Instead of Item Level number, who not..

[Granyala]

Instead of Item Level number on a new character stats pane, how about adding proving grounds "bronze, silver, gold, endless" medal next to it?

If they redesign PG so it's an actual measure of skill in terms of PvE: sure.
If it stays broken due to scaling and keeps teaching play that is not applicable to PvE: nope.

[Soisoisoi]

Proving grounds is closest to that I think

Proving Grounds do one thing;

• If you can't get Gold, you haven't bothered to read anything into your classes abilities, or, just can't read?
• If you have Gold, congrats you can read your spells and MIGHT just know the basics of your class.

Unfortunately, there's nothing really higher than that to judge someone without looking at their logs (which for most is too time consuming, inconvenient for starting PuG Raids), or getting a rough idea from their ilvl and previous achievements. Not that they are even close to good considering both are easily bought or cheesed somehow.

Personally, I think the old addon "Elitist Group" should be made default somehow. You could rate people depending on their ability and behaviour, I believe you could also leave notes etc. obviously you would have to be able to contest reviews else you'll just get idiots saying "lol this guy is a fkn n00b lolol faaag!"

A lot more info on the old thing here - http://www.wowinterface.com/download...tistGroup.html

[Pull My Finger]

Well, it's better to have official "benchmark" rather than something completely arbitrary. Community loves to self-segregate, people have different interests, it happens all the time, even IRL. You can do nothing about it, that's in our nature.

FFXIV has no addon support, has no official benchmarks, nothing. You know what's the first 3rd party tool community developed? A benchmark, a fucking DPS meter.

Well I don't know if it's in "our nature". In my personal life experience, the dumber the people, the more they tend to segregate. It's not a "nature" thing, it's a socialisation thing. Of course you can do something about it - what all smart, positive-attitude-people do: promote openness and inclusivity. Being a normal, relaxed person, not making a fuss of things. It's actually easy. People need that guidance by example. When they don't have that, they fall back into paranoid and excluding behavior patterns, it's based in fear.

Implanting systems however that promote and validate segregation definitely won't help.

[Mahmeya]

If proving grounds are tuned that they actually mean something, then why not.

But in this case, damage PG would need to make you care about positioning in beter way than NPC running around throwing bananas or mobs vulnerable only from one side.

And healer PG would need to mean something. I did Endless 12 without knowing what to do and never actually healing relevant content (healing WoD HCs in 680 ilvl is easy even for clueless person).

[Flutterguy]

Proving Grounds is a poor judge of capability and understanding. It's a very flawed evaluation tool.

[Deleted]

I doubt that would do anything.
All it does is give the chinese another service they can sell to people.

Aside of that I don't want to waste 2 hours in the proving grounds to reach whatever level.
Also the PGs don't require a lot of understanding of boss tactics, it merely requires the basics.

[Deleted]

The point OP was making is that this isn't necessarily true though. A player with 10 ilvl less and endless proving grounds will likely be more efficient than one with 10 ilvl more and silver in proving grounds. He's saying that gear is only one measurement of how skilled/efficient a player is, and others should be at least displayable for people to make their own choice.

Yes it's not the only, but it's the fastest and easiest to display and understand. Bigger number = better.
With Proving Grounds it's more information, either they condense that information down to a simple number or people will just stick with iLevel.


If you give iLevel 750 | PG: 13 for Player A and iLevel 765 | PG: 1 for Player B, yes but right now for raw power: iLevel trumps everthing.

[Yizu]

if they remove all cross realm grouping and merge servers maybe people would actually care to join a guild within their skill level and schedule, the way it is now nothing in the game encourages people to play better, to learn their class etc

[Paula Deen]

I really love your idea OP, BUT......



Seriously tho, this is a great idea, I would love to have this kind of thing on the pane along side my ilvl.

[Baconeggcheese]

They'd need to make proving grounds more... proving.

As it stands it doesn't mean a whole lot.

[Restors]

I remember judging people based on their performance, not pre-deciding based on numbers.

Gear / player score addon says high!

[Deleted]

Not sure that would mean much. I haven't even touched the proving ground this expansion beyond the minimum for group finding

This, a hundred times this. It is just an annoyance one has to deal with before you can use the lfd tool. And the only reason to touch the lfd tool is to get the ring.

[Feril]

Well, if proving grounds gave you a class/spec template that you can't "game" and gear is nullified so that everyone is completely the same save for pure skill, then it would be semi-useful as a measurement system.

But right now, item level is the best way to measure "raw" power level. Whatever you do with that power is up to you, and no proving ground medal will realistically show off how well anyone will perform outside of proving grounds.

[Deleted]

Proving Grounds is a poor judge of capability and understanding. It's a very flawed evaluation tool.

It scales so you can't overgear it and you can't get boosted so you actually have to do it by yourself.
It's not perfect, but better compared to item level which can just simply be bought with items in AH without having to know anything about your class.

[tithian]

Any removal of a Blizzard designed item level feature will just result in a third party one taking over. Unless they ban them which wouldn't happen.

It did happen though, with Gear Score, during Wrath. In an update they completely hid ilevel of equipment from the API which broke the addon.

Of course in Cata they did a full 180 and implemented GS in the basic UI

[Deleted]

Proving grounds is closest to that I think

More realistic would be to allow people to link a achievement of their choice next to their ilvl.

i mean proving grounds aren't very representative of actual content, and people will still ask you for curve regardless.

drawback/extra bonus of that ofc would be that you can't fake link achievements anymore.

[Mikael123]

So you want to replace one system which doesn't say much about the skill of a player, with another system which doesn't say much about a players skill?
Secondly, if Blizzard removes item levels, it will just mean the reintroduction og the addon gearscore.
Thirdly, what is it you try to accomplish?

[Deleted]

Still waiting for the LFG tool to let me tank heroics after I got tank silver on my shaman :<

[Deleted]

Simple: Higher ItemLevel means generally more power. More power means easier/faster dungeon runs. Nobody wants to play the game anymore, they only want the rewards as fast as possible. And Blizzrad trying to cater to their players instead of building a good game, makes it easier to select the fastest way of getting rewards.

It was always like that, for as long as raiding was a thing. People looked at your gear. Shocking, innit? It's for two reasons. One, if you know little, or even nothing, about a player, you pick based on gear, because, surprisingly enough, of two people playing their spec at 60% efficiency (which is what you'd expect from just a random player), the better geared one will prevail. Second of all, a fast run allows more leeway with tanking, healing, everything. Nobody wants to struggle through a raid they've done 10, 20, 30 times. Why would they?

But of course, let's make this about retail bashing. Baaaaw, baaaaw, muh nostalrius, vanilla was the best, people didn't look at gear, only at MAD SKILLZ, game so dumbed down now, everyone's a casual T__T

[Deleted]

It was always like that, for as long as raiding was a thing. People looked at your gear. Shocking, innit? It's for two reasons. One, if you know little, or even nothing, about a player, you pick based on gear, because, surprisingly enough, of two people playing their spec at 60% efficiency (which is what you'd expect from just a random player), the better geared one will prevail. Second of all, a fast run allows more leeway with tanking, healing, everything. Nobody wants to struggle through a raid they've done 10, 20, 30 times. Why would they?

But of course, let's make this about retail bashing. Baaaaw, baaaaw, muh nostalrius, vanilla was the best, people didn't look at gear, only at MAD SKILLZ, game so dumbed down now, everyone's a casual T__T

Yes people always did it, they always will. Difference is how easy it's made to do it.
Up to WotLK and the rise of Gearscore you looked at the items of the player, du needed to know what was fitting.
With gearscore everybody started only to look at one number, then Blizzard jumped in and provided iLevel as the "better" measurement.
And with the: "Gear always is okay for your spec cause the stats change to it" nobody needs to know shit about the gearing of any class. Just take the highest iLevel and you are okay. If you get the secondarys right you are good to go, and if you get down to theorycrafting you are amazing.
Before that you could get a high gearscore with shit and wrong gear for your class and before that you just had shit gear. It's getting easier to play the game okay, just because people are afraid of being just average at a game, they all want to be at least 'gud' at the games they play.