oh just got to your WotLK experience in the video. I quit wrath for retail because of the terrible time I had trying to find a partner. LFG isn’t cross server OR cross faction. So it’s so hard. Joined retail and made 3 insanely good friends within a week and I haven’t stopped since!
Same boat bro. Started wotlk first ever time playing wow. Year or so later just switched to retail. Maybe go back to classic for cata
If they had the brackets (copper,silver, etc.) they could actually tie upgrades like in slands to it. But in order for it to not feel awful and to combat “boosting” you don’t fight anyone outside of your bracket. I.e, 1600-1799 only fighting players within that rating/bracket and it always goes off of the highest player in the group. So if you have a 2400 player in the group you only fight people 2400-2699. And the beginning of the season it only drops you back one bracket. So from 3k players drop to the 2.7 bracket. Just examples, obviously with how low pvp participation is, the bracket system won’t really work in terms of time in queue.
Sounds good
Ppl kill their own rsting to boost all the time booster also have multiple toons. Thia doeant fix anything.
STOP WITH TYING UR UPGRADES TO RATING. FUCK THAT.
I started playing when I was 12, and am calling it quits at 30 due to how bad Blizzard has neglected PvP. I just can't justify paying it anymore.
The solution to solo shuffle is making it a 1 queue instead of 6 queues. Nobody wants to get locked out with people they deem incompetent for 6 queues, and it also creates imbalanced comps facing each other by design, so facing one such comp is better than, say, 3 or 4. Everybody feels bad losing 70 cr, it's not as bad if you only lose 13 cr like in a normal bracket. And you won't be able to skip rating either, because at this point, if you have enough mmr, you can park yourself to 1.5 and then win a 6-0 and it propells you to almost 2.1, for example I've had myself get propelled from 1.4 to 1.8 on one of my alts for a 4-2. Also, I bet it would incentivize people to actually communicate together.
Imo they should stop subtracting rating for losing games. Instead you get 0 rating for a loss and yes you gain rating for winning.
people are walking away because is unfun, not because of mmr/rating. pvp is to faced paced, people die to fast
also if u slow down pacing and times to kill, you could make triple dps lobbies in solo shuffle a thing. healers shouldnt be mandatory to play this game
There was a time when having fun wasn't equated to an increase in rating and I think that's an issue.
That's called the honeymoon phase. Now that all the wonder/intrigue/lack of understanding are gone, people realize there is little actual fun.
@@Rizzerio1
Might be in to something
If you wanted to make queue times non existant, then one compromise would be to only have 1 queuing option for Arena, kinda like how skirms work. If it had proper mmr & rating then those would balance for team/comp advantage over time. I.e. you may be hard stuck 1800 when soloing but get 2k if you get a team. You could also have an option to simply hide the rating display instead of needing a separate bracket for the casuals. Solo shuffle would have to go back to a brawl with good weekly rewards. Its not perfect, but again, there would be no queue time at all.
boosting is a problem, exactly. but you have to face the fact that A LOT of rank1 players and streamers are such "boosters", lowering their MMR/rating on purpose for "stream content" or gold carries (which very often is RMT also...) "helping" others for whatever currency they want. Every time i read "helping" in LFG tool this intelectually dishonest nonsense, I could puke on my monitor.
Just try it and whisper those morons in LFG that make these groups with "multi glad helping others" etc. then you will see they don't wanna HELP (helping is a selfless act and doesn't have an ulterior motive behind it, driven by greed for money or gold. They gonna tell you some stupid stuff and lure you into their discord.
Solo Shuffel is also plagued by boosting und wintrading like crazy, at least on lower ratings. Its annoying and is one of the major issues people don't wanna play. Beware.. to not talk about these issues on the official WoW forums, you gonna get spam reported by the boosting mafia on there, that deny everything that hints at a bossting problem in the game.
Solo Shuffle shouldn't require a healer. Let trip dps battle it out, and at the higher mmr levels, healers will make their way in. If you can que trip deeps in arena, let them que trip deeps in solo shuffle. Requiring a healer forces a 2k+ comp for people who aren't looking for that. It fixes the wait times if you ignore roles and throw players together no matter what. Let 2k rmp fight 2k blood/prot/sub. Winner gets points. It isn't rocket surgery.
They just need to increase the rewards at lower rankings and pvp across the board. It’s that simple I feel like.
The way i see it. If you want a game with a healthy pvp and pve scene. You need ~2 notable BiS pieces from PvP to bring to PvE and visa versa.
Everybody chases the best gear, to have some locked via the other source amd visa versa.
That being said, the pvp gear shouldn't be completely gated by rating (perhaps a new system where arena gear gets cheaper the higher rating you have, only gating the BiS PvP only gear behind rating
Just my 2c
Ven, yesterday I was farming vaults for my sockets on an alt WW look what happend:
Fist Q = 17 minutes, before first round even started the hpal left the game minus 155 rating for him;
Second Q = 17 minutes + 28 minutes, after losing two rounds without pressing buttons the holypriest left the game, and guess what? I played the two first rounds with him he let the DH and Boomy die without pressing even a single heal of his.
Results for me: 45 minutes in Q to lose two rounds and get less mmr, no honor, no vault ~~
The ceiling feels so heavy not because of skill, but lack of in-depth class spec talent design. If they were to create full PVP talent trees that would encourage more player agency and progress. A rating of how often you win and lose isn't really motivating whatsoever especially when core abilities and talents could be changed from season to season and patch to patch.
What killed it for me was one day I decided to gear up my Ret pally in PvP. Bought him his greens, did a few BGs and weekly quests which eventually lead to a full blue set.
So then I felt like I had the bare minimum to at least do a solo shuffle queue for some CQ and vault rewards.
First queue was maybe 10min and I won 5/6 rounds. We were all close gear and ilvl. Next queue was an hour and 16min and I was pitted in a lobby with 5 other people at 1800 to 2000 and they all massively out geared me. It was an absolute and total shit show. Then of course I'm the noob etc etc lol and it's all my fault. 😂😂
haha dude I had the exact same experience like I can't do shit in blues when I'm hitting for 30k but people are hitting me for 80k-100k
@thesheriff720 yeah man it just felt so disheartening lol. Like the CR discrepancy shouldn't have been a thing.
Here's a problem with it that isnt exactly talked about much but its also common knowledge and i think this may be the biggest contributing factor: theres no people playing ranked arena now (2s/3s) there's just simply not.
The rating system as it is has been fine all these years since its introduction in TBC. All these years and the system has been fine, even through Shadowlands, up until season 4, it was fine. What happened in season 4 where it wasn't fine anymore? Nobody was playing. Df s1: nobody playing because rated shuffle exists now, DF s2: same thing, but even less people are playing.
The problem isnt quite the mmr system, while yes its flawed and needs some work, the primary problem is that nobody is playing, and this branches off into multiple problems all by itself.
1: because nobody is playing, theres even dewer people queueing at the top of the ladder, so why would top end players try to play there when they can just make another alt and play, rinse and repeat until bored
2: BECAUSE theres nobody playing, people feel this need to now buy boosts in order to get the rewards that they previously could get when people were playing
3: because of people buying the boosts and also because of the countless rank 1s on their god knows what alt (probably like 20th, Venruki is a pitch perfect example of this) thats all these lower experienced players keep facing and it makes it even more difficult for them to climb as well.
Your problem is just simply the fact that theres just not a god damn person playing the game. As to how to fix this, hell I don't know, however my best guess would be probably to first fix this god awful fuckin joke of class design since its the primary reason a bunch of people have just stopped playing to begin with. I mean shit, even after 20 god damn years, even i just stopped playing because i can't deal with this shit anymore. The class design is a complete fucking mess and its really unfun.
So if you want people to start playing again, that wouldn't be a bad place to start, i mean hell look at Classic WoW, thats where alllll the new players go, and have a great tendency to stay and they all say the same thing, its a much easier game to play and its a lot less stressful. So I'd start there tbh
I'm not a fan of Battle Passes in general but I would make the PVP level thing seasonal (rather than completely irrelevant as it now seems to be) - Could divide it into two tracks, one damage and one healer to encourage people to do both, level up faster winning but also when losing. Could do some bonus xp for particular actions (ie - interrupts) to try and help new players get an idea of good plays.
I guess as well some kind of encouragement to add people to friends at end as the social side also needs work. Maybe a prompt then if both sides agree they get added in as pvp friends.
In PvP, bad players bring more to the game than good players do (because they provide punching bags for the good players to feel superior against.)
So, the central problem Blizzard should address is how to reward bad players, so they stay engaged.
Assuming 1st season is 0 and 2nd season i 3000, it seems to me that this doesnt actually do anything different. The approach is more like smoke and mirrors lol. I think that people should retain a percentage of their CR from the previous season. So every season your CR just DRs. and then of course have your MMR DR appropriately. This would function a lot differently than the current system.
Imagine: Win = 1 points, Loss = 0 points. Your teams total points in match is 1200. Your opponent is 600. A win for you is 1 point. A win for your opponent is 2 points (why, because 1200 / 600 = 2 (time the point basis). Change the base value to whatever, 5, 10, 1 trillion... the math is the same. If you played players at your level, all season long, 300 games. At the end of the season your rating (assuming 150 games won) would be... 150. If you played against higher rated players your rating could be 450 or more. If you played scrubs, you would be 300. It really is that simple.
That ( rating) is a major contributor to the issue.
There are other factors (toxic enviroment etc) as well but another impactful issue is the cheating that has been in the game which one can report but with little to no support not much gets done about it.
Scripters have been around for a while. My first encounter was in SL's S2 and once we started passing the 1800 tier my partner and I encountered many.
I agree there need to be new content for pvp. Anything fresh embraces if it was well thought out.
New content.
At this point wow ranked pvp should just use like a flex queue system and just allow people to queue for 2s/3s arena, as a solo or with group and put everyone in the same pool of players. Just make it so that if you queue with people your hidden MMR starts higher. I'm basically thinking ranked flex queue style. This makes it so everyone has a possible path to getting a glad mount you can technically queue solo and get it, might be harder but still possible. Just remove solo shuffle and add the ability to solo queue into 2s/3s. I know a lot of people will hate this idea because of competitive integrity but i think this actually solves a lot of problems. PvP participation is so low that the last thing it needs is to be more split up.
While although the suggestions in here are good, as far as solo shuffle is concerned, theres a handful of people talking about how shuffle has been hindering them getting ahead yet the better players are still consistently rising to the top in Solo shuffle. Given this being the case and they face the same set of adverse factors that you do while queing, this should tell you something about the individualistic gameplay as opposed to the gameplay as a whole. Is there a lot of imbalance in the game? Yes, absolutely. Are there things that need to be fixed so ques aren't 40 minutes long for potentially adverse lobbies? Yes, absolutely. But for those of you complaining that the shuffle system is holding you back, consider that the better players who are playing under the same conditions as you are still finding ways to persevere and climb. The gameplay is FAR from perfect but people are still finding ways to get ahead.
Change the rating system/mmr. Make Safe points. Example start at 0, hit 1000, you can't go below 1000. Lose every game the rest of the season you won't go below 1000. Next Safe point 1400, same thing. Can't go below 1400.
Can say people will get carried to brackets but they do anyways.
Something like this would reward sense of progression, and much less sense of negative progression. I actually think gearing is fine atm, as a pvper it's the best it's been in a looooong time.
Secondly reward time. Even if you are losing games, specially ina shuffle that you spend 20 mins in to get nothing is bad. Should get some conquest for your time.
People always blame the devs for this. And I think that the devs are largely to blame for what has been happening with WOW, but not only that. Let me give you a small example. 2 months ago retail became unbearable for me, I was stuck at 1700 rating. I decided to give classic a chance again.
In the 2 months that I've played classic I've already made 10 friends who I talk to whenever I'm online, I joined a guild, I'm doing raids, pvp events, helping lowbies. I am completely adapted to the server I play on.
Since DF was released I have made 0 friends. I didn't know anyone, I was harassed countless times in arenas and solo shuffle. I lost count of the times I logged out feeling bad, questioning my skill and thinking about quitting the game.
Let's be real, go to the pvp forum and talk about profound changes in this area of the game. Mention that you want to inflate the rating and that you want to democratize access to the game. Wait 5 minutes and you will be subjected to a virtual lynching.
There is no way for there to be changes when those who determine what happens today in WOW are a portion of 0.5% of the playerbase.
Obviously I would like to have access to gladiator mounts. And even with all the problems, I think SL was right to democratize access to this type of thing. Ranking high in the arena shouldn't be immensely more difficult than any other content in the game.
The truth is that WOW has become a game that offers almost no access to average joes like me. And it is dominated by an elite group of people who dedicate an absurd portion of their lives to it. It's all about me having little toys that you can't have access to. The eternal gatekeeping of you feeling better than others because of pixels.
I don't see any sign that this will change. And that won't change because WOW has become a game about collections, about achievements and the name given to this in social theory is path dependence. In other words, the game depends on things being like this, so that the playerbase remains attached to it.
The idea of inaccessibility is much more relevant than you think, it is the core of what WOW is today.
I love the idea of going to a more bracket like system of copper, bronze, silver, etc. Almost every other pvp game does that in some form, just using some random rating feels outdated since it means something different every patch or xpac.
Solo que bg be awesome. Just something more chill but can earn conquest
The ELO system has been teetering on unsuitability for a while now. It's been propped up by their overcomplicated formula and the population. Contrary to popular belief that "rating doesn't matter" it's the complete opposite, people play for their titles, they always have! Now because of the massive drop in players the algorithm cannot keep up so the "inflation" does nothing as there are not enough players to distribute the MMR around so you have this domino effect of people not queueing and now it's got to an extreme where it's finally broke the ELO system.
Time to modernise for sure, new system required with the most important thing about it is that it must feel rewarding to play!
Starting everyone from some arbitrary starting point is almost objectively bad - as a low rated player it's already painful to play weeks 1/2/3ish of a season because you're regularly getting stomped by huge players. The game should be slotting players in at a close MMR to their skill level (maybe with some bias towards the low end to be conservative). But having rating inflation feels better than no inflation for sure - removing the fixed rating cutoffs for titles would let blizzard have a steady inflation
Adding rating decay would make people continually play, however that would require work and players would quit over that too. Rating goes below your gears requirement you cant wear it until you get you rating back up....