WOW, Season 4. Arena or GTFO

[Cybsled]

10,000 players....lets say only %10 will get rating for l00t.

So 9,000 can't get, 1000 can. Yay the 1000.

Ut oh, 9,000 decided to say "fuck arena!!!" and stop playing.

Queues get longer. There isn't as many players.

1000 players...still, only %10 will get rating for loot.

Oh hey, only 100 are getting items now, 900 get shit.

Rinse repeat.

And this benefits everyone...how?

The point people are trying to make is that anytime you have "skill" graded on a curve, some people are always going to be considered "shit" even if in any other circumstance they would be considered good.

[Rezz]

Specifically, the 2200 cost for shoulders is what is confusing me. This change will chase away a vast number of "casual" arena players where the largest % of arena inflation is coming from. Those 2200 numbers are only really possible when there's a large number of crappy teams getting farmed for points to increase the top end since the bottom end gets dropped the majority of the time. Example: 2 teams, elite over 9000 team fights continuously against crappy prot paladin and survival hunter team over and over again. Rating for Good team goes above 1500, rating for shitty team goes below 1500. When shitty team hits 1200, they ditch their team. Does this lower good team's rating to 1500 to compensate? Negative, they maintain whatever rating they got from farming shitty team.

There will be a bubble that fills while the majority of casual arena goers who for some reason didn't bank points for the first few weeks of arena fight it out. These guys will play some games, fight each other a lot and battle hardcore for the lower end, losing games against people who belong in higher brackets at the onset of the season. Once they get the couple pieces they are destined for, there really isn't any reason for them to be doing arena. Since it's been proven time and time again that wow isn't challenge based it's acquisition based (people will always take the easiest way to get loot. This applies to 99.999999% of the userbase), this means people will stop doing arena about 4 weeks in for the most part, meaning the only teams running around will be the good teams from each server. So where exactly is the surplus of points that is required for teams to get above 2200 coming from?

It would require a single team to be head and shoulders above every other team in his battle group, and simply not lose. Basically this is 100% supporting top end teams loss trading, and actually encouraging it with the removal of the majority of arena goers. Blizzard, why so retarded?

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Cybsled

10,000 players....lets say only %10 will get rating for l00t.

So 9,000 can't get, 1000 can. Yay the 1000.

Ut oh, 9,000 decided to say "fuck arena!!!" and stop playing.

Queues get longer. There isn't as many players.

1000 players...still, only %10 will get rating for loot.

Oh hey, only 100 are getting items now, 900 get shit.

Rinse repeat.

And this benefits everyone...how?

The point people are trying to make is that anytime you have "skill" graded on a curve, some people are always going to be considered "shit" even if in any other circumstance they would be considered good.

DOOOM AND GLOOOM!

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

DOOOM AND GLOOOM!

It's correct though, which is the problem.

Pretty soon the entire bracket will be nothing but 2800 win traders, with no one to support that rating.

[The Ancient]

Of course it will, because people say it will!

Howsabout we revisit this thread in 3 months and see how it goes.

[Kaxmax]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

Of course it will, because people say it will!

Howsabout we revisit this thread in 3 months and see how it goes.

That's what I'm thinking. It seems like there's always a kneejerk 'omg people won't play!' reaction any time Blizzard makes a change. Hasn't happened yet, and I'm not convinced it will here.

I do think some of the ratings are high though. 2200 for shoulders?

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Kaxmax

That's what I'm thinking. It seems like there's always a kneejerk 'omg people won't play!' reaction any time Blizzard makes a change. Hasn't happened yet, and I'm not convinced it will here.

I do think some of the ratings are high though. 2200 for shoulders?

There's definitely less people playing arena now than there used to be. Low ratings are pretty stagnant, and the amount of people running around in full S1 gear on no arena team is pretty staggering. That's a significant amount of time spend running BG's without devoting an hour a week to getting arena points.

Make it so that they can't even get BG gear without doing arena, and well, you're either gonna make a system where everyone does arena, or everyone says "Fuck it." I highly doubt everyone is going to do arena.

[Kaxmax]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

There's definitely less people playing arena now than there used to be.

Is there? Not disagreeing, but just curious how you can definitively say that. It wouldn't be surprising considering we're at the tail end of a season, but anecdotally pretty much everyone I see is on at least a team or two.

[Plorkyeran]

Originally Posted by dak

I don't understand why shoulders are the high rated item blizzard choose.

Yes, they are giant and noticeable but that also means if you don't have 2200 rating you are gonna be stuck with some HORRIBLE ugly looking gear due to the color pallets from s2->s4 items.

That's the entire point. Rather than rewarding the very top players with a significant power advantage, they're rewarded with a significant appearance advantage.

[Makata]

If you honestly believe Joe Casual will continue to do arena when only buy 5 items, you're retarded. Obviously not all 90% will leave. Even if only 20-30% do that's going to be enough to drop people's scores enough so that more will leave, etc. My mage has 4200 arena and 45k honor and I'm not bothering to do 1 more pvp activity personally til this is fixed. I enjoy playing on my 3v3 w/ a rogue/mage guild friends and yes the team comp sucks, yes the rogue is a keyboard turner, no the other mage isn't frost, but none of us particularly care. It's moderately entertaining and I've been banking for 3 months or so now waiting on s4.

[Gnome Eater]

Makata, people like you losing themselves to 4/5 s3 is exactly why this change is in place.

People as horrible at MMORPG as you don't deserve to get gear for simply failing repeatedly.

[Kalaar Kururuc]

How about just let every arena team compete in full s3, but you can only buy it to use outside of arena if you earn points by actually winning stuff. Take equipment totally out of the equation for arena. You can still match up using rankings but the galdiator teams doing 1500 matches wont be quite so completely overwhelming due to gear disparity.

[Frax]

Originally Posted by Kaxmax

That's what I'm thinking. It seems like there's always a kneejerk 'omg people won't play!' reaction any time Blizzard makes a change. Hasn't happened yet, and I'm not convinced it will here.

I do think some of the ratings are high though. 2200 for shoulders?

Teams rated 2200 or higher as of 8AM MST 24APR08 in each battelgroup (Compiled manually using wowarmory.com):

Battlegroup          2v2     3v3    5v5
Bloodlust            93      65     29
Cyclone              92      56     27
Emberstorm           51      18     9
Nightfall            97      42     27
Rampage              79      34     24
Reckoning            83      53     31
Retaliation          69      21     6
Ruin                 99      57     32
Shadowburn           78      41     25
Stormstrike          73      45     24     
Vengeance            78      32     21     
Vindication          88      50     25     
Whirlwind            76      40     26

Of course thats the same crowd that is already going to get a Drake and Gladiator title as well. The decision making around this entire rating required for items seems pretty poor. They'd be better off requiring you to play "X" amount of games and "X%" of your team's total games before you could buy certain items. That means the little timmy crowd has to put in more effort than 10 games a week AND have the points to buy gear. Those points don't come easy if you are on a 630 rating team! Poor Mustacho is 8-122, and is obviously not a complete moron based on his gear.

[Makata]

Originally Posted by Gnome Eater

Makata, people like you losing themselves to 4/5 s3 is exactly why this change is in place.

People as horrible at MMORPG as you don't deserve to get gear for simply failing repeatedly.

Why then should I even bother queuing for arena if I'm not going to get anything from it? Like it or not you have to reward everyone or else the punching bags don't queue. You can't get your 1800 unless someone else gets their 1350, etc.

[Gnome Eater]

Originally Posted by Makata

Why then should I even bother queuing for arena if I'm not going to get anything from it? Like it or not you have to reward everyone or else the punching bags don't queue. You can't get your 1800 unless someone else gets their 1350, etc.

I don't do Arena for the gear, I don't do it to stomp newbies, I do it for the competition. If terribles stop playing, it doesn't change one thing for me.