[PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

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[PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#1 » Post by Gnurg » 20 Mar 2017 17:40

  • .

    TBC is right around the corner and with it, we will have the first proper arena season. Therefore, I think it's time to discuss how we would arenas to be. One thing I should add is that the first arena season does not have a unique arena title like the others (i.e. Brutal Gladiator, Relentless Gladiator), so in a sense, it's a similar arena season to the ones we had on PrimalWoW during the Vanilla phase. Since it is similar, I would say this opens for us to experiment a bit and move away from how the arena rules were on retail.

    Please, don't look at the 3 points as one unit, look at them as 3 different opinions about how we can change. If you like one of them, but not the other point that out. Feel free to come with alterations or other opinions on how arena should be.


    1. Lower rating requirement?
    Benefitors: The new and 'less gifted' PvP players.

    One of the problems with a small population is that there are few people in the queue, thus you're more likely to encounter the same opponents several times. It sucks even more if the team you're facing is the super strong opponent, Arena Bully Vane. If people constantly encounter a much stronger team, they start believing they can't make it to X rating to claim their reward, and they simply stop doing arena at all. "What's the point in losing 90 % of the game if that won't give them any reward?". Another problem with few team is that it is even more difficult to gain a higher rating because it's a system that revolves around having the winner gain rating and the loser drop rating, thus you will have few teams going high.

    So why 1000 rating for two pieces? There is little to no rating loss before 1000 rating, you simply have to win 20 matches and you should be eligible for the two first arena pieces. They will, however, cost a certain amount of arena points, so you'll still have to actively play every week to obtain the items (6-8 weeks per piece if you're below 1500 Arena Rating, depending on what mode you choose to play).

    This is clearly a suggestion for the less skilled player, who are unlikely to climb far up on the arena ladder. In the normal system, you do get your first around 1300 arena rating (only 1/8 of TW's and 1/7 of PW's arena ladder are above that). I believe that people who previously didn't do arena because they thought they wouldn't make it to gears' rating, might give it a try now. The more average guys wouldn't feel like the gear difference is that huge between them and the 'arena bullies' as they could eventually also pick up the same gear. The big guys can still compete for their arena titles, so I don't think the lowered requirement would demotivate them from climbing higher than the final gear reward.

    Certainly, the values can be altered, but I would prefer having them at a low enough rating to give everyone dedicated a chance at getting every piece.

    • Head - 1400 Arena Rating
    • Shoulders - 1600 Arena Rating
    • Chest - 1200 Arena Rating
    • Hands - 1000 Arena Rating
    • Legs - 1000 Arena Rating
    • Weapon - 1500 Arena Rating
    • Off-Hand - 1450 Arena Rating


    2. Guaranteed rank titles?
    Benefitors: The 'hardcore' PvP players.

    In addition to the current system (i.e. 200 active teams --> 60 Challenger, 20 Rivals, 6 Duelists, 1 Gladiator), we should add the rank titles according to the list below. This is to ensure that the arena rewards would not be spoiled due to lack of teams, which would also encourage players to keep playing and get a higher rating.

    • Top 15: Challenger (1 + 2 + 4 + 8)
    • Top 7: Rival & above (1 + 2 + 4)
    • Top 3: Duelist & above (1 + 2)
    • Top 1: Gladiator & above (1)


    3. Eliminate 2v2, embrace 3v3?
    Benefitors: Everyone.
    Losers: Classes that can play on 'their own' (i.e. warrior, warlocks) and healers.

    What I always found boring about TrueWoW's arena was that it was pretty much only 2v2. Typically, you have a lot of healer (Paladin, Priest) with a strong DPS (Warrior, Warlock, Death Knight) compositions (easy to pull off without coordination) and a few CC-oriented (i.e. priest & mage, priest & rogue, rogue & mage, hunter & paladin) compositions (typically only above average players). There's a limit to strategies and it's repeating team compositions, so it does quickly get old. It also favours some classes more than others and it renders certain specs useless.

    With 3v3, you open for a lot of different team compositions. In a sense, you can make anything viable as every class/spec brings something unique, and the combinations of their unique strengths might make up for that class's flaws. Say a class is only unviable in arena because they're too squishy, then combining them with a class who could peel will be the solution. The third member would in most cases be a healer as it seems to be a necessity, at least for the average player's skill level.

    With our population, we can't have both a 2v2 and a 3v3 scene. When all modes are enabled, the easier one is naturally chosen, so I do believe 2s is keeping people from playing 3s. I suggest we disable 2s for the first season as an experiment to see if this would boost activity in 3s, which is a much more balanced game mode than 2s. Should it backfire badly, we could always enable 2s after a month or so.
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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#2 » Post by Ancestor » 20 Mar 2017 18:34

everything is okey, why change something?
1. thats why theres /dodge
2.let it be like it is
3.if theres problem...its harder even to find 3 ppl online to play all time...2s should stay, 3s also, maybe if want put 5s under soloq

and its not under suggestions?

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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#3 » Post by Gnurg » 20 Mar 2017 19:01

Ancestor wrote:
20 Mar 2017 18:34
everything is okey, why change something?
1. thats why theres /dodge
2.let it be like it is
3.if theres problem...its harder even to find 3 ppl online to play all time...2s should stay, 3s also, maybe if want put 5s under soloq

and its not under suggestions?

I was hoping for more of a discussion for now, so that's why I didn't list it under suggestions.

I didn't quite understand your argument for point 1. Wouldn't making the rating less significant for gear, discourage people from dodging, since it's not such a big deal if you drop a game or two?

Why do you think the system is fine for point 2? There's yet to be a gladiator and rarely anyone gets duelist, even though there has been a few arena seasons on Primal already.

I can understand your concern for point 3, which I think is the hardest one for people to agree on, but we can't really know if it was such a big problem forming teams unless we try it out in practice. We could always bring back 2v2 after a month if it backfires, though, it could encourage new people to give arena a try. It would, after all, open for new classes/spec to join in on the fun.
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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#4 » Post by Ancestor » 20 Mar 2017 20:34

for point 1, as said vs "super strong opponent", you need to play and improve you skills better to reach such rating, if you get everything easy and fast you will lose motivation. Low geared can still play vs low geared, thats why theres mmr made. If you dont reach such rating, then you are not worth that item either.
2.So far those arena seasons didnt mean nothing, 1st proper gear coming from tbc->where it matters. Same, if you are not eligible then you are not worth that title. I know there might be less arena teams because of population but still.(tw got under 100 ppl online, doesnt mean i should get free SM)
3.pw started as pve, theres still much pve players, we cant expect active arenas @ start or @ all, ofcos arenas and everything is active in beginning of new thing, even if close 2s and open 3s only. Still should not change this, only thing i could agre myself is, turn 5s to soloque, keep all other as it is.

Its still same game and tactics, dont change it, not everyone should run full bis gear and hit 123...if not eligible for then should not get those items/titles.

Thats my stupid bit drunk opinion, would like to hear other ppl also
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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#5 » Post by Gnurg » 20 Mar 2017 21:33

1. You don't get the gear fast. To get every single gear piece, you would need about 12500 Arena Points. By only playing 2s and not going above 1500 rating, it would take you ~50 weeks (~250 a week, there's no Arena Points from daily RBG), twice the length of a season. If RBG somehow gets added with the reward, it would still take ~25 weeks (a full season), still not fast.

You might not struggle with getting the high rating, but this is to motivate the players who don't feel motivated because the items are for them 'impossible' to get. These players are the backbone of arena, as it's a system that builds around having a winner and a loser. It's very much needed to keep these bottom tier teams are motivated to keep on playing.

In my opinion, rewards should be centred around getting the arena titles and picking up arena gear faster. On retail, making it to a high enough rating for most of the gear is something the majority of gear is a piece of cake. Challenger (top 35 % on retail apparently) usually lies around 1600 rating, where it here is just 1000 rating.

2. I wouldn't say that this about deserving a title or not, as there are some titles, which have been handled differently after the community's choice. Take Scarab Lord for example, it's very unlikely that several people get it per realm, but here we had (I don't mind this at all, by the way) 20+ people with it. High Warlord / Grand Marshal has been picked up by at least 20 transfers, who played on a realm far too active to consider 15 000 kill worth of being the top percentile PvPer, but it is just how it is.

It's more about leaving it as an encouragement for people to go competitive every season. Getting rank 1, even with our population, is still an accomplishment. Also, I feel like it's wrong that they lose out on their titles due to lack of teams, even if they put down the same effort as if the arena scene was more populated.

3. Very well.

Though, judging by the 3v3 solo queue ladder. it sounds like you're very inspired by Arena Tournament. You should know by now that TrueWoW, nor PrimalWoW, doesn't have the community to create a similar PvP scene. We have a bunch of average and below players, and it's important that the arena system reflects this. There are simply too many suggestions about making similar to Arena Tournament, which won't work with our community. What we need is a bit more noob friendly system, that encourages average Joe to queue up for arena, not something that centres around elitism (they can manage fine on their own).
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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#6 » Post by Vaen » 20 Mar 2017 23:24

The first point is something that I've been supporting since I played in Truewow. However, I have heard of another idea involving a gradual reduction of costs and arena rating requirement, and I would actually prefer that instead of starting the season with low rating requirement items. It might bump up the arena activity every so often.

I support the second suggestion because the amount of active arena teams is too low for the original percentages to be significant. It happens often that there is no team eligible for the Gladiator title alone because the amount of active teams is under 200.

I completely disagree with the third point. 3v3 simply will happen at a much lower frequency than 2v2 no matter how many exclusive rewards and/or titles you shove onto it. If you disable 2v2 people just won't queue arenas at all because getting games in 3v3 will always remain slow with the current population. Games in 2v2 will happen more often (and very frequently at certain moments of the day/week) simply because setting up a team and starting to play is easier than in 3v3.

I forgot to add something about this:
Losers: Classes that can play on 'their own' (i.e. warrior, warlocks) and healers.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'on their own', as warriors definitely will have a hard time moving around without somebody to assist them in dispeling/keeping uptime on their target. You could argue that warlocks can play 'on their own' but again they have their flaws such as next to zero mobility (missing tools like shadowflame snare, shadowfury, demonic circle).

The truth is every class can play on 'their own', but arena should come down to having good synergy with your teammate(s) and it actually does (yes - in 2v2 too) in most games that aren't uneven due to gear. Support classes mix well with more offensive classes and so do healers. Almost every spec and definitely every class has a place and a handful of decent choices for teams in 2v2 arena.
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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#7 » Post by Gnurg » 21 Mar 2017 00:14

By their own, I meant that could easily kill or survive without any other help than the healer they're playing with. Some of the other classes are more reliant on having another damage dealer to peel and burst, so 2s would clearly give 'on their own classes' an advantage.

They could go for a double damage composition, but the skill cap and cordination for this is a lot higher than some tunnelvisioning warrior with a pocket healer behind her. With 3v3, you could fill that missing peel/burst, while still having a healer, lowering the skill cap needed for those other classes.


While 3s has been slow, it might be because of 2s overshadowing it. I feel like we can 'sacrifice' the first month of the arena season to experiment if it could work, as 2v2 is straight up uninterresting. The only reason to play it is to get the gear. Should it turn out well with no 2s, we made arena fun, and should it turn poorly, we only get a bit delayed with the arena season.
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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#8 » Post by Mizzeeh » 21 Mar 2017 04:46

Concerning point 1) the idea of gradually lowering rating requirement(2-3 nerfs ending in no rating requirement, similar to retail) is much better than just having them low, imo. In TBC there will be more access to and variation in pvp gear than there is currently so even if you don't like to do arena at all you should still be able to pick up last season's arena gear for honor and do well.

Also, having it too easy to get early on may result in pvp gear overshadowing certain pve items for pve in certain cases which, while it would probably encourage more people to pvp, would also force people to pvp that really just don't want to, if they felt it was the best they had access to and top of the line pvp gear was easy to get, and only required a time investment.

Second suggestion is solid and, ignoring rank 1 titles, doesn't need any changing, minimum 15 teams get challenger, minimum 7 get rival, minimum 3 get duelist and minimum 1 gets glad, obviously more if we have the population to support it.

Third suggestion is where you completely lost me. If the plan is to actually balance out PvP with that then I think you're completely missing the mark, while 3v3 is in some ways inherently more balanced since you get a wider spread/variation of abilities in it, it also requires a higher level of coordination so people who are not very good will get smashed even harder. It will also make the difference between the 10 best comps and the 10 worst comps way bigger so that people who can actually get people of the right classes to play with them to make a team with good synergy will roll over teams that just want to have fun in arenas with their friends who might not play classes that are optimal together.

But the big thing, I think, is the fact that 2v2 is, always was, and always will be the most popular mode of play, despite all attempts towards discouraging it with things like no gladiator titles, less arena point gains and no access to certain items via 2v2 rating(I think they did this at some point, my memory might be off). The reason for this is simple, it requires FAR LESS effort to join or start a 2v2 team than it does a 3v3 team, it requires less people, less people to be on, less reliance on comp, etc. It might limit some classes, yes, but disabling it will limit the entire server because there will be fewer arena teams, fewer teams queue-ing and fewer people in arenas altogether.

Also, I think that if you hit balance correctly with PvP that healer/dps comps won't dominate, even in TBC when healers were at their strongest, double dps comps still dominated in season 1 and were just as viable in season 2, it wasn't until resilience started stacking up and certain classes got access to PvE gear that boosted some important numbers that healer/dps became the go-to in 2v2, and in later expansions that wasn't always the case either.

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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#9 » Post by Gnurg » 21 Mar 2017 08:02

1. Dungeons and raids start before the arena season, so that shouldn't be a problem. Also pre raid gear is better for PvE than the Gladiator gear, you wouldn't want to bring the PvP gear to raids.

3. Better players should be the ones winning. It's about giving the double damage teams a healer, to give them a better chance to beat facerolling the Warrior/Warlock with Pocket healer, as at equally low skill level the warrior/warlock team would win.

For the effort part, I do agree, that's why I want it to be experimental for the first month.
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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#10 » Post by Mizzeeh » 21 Mar 2017 18:06

Of course better players should win more often than not, but I don't believe limiting all arena to 3s will necessarily help with that with the population of the server. What it will do is make all the active, good pvpers group up into a small handful of teams with the classes that fit together and the ones that get left out because of comp balance or whatever will have a much harder time finding an active team appropriate for their level and everyone else who wants to pvp but isn't very good will just get rolled over because there won't be an even skill and comp distribution between the few top teams and everyone else.

To an extent I am exaggerating this a little bit, I don't believe that there will just be like 2 3v3 teams with 95% win ratio vs everyone except each other and then 10 terrible ones that end up playing most of their matches against those 2 top ones because they're the active ones, but something like that of a slightly lower magnitude is what I'm afraid will happen.

And in your balancing part you are completely ignoring that 3v3 is, in many ways, open to much bigger cheese comps than 2v2. Yes there might be an issue of healer+dmg dealer with good survivability and high dmg being overpowered if we miss our mark somewhat with balancing, but 2 of the most retarded comps I ever played in was resto druid/disc priest/hunter in season 3 with an awful keyboard turning hunter that we carried almost to gladiator with plenty of hour+ long games when we faced teams that we didn't just run oom in 5-10 mins, and feral druid/combat rogue/shadowpriest in late season 5 or early season 6 where I got my rogue friend with green gear rating for arena weapons by aoe fearing and bursting down a squishy target. Neither of those comps, or countless others, required any more skill than resto druid/warrior in season 3/4 nor did they inspire any intuitive gameplay.

I think what we need to do to make arenas in TBC good is to get them active by incentivizing them and getting the balance right, not by forcing people to play with more players.

If you perform an experiment during a critical stage for the server you might lose a large chunk of players which will snowball into losing more players later on.

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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#11 » Post by Flooded » 21 Mar 2017 18:23

There are several issues you're highlighting in this thread that we actually have plans already in motion to fix. I hope you find yourselves to be more at ease knowing that. I plan on creating a news post fairly soon including most of the details; we're just waiting on a few graphics to be finished up.

However, this discussion has provoked some interesting questions, so please continue ;)

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Re: [PW] TBC - How should we have arenas?

#12 » Post by Floss » 23 Apr 2017 07:30

I came by this post long ago and ignored it at that time but now since i play in PW , i don't agree with the 3rd suggestion . In order to have an active 3v3 bracket , you need an active pvp community which doesn't exist in PW .
In my few days of playing, I barely came across 5-6 players that are pvp biased.
You said it yourself ,why lighten the award system ? Cause most ppl here do arenas just for items.
They don't care for a fun experience while doing that, true pvpers however , do care more.(Thats why in AT 3v3 counts alot more).

As for the 2 first suggestions , i totally support them.

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