WOW, Season 4. Arena or GTFO

[Ninen]

I'm hoping I'm missing something, but it seems like the next wave of griefing for s4 will be 4 top quality players picking up some random scrub to force low quality matchups (from the "if 1 player on a team's more than 150 pts below team average, the team's matched using *that* player's personal level) just to wtfpwn noobs.

It's like rerolling but they never actually lose their 2XXX level for those games each week they actually want to complete rather than pillage the peons.

[Mkopec1]

Dude, if you keep playing and paying for WoW and their 100 daily quests and S4, repeating the same goddamned content for the next 6 months. You are griefing yourself already.

[Aria]

Have they said if we're getting new battlegrounds in the expansion or are we still going to be scrubbing it out in the same 4 goddamned maps while 1% of the population is getting shiny new raid instances?

[WarderX]

If you are rated 1700, you are in the top 15% of the playerbase.

If you are 2000+, you are in the top 2%

The bell curve is :science: ?

[Makata]

Originally Posted by Ninen

I'm hoping I'm missing something, but it seems like the next wave of griefing for s4 will be 4 top quality players picking up some random scrub to force low quality matchups (from the "if 1 player on a team's more than 150 pts below team average, the team's matched using *that* player's personal level) just to wtfpwn noobs.

It's like rerolling but they never actually lose their 2XXX level for those games each week they actually want to complete rather than pillage the peons.

You can accomplish this already without having to carry a scrub. Assuming you have bought your items requiring rating (and thus don't care anymore), 4 people drop the team, get reinvites, pass leader, leader drops and rejoins and your 2135 team has 5x 1500 PR.

There has to be a good reason why PR resets. I have enough faith in humanity that at some bigwigs meeting at blizzard hq someone had a GOOD reason for this. If your PR is UNDER 1500 it should reset to 1500; that's fine. but there's no reason to ever lose PR for anything other than a lost game. Blizzard doesn't seem to realize that excluding resets, PR gains and losses is a zero sum. Make it so people can arbitrarily drop their PR a couple hundred points and you introduce little to no way to inflate the average PR (only by remaking while < 1500) while it keeps getting reduced. The average PR will obviously start at 1500 at the start of s4 but I expect to see it drop into the low 1400s very quickly bottoming out as low as possibly 1300s or maybe maybe maybe even 1200s by xpac if enough pvp griefers get bored.

Originally Posted by Aria

Have they said if we're getting new battlegrounds in the expansion or are we still going to be scrubbing it out in the same 4 goddamned maps while 1% of the population is getting shiny new raid instances?

I'm 97% sure they are introducing 2 new BGs but I have no links to support this. (No I'm not being an ass and making this up on the spot, just being both blunt and honest)

Originally Posted by WarderX

If you are rated 1700, you are in the top 15% of the playerbase.

If you are 2000+, you are in the top 2%

Sounds about right.

When Blizzard makes the judgment call ahead of time that regardless of actual skill and where the 85/15 split actually lies, that most people cannot EVER physically get the item without resorting to exploitive measures (which not only defeats the purpose, not only continues to lower average PR/TR's, but makes it even MORE difficult for others) they are fucking over their playerbase.

Look at it in a very very simple way. Assuming the 85/15 split is accurate, more than 15% of the population is going to want their S4 helm. Suppose the top 10% has no trouble getting it but some of the 85% use exploitive measures (rating sellers, etc) to force their way into the last 5%. Now some people who want to hit the 1650 rating for w/e that item is face a similar problem and more rating selling goes in, and so on and so on. By the time you hit 1500, ratings are so deflated that a truly average team, which should have a 1500 rating, will lose its way down into the 12 and 1300s because of the overwhelmingly large number of point/rating sellers AND the LEGITIMATE teams that have been forced down to that level due to the sellers, which continues the compounding problem.

This is purely butterfly effect at work. Start a small ripple in the center of the atlantic (2200 rating) and it's a tidal wave at the beaches (1500).

The Grand Fix:
1. Personal Rating is kept static per bracket. If you leave a team while having a personal rating under 1500, your personal rating for that bracket is reset to 1500.
2. If you have the highest personal rating amongst the players in your group when queuing for arena and it is 100 or more points higher than EITHER the average of all other players in your group OR your team's rating, you are matched based off of YOUR personal rating (Earth to Blizzard: you don't match DOWN, you match up. You're supposed to DISCOURAGE arena power leveling, not make it easier)
3. You cannot join a team that has EITHER an average personal rating amongst all players OR a team rating that is 200 or more points above your personal rating for that bracket. (Want to play with your friends? Reform a new team. You don't get to curbstomp and get 1k pts a week just because your friends have a 2.2k team)
4. You cannot join an arena queue if the above qualifies at the time the leader attempts to queue.
5. When calculating point acquisition each week, the LOWER of your personal rating and team rating for each bracket is considered.

I JUST FIXED ARENA GUYS.

[Plorkyeran]

Originally Posted by Aria

Have they said if we're getting new battlegrounds in the expansion or are we still going to be scrubbing it out in the same 4 goddamned maps while 1% of the population is getting shiny new raid instances?

So far there's one new one implemented.

[Jubee]

Originally Posted by column

Yeah I don't know..I'm pretty good at PVP in wow..so to me I could pretty much be half asleep and still get 1700 /shrug. To me 1700 is where all the average players are,but if you say the numbers are much lower I'll take your word for it.

The teams I run into on the way to 1700 are 2 boxers,terrible combos,terrible gear,retards etc etc.

After 1700 the teams show abit of skill,but not really into the 1800's do you get decent teams as it stands now for me anyway.

I can't see it from the unskilled players side, so its hard to see what there whining about other then the team exploits because of the way the rateing system works. To me if you can't at least get a 1700 rating you have no business even bothering with PVP to begin with...but thats just me.



I agree that rateing system is out of wack,I'm not sure if they will ever fix it tho.

What battlegroup are you in? That has a lot to do with what quality of players are at 1700. I haven't arena'd since the start of s3 until last week. A lock friend and I decided to do some 2s and took a 1500 team up to 1700. We played about 25 games and every single team had at least one member with a s3 weapon. Before we even made it to 1600 we played Warrior/Druid x3, Mage/Rogue x2, Lock/SPriest and Hunter/Druid. There certainly weren't any 2 boxers or retards around.

[Kreugen]

ALL of the BG's should be revamped for WLK, there's no goddamn excuse.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Jubee

What battlegroup are you in? That has a lot to do with what quality of players are at 1700. I haven't arena'd since the start of s3 until last week. A lock friend and I decided to do some 2s and took a 1500 team up to 1700. We played about 25 games and every single team had at least one member with a s3 weapon. Before we even made it to 1600 we played Warrior/Druid x3, Mage/Rogue x2, Lock/SPriest and Hunter/Druid. There certainly weren't any 2 boxers or retards around.

Last night was pretty horrible for my scrub team. Half the teams we played in the mid 1500's had S3 shoulders, at least 7 had weapons. I ran into 2 druids that might as well have been bots for the way they execute their lockdown chain. Pounce, Cyclone, Cyclone, Feral Charge, Bash, claw, Maim, rinse, repeat. No flaw, no delay, complete automation. Yeah, the guys in the 1500's should absolutely be THAT good.

It's just not looking good for S4 if you think that the WoW scrubs playing arena are gonna put up with that shit at the entry level.

[Azzikai]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

Last night was pretty horrible for my scrub team. Half the teams we played in the mid 1500's had S3 shoulders, at least 7 had weapons. I ran into 2 druids that might as well have been bots for the way they execute their lockdown chain. Pounce, Cyclone, Cyclone, Feral Charge, Bash, claw, Maim, rinse, repeat. No flaw, no delay, complete automation. Yeah, the guys in the 1500's should absolutely be THAT good.

It's just not looking good for S4 if you think that the WoW scrubs playing arena are gonna put up with that shit at the entry level.

I pretty much run into this whenever I step foot into the arena. If I don't see S3 shoulders and weapons I'm flat out amazed. I'm only playing 2v2, though, so I do get to see my fair share of average geared PvP'ers but 75% of the time I'm facing at least one person who should not be at 1500. My guildmates have a 5v5 that really is just for the points (none of them are spec'ing pure PvP for it) and their first ever match was against a full S3 wearing team, it was ridiculous. This is no exaggeration, I sat here and checked the armory of every one of them when the match was over.

S4? Yeah, that's going to be worse. Blizzard needs to fix the resetting of personal ratings. They also need to fix it so that a person earns points/rating based off their own personal rating with match-ups being determined by the average personal rating or team rating, whichever is higher. You want some 2k+ rated person to boost you? Fine. You earn points like the 1500 rated person you are while facing off against teams that are at least rated 1750. You want to be added to the 2.3k rated team as a new guy and be carried through? Best hope your "teammates" aren't adverse to fighting 4v5 because you're going to be dead, a lot. Oh, and useless too.

They need to fix the loopholes. Until the do, the arena is pointless unless you're already geared for it (and not a Druid).

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Kreugen

ALL of the BG's should be revamped for WLK, there's no goddamn excuse.

The excuse is: Blizzard's earning a crapload of cash by doing very little, so why do more? Sucks, doesn't it?

[Niafix04]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

I ran into 2 druids that might as well have been bots for the way they execute their lockdown chain. Pounce, Cyclone, Cyclone, Feral Charge, Bash, claw, Maim, rinse, repeat. No flaw, no delay, complete automation. Yeah, the guys in the 1500's should absolutely be THAT good.

Players at 1500 ratings arent "that" good, they are average. If you, or your team lets a druid get a cc rotation like that off, then you are blow average and deserve to lose.

[TheCutlery]

Originally Posted by Niafix04

Players at 1500 ratings arent "that" good, they are average. If you, or your team lets a druid get a cc rotation like that off, then you are blow average and deserve to lose.

Right, so he got that S3 weapon being average too, right?

You guys who are completely clueless of the problems of the arena ladder are amusing as hell.

[The Ancient]

Although for reasons stated earlier in this thread, not everyone with S3 weapon or shoulders isn't a scrub. I'm not trying to imply that there aren't overgeared and overskilled players in the lower bracket, simply a statement that they are plenty of S3 wielding players populating the lower rankings who suck at the game.

If the last time I started fresh in the arena we gave up whenever we ran across a top geared player, that'd probably halve our number of wins.

[Niafix04]

Originally Posted by TheCutlery

Right, so he got that S3 weapon being average too, right?

Yes. There are/were a number of ways to have an S3 weapon and be average or worse.