What GOOD has Arena brought to the Game?

#0 - Feb. 22, 2009, 6:31 p.m.

Seriously. Not one post is ever made about how much people like arena, or how much fun they have in arena, or what a wonderful, good, decent, tolerable addition it was to WOW PvP.

All you ever see it the classes who are on top defending themselves from the classes who can't even compete in it. You see the dev's trying to justify the whole thing, while the player base /facepalms and feels that we are without a doubt playing a completely different game than they are making.

99.9% of all class nerfs / buffs are made around these small encounters that HARDLY everyone in the game participates in much less gives a flying kite about. Yet when we try to farm or go to a BG we are faced with the wrath of over / under tuning of some class abilities.

So. I ask. What GOOD has come out of this? Are you GC REALLY happy with Arena? Are you pleased that in going on the second expansion of the game it seems to be even FURTHER away from fair / balanced than when it was first released? Are you sure this is a direction you want to continue to bring the game thereby subjecting the masses to further failed attempts at balancing?

Disclaimer: I have played this game from several angles: A Healer, Melee DPS, Caster DPS, and I can say that it is no fun being the stomped and being the stomper is only fun for so long. People who claim to like arena are usually the classes on top and their tunes change quick when they fall from grace. I really just want to know how much longer this game is going to hold on to something that obviously can't even come CLOSE to working as intended: and by that i mean all the pvp viable specs within close proximity to each other.

Ghostcrawler

#17 - Feb. 22, 2009, 7:18 p.m.

A lot of players like Arenas. We understand that they aren't for everyone, and we're okay with that. Players who post in general on any topic are using asking a question or trying to make a point. Posts that say "I like this," are few and far between, and often scroll down to the later pages quickly or the OP gets shouted down.

Arenas definitely put class balance under a microscope, though I also predict tougher fights in Ulduar may do the same for PvE.

There are a couple of problems with Arenas that I would describe as round peg - square hole. In other words, some players are expecting something different out of Arena than they are getting. Part of this was because when Season 1 went live, it was a relatively easy way for players to get epics, especially compared to the raiding content at the time. Players assumed that they were "supposed to" participate in Arenas to gear-up. This wasn't necessarily the intention, but it was certainly a logical conclusion given the ease of getting the gear.

Related, you are going to lose a lot of Arena matches. Players are used to beating every PvE encounter they go up against, often trivially in the case of soloing quests. If the matchmaking system is working properly, you are going to lose about as many matches as you win. I think many players profoundly underestimate the psychological effect of losing so often. They get frustrated, and they often blame us for their inability to beat other players, forgeting that they may be playing better players, or that they should lose 50% of their matches against players of equal skill.

I am not saying class balance in Arena is perfectly balanced -- it's not. But I am saying that even if and when we achieve perfect balance (should such a thing even be possible), you are still going to lose a lot of matches.

Ghostcrawler

#69 - Feb. 22, 2009, 8:19 p.m.

Q u o t e:
GC, what about people who enjoy battlegrounds but not Arenas? Right now, you need to play Arenas if you want to be competitive in battlegrounds. Is this intended, and if not, do you have any plans to change it?

There needs to be a way to get good gear through BGs. Unfortunately, we don't yet have a way to measure skill in BGs that is very reliable. Therefore, BG progression tends to feel pretty grindy and adding better rewards would probably only exacerbate that.

It is definitely a goal to let players who like PvP but not Arenas still feel like they can advance (which includes improving their gear). It's just a big task that is requiring a lot of work.