Why hasn't Blizzard abandoned arenas?

[PizzaSHARK]

In the sense of using arena data as a factor in balance.

As far as I'm aware, the vast majority of PvP that takes place in WoW is in random BGs - since this is where the most people play, this should be the focus for your game. I'm sure the hardcore arena players will start screaming at me now, but they need to accept that they're an increasingly small niche, and I don't see that changing.

To me, this means that rated Battlegrounds should be where Blizzard pulls the majority of their data from for use in making balance decisions; arena does not translate well to the random Battleground environment, while rated Battlegrounds do.

A lot of the things that make people get frustrated with PvP (which, again, for most people is random BGs) exist solely because of the emphasis placed on 3v3 arena as a balancing factor. The first things that come to mind are healers being extremely difficult to kill, and the sheer amount of disables in the game. Kills in arena games are often made through forcing cooldowns with disables, and then doing it again once DR timers have reset to secure the kill. Likewise, healers in arenas must be very hard to kill, otherwise there would be little reason to bring a healer along.

Because BGs allow unlimited respawns and include more players (which also means more classes available), this results in a lot of potential silliness that can't really go away unless they want to also separate arenas and BGs... which would require a lot of work and be pretty dumb.

So, again - why are Blizzard using 3v3 arena as a balance focus when, since the vast majority of players just play random BGs and little else, rated BGs are a much more relevant source to draw data from?

[Razorice]

Because Arenas are one of the most fun things to do in the game. They're also challenging.
Random BG's are mostly run by bots and people who, well, suck.

[mistahwilshire]

IMO most of the changes made with PvP in mind are for the random BG players. They're the ones that complain the most. The majority of decently ranking arena players I know just deal with it and don't care to spend time getting vocal about changes. All the forum threads you see full of people clamoring for PvP changes are random BG players and often not even frequent random BG players.

[The Kao]

More like, they missed the correct time to abandon them (that was when they were in development during BC beta) and only found out later that the concept was lacking. Ever since then they could not remove arenas without admitting mistakes, losing face, and more understandable, getting a rather big portion of their community raging hard. It's a lot easier to just leave it be. The balancing around 3v3 would then be a convenient way to give arenas artificial meaning.

[Deleted]

I'm not a pvp player, but I don't understand it since the release of the arena in 2007.

Every battleground is build around a certain established type of pvp-gameplay (basically inspired by fps): Capture the flag, domination, assault etc.
Last man standig (arena) was taken out of the normal battleground rotation, probably because a lms-game is much shorter than a ctf-match. Blizzard wanted to offer a quick-to-join-fast-to-play-pvp-mode, with fights, that only take a few minutes (at best).

But with this decision they created two parallel universes of pvp gameplay which doesn't really fit together.

In my opinion it would have been better to create a last man standing battleground (big arena) with 10 vs. 10 players and (let's say about) 3-5 rounds with changeovers etc.

= Less balancing issues; more friends; more action

[Srg56]

So, again - why are Blizzard using 3v3 arena as a balance focus when, since the vast majority of players just play random BGs and little else, rated BGs are a much more relevant source to draw data from?

Because the random people playing BGs don't know the game enough to care enough to whine about it on the forums, while the arena fanatics are an extremely small niche which if pushed too far will whine so much the forums will drown.

Because Arenas are one of the most fun things to do in the game. They're also challenging.
Random BG's are mostly run by bots and people who, well, suck.

Because arenas are <insert subjective personal prefference>. They're also hard to get into.
Random BGs are mostly run by <insert personal experience> and people who aren't as good at the game as i am, so they don't count.

Well..where do you get your numbers from and how do you know what Blizzard uses mainly as data (and how they weight it) to balance pvp?

Random BGs are..well..random. With pretty random match ups. I say pretty random because I hope there is at least some rudimentory matchmaking so you don't get 10 healers vs 10 dps in a BG....

As IF you need hard numbers to see the self evident. So you're actually arguing that there are more people playing arenas than BGs? Blizzard has said numerous times that the game is balanced around 3v3, and if you need proof, just look at healers, and how they can survive extreme punishment. They are obviously designed to not only keep themselves alive but other players around them. A good healer needs at least 2 players damaging them, and coordinating their interrupts. This leads to ridiculous scenarios where if you put 3 healers at a flag in to defend it, you will not be able to capture that objective, because you need exponentially more dps than healers.

[PizzaSHARK]

As IF you need hard numbers to see the self evident. So you're actually arguing that there are more people playing arenas than BGs? Blizzard has said numerous times that the game is balanced around 3v3, and if you need proof, just look at healers, and how they can survive extreme punishment. They are obviously designed to not only keep themselves alive but other players around them. A good healer needs at least 2 players damaging them, and coordinating their interrupts. This leads to ridiculous scenarios where if you put 3 healers at a flag in to defend it, you will not be able to capture that objective, because you need exponentially more dps than healers.

And, amusingly, this is almost literally the only reason (Frost Mages being the other) I didn't get massively into PvP with Cataclysm. Rated BGs? Hearing that, and that they'd be given importance in the world of balancing, was like a wet dream.

Then you play the game and see it's actually balanced around arenas, which leads to RBGs being hilariously stupid... and, well, I guess I went soft pretty fast.

But as someone said above, removing arenas as a balance focus would be Blizzard admitting that they made a mistake - and their inability to do that is, in my opinion, by far their greatest shortcoming as a company and as a game developer.

[panterarules]

And, amusingly, this is almost literally the only reason (Frost Mages being the other) I didn't get massively into PvP with Cataclysm. Rated BGs? Hearing that, and that they'd be given importance in the world of balancing, was like a wet dream.

Then you play the game and see it's actually balanced around arenas, which leads to RBGs being hilariously stupid... and, well, I guess I went soft pretty fast.

But as someone said above, removing arenas as a balance focus would be Blizzard admitting that they made a mistake - and their inability to do that is, in my opinion, by far their greatest shortcoming as a company and as a game developer.

When RBG's came out they did balance PvP around them (eg. the addition of many aoe cc's) and so many people complained about how they were balancing around battlegrounds that blizzard stopped. Many top PvPer's left the game in cata due to the focus on RBG's.

At the end of the day all the most well known PvPers arena, it has a huge community with tournaments. Take that away, you not only lose those PvPers but most likely their following as well.

As to balancing around random BG's OP, i really hope you're trolling. It is the most unorganised and terrible PvP i've seen in just about any game. You're example is just that, an example of unorganised PvP where 15 players can't take down a healer. Do you really want to balance a game around a bunch of people who don't need to communicate and work with each other? Is that not the reason you play online games?

[PizzaSHARK]

When RBG's came out they did balance PvP around them (eg. the addition of many aoe cc's) and so many people complained about how they were balancing around battlegrounds that blizzard stopped. Many top PvPer's left the game in cata due to the focus on RBG's.

So?

At the end of the day all the most well known PvPers arena, it has a huge community with tournaments.

No, it doesn't. I mean, sure, it has tournaments, but the community isn't huge - especially not compared to the many, many more people who don't give a crap about "competitive PvP" (fucking lol) and just queue for a few BGs between raids or to have a little fun. There's no point in balancing the game around a comparative handful of (extremely vocal) players when the majority of the playerbase plays a gamemode that's at best tangentially related to it.

Rbgs are mostly just an unbalanced clusterfuck of aoe dmg and some spam cc on the healers.

... Because PvP is designed and balanced around arenas. Which is the point of the thread.

[Rorschachs]

Random bgs aren't as fun. If they changed them and made them all a little smaller, and maybe add those announce features and maybe made the bg minimaps a little bigger.. Battlegrounds need some more factors to make them more fun and need some adjusting to be taken seriously in rated gameplay.

I hope in the future expansions they stop adding new stuff like scenarios, pet battles and whatnot and just keep focusing on what they have currently and try perfecting them.

[CHRONICGODX]

because 3v3 is the only bracket that has any, ANY bearing of skill involved.

[PizzaSHARK]

because 3v3 is the only bracket that has any, ANY bearing of skill involved.

So? Very few people give a rat's ass about "skill" - they just want to have fun. And currently, PvP isn't particularly fun, and the disconnect between what PvP is balanced around and how it's typically played is a major contributing factor to that.

[Deleted]

because 3v3 is the only bracket that has any, ANY bearing of skill involved.

Except it's dominated by the top 2~3 combos. 2v2 has historically been the most unbalanced bracket but this season it seems way more balanced than 3v3 though matches tend to last as hell since one DPS takes ages to bring down a healer alone.

[Kuniku]

So? Very few people give a rat's ass about "skill" - they just want to have fun. And currently, PvP isn't particularly fun, and the disconnect between what PvP is balanced around and how it's typically played is a major contributing factor to that.

Just because you don't enjoy arena there are a LOT of people that do, I agree there is a problem where Arena geared people play against green wearing clothies who get one shotted, and that PvP is very difficult to get into mid season because you have to spend days getting your ass handed to you because you die in seconds because you don't have the gear yet.

Arena is a lot of fun once you've got the gear and skill to be competative, which is the same for BG's as well, its a problem where neither is fun until that point though.

But 3v3 is where the majority of the competative PvP is played, random BG's aren't competative PvP because nobody cares about them, they're like heroics - there to be used to gear up in.

[melodramocracy]

Random bgs aren't as fun. If they changed them and made them all a little smaller, and maybe add those announce features and maybe made the bg minimaps a little bigger.. Battlegrounds need some more factors to make them more fun and need some adjusting to be taken seriously in rated gameplay.

I find random BG's to be the most fun implementation they have. Arena is pvp under a microscope, and gets old pretty quickly. Rated BG's = 10 vs 10 on a map designed to accomodate 4x that amount = zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Rateds should have been implemented in a way that the game takes your personal w/l record, and places you in a random with folks that have a similar record.

Randoms are exactly that. You never really know what you're going to be up against, how well they'll play together, etc. Your team may be awful, or not. It's fun because of that.

Still, as far as the OP's point? Arena is probably still the best methodology for attempting *cough* to balance the pvp side of things. Fewer variables, which oddly enough, is a concept they don't seem to follow themselves

/just my .02

[Bobzor]

Yea, and raiders should just accept that the majority of PvE encounters are between a single player and a quest mob. So let's balance the game accordingly...

I win every random BG I set my foot in by just graveyard camping people like OP. It doesn't need balancing.

[Lumast]

Whole lot of people in this thread that don't understand pvp at all. You have fun when you play with 9 random people that are awful?

[Deleted]

3v3 and 5v5 is fun, but I don't see why Blizzard haven't abandoned 2v2 because of the imbalance that occur in it.

[Metallikiddd]

cause they need to fire kalgan first. then they can delete arenas.


oh yea, then undo every pve nerf since day 1.

[Deleted]

Because the only thing where PvP played seriously is still just arenas. People play rbg's because blizzard decided to give more cp and higher caps from rbg's if they wouldn't have done that they would be even more dead than arenas. Also, you balance the stuff which is competitive (arenas) not the stuff which isn't competitive (random bgs). Random bg's can be taken even less seriously than arenas also because they are just infested by bots and shit players, no need to "balance" that.