Quote Originally Posted by thinus View Post
Its an arena. Competition should be on equal footing, not a race to get access to the better gear first so you can stay on top.
Sorry, competition between who should be on equal footing? And why shouldn't it be a race? Again, think 2 moves ahead of your argument and think about what would happen if players were allowed gear for merely playing games and not based off of any ranking system.. everyone would have the best gear, and there would be no incentives to be competitive. What would be the point? Play 100 games and get your free relentless? I'm confused on how you would run the game your way, would you just have premade characters for all arena matches with equal gear? Why would the majority of the player base play them, since upgrades are the main reason people compete in arenas.. taking out that would effectivly make arenas a joke and nobody would take them seriously.

Those teams who are better players than you and your team, or have more experience in the arenas move up the ladder quite quickly, and when you are at a 1000 MMR you do not fight anyone above 1300 for any points, making the fights trivial, while also allowing you access to higher level teams in case you are able to pull off a win.

Of course you get stomped in arenas, there's just not enough players to ensure an even matched even ranked team every game, but that's what they introduced MMR for, and this ensures that fighting these players with the gear and skill to destroy you does not impact your team negatively.

At higher levels of competition, the gear differences are non-existent and it ALL comes down to skill. In order to reach this though, you must fight enough of the teams at your level and win to rise slowly, that's what everyone who is 2500 rated did too.

If everyone in arena had the same level of gear, then the fights would come down to skill, tactics, group make-up and latency... what's the problem in this?
above 2k rating, this is exactly what happens. Every team over 2k has their entire Relentless set and the gear is equivalent.