Unintended Consequences - Blizzard Broke Arena

[mmcookies]

The problem with arena is that I don't think Blizzard knew what they wanted from it.

I believe the whole arena idea was probably lightly suggested, but then some marketing minded exec made it a must-have feature, hoping to duplicate the success of SC style competitive gaming. You can see some evidence of this in the way Blizzard has tried time and again to leverage arena with various competitive gaming bodies.

Long story short, the current arena implementation tries to straddle serious competition and casual accessibility, but creates a mutant mix that's rich for exploitation. If Blizzard intended to focus arena on serious competition, they would have implemented gear resets based on ratings or team disbandment without the sort of gear progression to match PVE content. Of course, now we have tournament realms set aside for serious business arena, which means normal arena will probably be left as a broken system, kinda like open ladder.

[merujo]

which means normal arena will probably be left as a broken system, kinda like open ladder.

yeah...it's millions playing a system that will only ban those exploiting when its super obvious. U can see everytime ppl with 90-1 records not even banned or anything. we're based on a good faith system, where no one will exploit, but that just doesnt happens. Thats what makes me sad about it.
One day ppl don't have rating for nothing, the other day they show up with weapons and shoulders...eh. It's completly a open ladder, on each realm the ammount of geared players by win-trading is huge, and blizzard just won't care enough.

[Drakkun]

Its nearly impossible to create a fair ladder system that can't be exploited. Just like its near impossible to create a software registration system that can't be cracked. If it was easy then you would see it from the start.

In fact, Blizzard has stated that they have a PhD (not sure the area of focus, but something to do with math and statistics) on staff that is analyzing the arena and pvp systems. Supposedly this person is doing a lot of work to try to find a balanced system. Hopefully, we will see some of it in place with WoTLK.

[Mokoi]

What they promised, and never delivered, was gear matching... which would fix this problem entirely IMO.

so everyone has to Que naked and then oput their gear on in the arena? that doesn't solve much

[Dominian]

What they promised, and never delivered, was gear matching... which would fix this problem entirely IMO.

so everyone has to Que naked and then oput their gear on in the arena? that doesn't solve much

Most likley it would take your highest helm (by item level) and one for each slot and divide it to get a average item level on your items... Wich means that if you have good pve gear you would face people with good pvp gear. An option to avoid this is that IF you put the items in the bank they wouldnt count..

[merujo]

how bout gearing greys, and change items while inside arenas ? haha!

[zanthor]

At 400 resilience and 800dmg it becomes a game of execution.

When BOTH sides are @ 400 resil and 800dmg it becomes a game of execution.
When the opponent is sporting those stats and has restarted their team to put their 2000+ geared selves into a 1500 bracket fight, then it's not a game, it's just execution.

Another solution to this is to simply make the gear have PR ratings, not to buy, but to EQUIP. If you have S4 gear with a PR needed of 1950 and you drop below that, it's the equivalent of the item becoming broken until you regain that rating. This of course wouldn't stop the amazingly skilled and experienced players from owning 1500 teams...

Seasonal based PR is the solution, skilled players will rise to the top, and the top will have plenty of action. Right now the cheesedick pvpers who are just doing it to make money sell their skill and live in the 1500 bracket owning people who have no real chance against them. This creates a vacuume of competition @ 1900+ where they belong. Fix that, and the rest falls into place.

[Steph]

Team rating should be removed and the average personal rating used instead. At the very least as far as the calculation of the win/loss points is concerned.

Imagine a chess Grandmaster joining a local village chess club, instantly dropping his elo rating from 2500 to 1000. He then proceeds to spank everyone in the club and totally destroy the club members' ratings. Compare this with the same games played without a falsified rating, and you see intact village chess player ratings. Unfortunately, the former is the situation we have in WoW arenas at the moment. The later is what I would consider fair. Arena losses that should cost 5-6 points are costing 15-18 points, because the team rating does not reflect the teams potential, but is used to calculate the win/loss points anyway.

I appreciate that high rated teams don't want only a handful of opponents and long queue time. For that reason the current team rating shenanigans might be useful, and would not necessarily need to be changed, but the the average personal rating should be used instead of the team rating for the win/loss points calculation.