There has been a lot of posting about upcoming changes to PvP over the last 24 hours, here’s the most important ones:
Season 2 gear probably staying after Echoes of Doom:
[BLUE=“http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10697501811&pageNo=1&sid=1#2”]The honor items added in 3.0.2 are not really replacements for the merciless gear currently available. As such, this gear will not be replaced in 3.0.2. Players will still be able to get season 2 gear via the honor vendors. I believe season 2 gear will remain on the honor vendors for level 70 players after the launch of the expansion as well, though am not certain of this yet.[/BLUE]
Season 3 & 4 availability after Echoes of Doom:
[BLUE=“http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10638058347&sid=1&pageNo=5#94”]Season 3 and season 4 items should still be on the vendors after Wrath of the Lich King launches. This means you could technically buy this gear at level 80 if you so choose. Bear in mind though that players will have their arena points wiped around the launch of the expansion, and will be unable to create teams and acquire points and ratings until season 5 begins.[/BLUE]
Experience in BGs?
[BLUE=“http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10697502130&pageNo=1&sid=1#7”]Battlegrounds wins/losses and honorable kills will not award experience after the next patch, nor upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King. It could always happen somewhere down the road as we work to improve PvP progression, but there are no plans for changing this in the immediate future.[/BLUE]
Possible BG Changes:
[BLUE=“http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10532281614&sid=1&pageNo=2#22”]Actually, we have been discussing new battlegrounds quite a bit lately. Wrath of the Lich King will feature Strand of the Ancients (attack/defend) as well as Wintergrasp (non-instanced, world PvP).
But past that, we are exploring ideas that would involve expanding our Battleground content in future patches and beyond. We believe we have some strong ideas for improving Battlegrounds and PvP as a whole in the game and we’re definitely going to focus on improvements in the future. Now, it’s very early to be talking about some of this stuff but I think it’s important for the community to know that it’s on our minds.
Our general thought is that we could provide more BG content over time. The BG content that we could provide could be of higher quality with a higher degree of accessibility. Overall, we’d like to have more content and variety. We also want the gameplay experience in the BGs to be better directed. We’re also exploring the concept of a complimentary “competitive” bg system as well. Over time, we’d like the focus of PvP to shift back to being more BG-centric and more focused on Horde versus Alliance—the core of our game.
We’re also planning on improving some Battleground and PvP features in general. For example, we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. We’re also going to explore EXP gain through the PvP system as well as low level itemization to support that.
Please don’t take this post as a promise. This won’t be an overnight process. Not all of these things are set in stone and guaranteed to happen. It would take us a while to shift in this direction. But these are some of the current thoughts on the development team. I think it’s important for you guys to know some of our thought process in regards to PvP.[/BLUE]
PvP Itemization
[BLUE=“http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10544541923&pageNo=1&sid=2000#4”]To address the point of not having access to any pvp gear before attempting to start arenas, I don’t actually feel that’s accurate. We’ve made a point to include easily craftable pvp gear of dungeon quality to give players a chance to get their feet in the door before moving along the upgrade path.
The Savage Gladiator set is actually of item level 200s (superior), equivalent to the item level of a heroic instance. So, in much the same way that you might expect a player to first gear up in normal mode instances and get a handful of ilevel 187s items before proceeding to the heroics, the philosophy is that in the pvp case players will get the 187s crafted pvp items before attempting endgame pvp activity.
In addition, players have access to ilevel 200e (epics) for the boots, belt, bracers, ring, neck, trinket, cape exclusively through honor (equivalent item level to end-boss heroic instances, nax 10, or items from the Emblem of Heroism vendor). These items, combined with the crafted items, provide a pretty good base of items from which a player might make an entry into the arenas.
At that stage, the number of arena points required for a player to get a piece of Savage Gladiator equipment is tuned to be pretty generous. Even at a significantly sub-1500 rating, a player can generally get about a piece of the Savage Gladiator set with the points from one week (10 games), which is generally about a time investment of less than an hour of arena play per week. This seems to stack up very competitively with how long it might take running heroic instances to get a piece of gear for your character.
As far as the question as to why the Savage Gladiator set requires arena points, there needs to be a set of gear obtainable through arena points that requires no rating, otherwise there’s simply nothing for a player of 1500 or below to play for, beyond the hope that they might at some point go above 1600 rating (which not everyone is guaranteed to do).
It’s certainly valid to express one’s dislike for the arena playstyle, although is it entirely different than requiring players that love the arenas to play in the battlegrounds to get their boots, belt, bracer, rings, neck, trinkets, and cape? One could also make the argument that it’s somewhat similar to the fact that we “require” all players to level-up in order to participate in end-game content, or perhaps that engaging in tradeskills is “required” to be maximally competitive in raiding or pvp gameplay.
We’re also doing what we can to address the fact that players that don’t have high ratings can often still get steamrolled by highly rated players that are starting new teams, helping friends, etc. As I’ve described in another post, we have plans to keep a persistent “under-the-hood” rating for all characters that is used for determining matchmaking, so that even if a highly rated player starts a new team (or joins another low-rated team), the system will know what opponents that team should really be playing against.
That being said, the fact that some players feel there is too much emphasis on the arena as a method for getting powerful endgame pvp gear is heard and understood. We’d love for players to be able to get high-end gear from the battlegrounds, and it’s something that will definitely factor into our plans for the future. However for now, we don’t have a way to measure “skill” in a battleground in a way that getting the “best” items in the game through battlegrounds would feel equitable when compared to what is required as far as co-ordination and success in pve to get items of equivalent power.
Of course, I realize that the subject of “skill” is another topic of debate on its own, with many players citing gear quality and team comps as factors in determining the outcome (some seem to go as far as to imply that it’s all that matters). Clearly, those factors do influence the outcome, but not in a way that makes skill irrelevant. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be very hard to step onto the stage with some of the pro-gamers in the tournament and take them down in a match of even gear and comps. However, I can assure you that while I consider myself (for example) a pretty respectable player when it comes to arenas, I and a pair of similarly skilled teammates probably wouldn’t win more than 1 in every 100 games against the top players despite using identical gear and comps. Like it or not, that’s skill.
That aside, it is important for me to point out that the arenas were never really meant to become quite as much of a focal point for the overall pvp game as they have (part of why we set the system up so players could get the full benefit from the system with only 10 total games per week), it’s more of a natural consequence of the fact that because we have a way to measure success that feels reasonably balanced against pve, we’re able to put high-end items there, which on its own creates the focus of importance. I’d venture to say that if there were no item rewards in the arena system, they wouldn’t be quite the subject of debate that they are now (either with respect to overshadowing battlegrounds or with respect to the microscope that class balance gets put under as a result). [/BLUE]
PvP gear attained through PvE:
[BLUE=“http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10544541923&sid=2000&pageNo=4#76”]To put it simply, you can’t endlessly wipe on raid bosses and get these tokens. At some point, you have to succeed. Even then, the pvp gear you get from these tokens is 1 tier behind their pve value (ie: the ilevel 213 pve tokens from Nax 25 only get you “Hateful Gladiator” gear which is ilevel 200). It’s not possible to get the “best” pvp set items through pve.[/BLUE]
So, PvE gear attained through PvP in future?
[BLUE=“http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10544541923&sid=2000&pageNo=5#85”]For the most part (lack of tanking gear aside), if you have the highest-end pvp gear, you can do fairly well in a “tier behind” raid (ie: 10-man nax). So, for the most part that dynamic already exists.[/BLUE]
Rated BGs?
[BLUE=“http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10532282026&sid=1&pageNo=9#172”]I wish it were that simple. However, for a rating system to reasonably zero in on the skill of a single player in a game with teammates it takes a number of games approximately equal to ten times the number of players participating on that player’s team.
So for example, for a rating system to have all the information it needs to know to figure out how “good” of a battleground player you are in Alterac Valley, it needs to take about 400 games to do it (10 times the number of players on your team). Unfortunately, that’s without the additional complexities of being able to queue solo versus queueing as a group, etc.
It would be kind of annoying to have to play about 400 games of AV before the system could decide what items you’re eligible for. So, there are some complexities in creating a system to work around that problem (among others). [/BLUE]
