So...Arena's failed...not surpisingly

I posted this in another thread somewhere, but I think the major conclusion you can really draw from this is that players go where the loot is. In season 1, it was much easier to get epics from Arena than raiding. We have almost completely flipped to the opposite extreme now.

Our goal isn't to force players into Arena who hate it but suffer through to get the loot. Everyone will be happier if the players doing Arenas are the players who like to do Arenas. Similarly, the people raiding should be the people who like raiding.

One of the designers came up with a smart saying recently, which is that you should not conculde that all heroics should be like Mechanar just because Mechanar was our most popular heroic. :)

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It seems that one could generate a new battleground every 8 weeks.

It actually takes a great deal of time to make a BG. It isn’t the map creation; it is making all of the rules work. We are working on building better tools though to streamline that process.

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I really have to say I'm getting sick of the CMs saying "oh well arena representations are low because PvE gear was so easy to get" or DK has high representation in arenas because "it's the most played class right now."

DKs are both popular and overpowered. I stand by the other statement though. Even in this thread you see a lot of players that just don’t like Arenas. We don’t have a problem with that. Things break down when you push players who don’t want to play Arenas into Arenas because they feel like that is the only way to improve their character (which happened in BC). Getting 100% of WoW players into Arenas is not our goal. Getting 100% of players who like to do Arenas into Arenas is a goal.

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I'm amazed that you guys does care about the popularity of heroics.

Of course we care. But as with all data, the key is in what conclusions your draw from it. Players say their favorite BC instances were the CoT ones. The most popular instance though (the one run the most) was Mechanar. Does that mean they were lying? Does that mean we should do more fast instances with lots of badges and fewer unique ones?

Similarly, if you give players ways to get better gear in an easier manner than Arenas, it is risky to draw the conclusion that players hate Arenas.

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You realize this doesn't apply to S4 at all? People flocked to arena for welfare epics in S1 and S2, but you're just wrong if you're suggesting that this happened in S4. Participation now is down compared to S4, is what i'm reading from the article.

But what was their alternative? Sunwell. Sunwell != Naxx by a long shot.

I’m not saying that there aren’t multiple factors at play here. I am sure balance has something to do with it. But so do other factors: players gave up very potent PvP sets to essentially start over with low resilience. The PvP gear requirements were much stricter. If you didn’t win, you couldn’t just lose your way to epics (you had to essentially wait a season for the ratings to go down). We also had a ton of new content that competed with Arenas. In addition to raiding, a lot of players have been doing Wintergrasp, or just leveling. But I also suspect you are wrong if you say the relative ease of PvE to PvP loot didn’t have a lot to do with it.

Consider, the PTRs have also been light (compared to BC) since LK launched, probably because players have plenty to do with the actual live game. I don’t think the conclusion to draw is that nobody is interested in Ulduar.

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I think players know pve gear is for pve and pvp gear is for pvp. We never went one route to gear for both - we just accepted that they were separate grinds (that's how it is for healers at least, but watching dps in heroics gear slaughter priests in raid gear is... interesting... )

I understand your point, and that is the design, but a lot of players have been arguing that they are getting beaten by players with KT weapons. Also keep in mind Archavon (and badges in general) can reward PvP gear for PvE content.

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Players go where the fun is.

Sadly, many players go where the loot is. Or perhaps more accurately for them getting the loot is fun, and that overwhelms where they are getting it. If we instigated another Silithus-style rep grind where you needed to kill 10,000 Tuskarr but we rewarded ilevel 232 for doing so, I promise you (and I rarely promise) that thousands of players would be doing it, cursing us all the while.

Another question you can ponder is if players love Arenas so much, why are the skirmish events (which provide no loot and don’t affect ratings) relatively unpopular? If players do it at all, it is just as practice so that they don’t risk hurting their ratings. They aren't doing it just because they love Arenas. The sense of reward is totally absent.

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Now you're just showing that you don't know how your own player base looks at it. Mechanar wasn't POPULAR, Mechanar was SHORT.

Mechanar was popular because it was short. You are making my point. Players do not always do what they enjoy the most. They often do what is most efficient in earning rewards. When we provide unfun ways to get rewards that players feel pushed into, then we have failed.

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GC i hope you and others at blizzard are taking a very serious look at whats been said in this post, as you clearly struck a nerve.

You've got 200 different people here saying the exact same thing, some who mainly stick to BGs, some multi-season gladiators, some hardcore, some casual.

You are reading a different thread than I am. There are a lot of people who agree with you (that imbalance is to blame). But there are a lot of other responses. A dominant theme is players who like PvP but don’t like Arenas (even if they are perfectly balanced). A smaller theme is players who hate PvP and wish it would stop intruding on the game they like to play. Another is players who would participate in Arenas, but feel the ratings are too steep to get the gear they want.

In any event, trying to measure anything by volume or passion of forum response is not a good idea. The least scientific poll is far more accurate than a medium where only the most vocal and opinionated minority opt in. You should be very careful ever assuming the forums reflect reality. The sample size is much too small and very skewed.

I spend a lot of time talking to players (here and elsewhere). A very striking theme is they tend to view the game through their eyes and don’t consider other ways in which players like to play. Just keep that in mind, because we have to.

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So, in light of all of this, what was wrong with the way PvP rewards worked in Season 1 and 2, where even the worst of the worst could get the best gear, they just took a damned sight longer to get it?

Two things. One, some players didn't feel the need to invest in raiding when a couple of hours of week in Arenas would eventually earn them the same gear without RNG. Second, we kept the same philosophy. The difference now is you just have to wait for the seasons to shift and the ratings to relax on the previous season's gear.

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Arenas came out of nowhere, and were immediately considered by the Devs as the reference point for everying PvP. Buffs, nerfs, talents and spells changes have since always been a consequence of Arena balance, with absolutely no consideration for the battleground crowd. Meanwhile, you allow huge imbalances in battlegrounds to persist.

I think this is fair. Though again, players placed a lot of focus on it, in part because that's where they had to go to get the best rewards.

We have some BG plans up our sleeve.

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But aren't there some classes - Ret Pallies in particular I can think of - that must do arena to get the best item for their class - for Ret's it's the libram - in the game?

I just don't know if this is the general consensus of the Ret community. I'll take your word for it. But that is not the goal. You should not have to PvP in order to PvE or vice versa.

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Thanks for lowering the quality of PvE so that more people can "enjoy it."

Can I assume you are one of those people that enjoys soul-crushing PvE content? Say hi to Algalon for me. :)

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GC, What about the players who don't like to raid? Do you want us to suffer through content because we have to?

At this point in time, offering very good gear through content other than raiding or Arenas isn't possible for us. Why? Because we don't yet have a mechanism to make the other content difficult enough to warrant that kind of reward. If we offered epics through BGs, it would basically be (right now at least) some kind of grind fest. If we offered them through 5-man heroics or quests or rep grinds or tradeskills, the requirements would have to be similarly brutal. Right now, we think only raiding and Arenas mandate the really high level of group coordination, intimate knowledge of the game and ability to make good decisions under stress that deserve the best rewards. I do think it's a weakness in the game design though, and we'd like to figure out other ways to offer those rewards.

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Do you think that with the release of the Furious Gladiator set, which will allow more itemization into stats other than Resillience do to a higher item level, that some more life will be brought into arenas?

I hope so. Resilience will be higher (and even new recruits will have access to decent gear from the previous season). The competing PvE content will be more challenging. Hopefully some of the balance problems from S5 will be under control.

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Do you think that since people have had the ability to adjust to the new invisible rating system, and with the teams starting at 0 rating, that it will be easier for people to jump into arena's and, enjoy the...

I try not to address the rating system in these forums, just because the topic of classes is broad enough. But I hope it's obvious we would not have gone for that new system if we did not think it would offer an enormous improvement over the old one.

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Do you think that more people will go to arenas because the current pvp gear (not season 6) will be more readily available due to lower rating requirements? Similar to what happened with BG's when S1 and S2 gear became available through honor? And because while Naxx gear, which is still good gear, will no longer be the best gear?

Yes, I do. Now Ulduar will be puggable to some extent, at least at some point. But I think it will be some time before players are doing quick farm runs. The hard modes are designed to keep players occupied for a long time. Also notice even with the Naxx pugs, how many of them advertise "Just Saph and KT left." Those encounters may be at the border for what many pugs can handle (though obviously many of them are still succesful).

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Do you think that more people will go to arenas because the current pvp gear (not season 6) will be more readily available due to lower rating requirements? Similar to what happened with BG's when S1 and S2 gear became available through honor? And because while Naxx gear, which is still good gear, will no longer be the best gear?

Go finish Hodir!

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Guess that's one thing you got wrong in WotLK.

This quote was in reference to the first tier of raiding content being easy. That wasn't a mistake and we don't consider it a failure. We think it's great to have so many people able to raid (again assuming they want to raid, and not that they are in a raid or die mentality).

Where we did err was that some of the 10-player content proved more difficult than the 25-player content, which was not the intent. That sets a weird mindset in the community that 25-player runs are pugs, and 10-player runs aren't worth it.

Ulduar will be more challenging, and we think the 10 vs. 25 difficulty will be tighter. With some of the hard modes, I fully expect to be on these forums in a couple of months dealing with lots of "Has Blizz lost their minds?" posts. :)

Consequently, some players still start looking at Arenas again as an alternative or even superior way to improve their gear. That coupled with higher resilience numbers, better understanding and tuning of the new rating system, and better class balance overall should lead to a stronger next season.

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That sets a weird mindset in the community that 25-player runs are pugs, and 10-player runs aren't worth it.
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It's not wierd. It makes sense. Since 10's are harder, and the gear is worthless compared to 25 man drops. Doing it is not worth it.

I meant "weird" in the sense that someone unfamiliar with raiding probably wouldn't expect. Some players seem to be viewing Ulduar through the same lens just because Naxx was that way, which is understandable, even though we didn't intend for Naxx to be that way.

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Nowhere else in the game is "Bring the player, not the Class" as huge a failure as arena.

"Bring the player" was specifically a PvE mantra. While we definitely want to improve the standing of historically under-represented specs, we also recognize that class comp is one of the most interesting parts of making an arena team. While we want you to grab any say 5 healers and go to Ulduar (with a slight emphasis on class diversity), we don't think or necessarily want you to grab any 3 player classes and head to a 3v3. Trying to get specs that complement your weaknesses is a big part of building a team. Even with these changes, we're not looking for the Triple Elemental team, and if we see a lot of 3DK teams, I will cry on the inside (maybe the outside too).

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So am I to understand that you want the two raids 10, and 25 to require equal effort. With the only disparity that one requires 15 more people, and garners an entire tier gear of difference between them as a reward, while marginalizing individual effort?

No. The 10-player content will be a little easier, if for no other reason than there are logistical costs of trying to run the larger raid.

This model works:
10-player is easier
25-player grants better loot

This model does not work (which is a Naxx problem):
10-player is harder
25-player grants better loot

This model does not work (it kills 25-player raiding)
10-player is the same difficulty as 25
25-player has the same loot as 10

But this thread was mostly about PvP, so I don't want to keep derailing it with PvE questions. :)

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By that logic:

This model does not work (it kills 5vs5 Arena)
2vs2 has the same or less difficulty than 5vs5
5vs5 has the same loot as 2vs2

If the two formats have the same difficulty and 25-man raids dies off and 10-man raids survives when you offer the same loot, then you may want to consider the fact that perhaps 25-man should have died off a long time ago and you were just keeping it on life support with loot and that people will actually enjoy themselves more doing what they enjoy doing rather than doing what the top loot says what they have to do.

You know, this really kills a lot of our PvP hopes. You gave the impression that once you develop the capability to make BGs as difficult as Arena, the players will be able to choose the type of PvP activity they prefer, rather than being forced into Arena because that is where the top PvP loot is. However, judging from your PvE stance, it sound like you are more interested in using superior loot to artificially prop up formats you believe people will not participate in given equal difficulty.

In your example, there is a pretty big logistical difference between trying to organize a 5-player Arena team vs. trying to organize a 25-player raid. The Arena doesn't require consumables, doesn't have the same matrix of buffs or debuffs, doesn't take the same amount of consecutive time, and just isn't on the same scale -- even the smaller raid is twice as many players. (I am not talking at all about choosing players, which is a challenge for both situations, and I'm not at all comparing the difficulty of the actual combat experience).

Furthermore, the 2 and 3 player Arena matches are also more popular than the 5-player ones, which sort of supports my point (that loot efficiency is a powerful motivator, perhaps the most powerful.)

We don't feel we are artificially keeping 25-player raiding alive. By contrast, we hear all the time from raiding guilds that they just like the larger raids. They feel epic. They like the added complexity and power gained from having more players. Their guilds were organized around the larger groups (and many already had to painfully shrink once).

We just think 10-player vs. 25-player comes down to player preference. Maybe 3 vs. 5 does too. Perhaps in Ulduar you will see more 10-player pugs. We'll see.

We would LOVE to offer good gear through BGs, don't get me wrong. It's clear from this thread alone how many players enjoy BGs. In the case of "BG epics" it isn't a philosophical opposition to having better rewards. We just haven't figured out a great way to do it yet. YET. The usual pitches tend to come down to:

1) Just give everyone epics. Despite S1 and Naxx 25, this really isn't the goal. :)
2) Make it very random, like you have a small chance to get an epic. /wrist
3) Reward number of BGs won, which feels very grindy because the number would have to be large or you have situation 1 again. One of the things we like about both Arenas and raids is the gear rewards are gradual because of the lockout. You can't play 24/7 and gear yourself overnight.
4) Have organized BG teams. Yet, if you think the logistics (and queues) are painful for a 5-player Arena team or a raid....
5) Reward skill. This is the answer we like the best, but is also the hardest to institute. If you played many games, we could eventually get a sense for whether your presence helps determine whether your side wins or loses. But there are a lot of other factors at play -- how coordinated your side is, whether the other guys are AFK, is someone just honor farming, is someone griefing, etc.