PvP Normalization is an RPG, and Game Design Failure

[Vojka]

OP is right to a degree, they made gear in pvp pretty much non-existent, and the statistics for participation in pvp really reflects how much FUN everyone is having.

It IS an RPG afterall, I think there needs to be a sense of 'player power progression' in pvp, maybe not to the extent of what we had in the past, but right now it feels so empty besides '1% stat increase every 10 ilvls'.

It is hard to strike a balance between fun and balance, right now we are way too skewed towards the 'balance' side of things, they have compromised too much with these templates.. What was said in the QnA about pvp templates is definitely a step in the right direction.

[Kallisto]

Yes and what a terrible decision that was - theres a very good reason all your dedicated pvpers quit wow

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WRONG

Bring back vanilla honor pvp hierachy system - the single best iteration of wow and the moment wow approached the pinnacle of mankinds immortal artworks

Ok Ok I get it. You just want to farm forever so you can gank lowbies and new max level because you don't have the skill to PVP against others of equal power.

[WowIsDead64]

Is this an RPG or isn't it?

Blizzard doesn't seem to be entirely sure.

GEAR SHOULD MATTER IN PVP

If you want to play chess, play chess - for everyone else, the players that work harder deserve better better gear, better stats, and increased power in PVP.

That doesn't mean make everything gear dependent - NO, there is such a thing as a balance, but if you want to motivate players to PLAY your game, you need to make it worthwhile to farm the gear.

IN NATURE, THE MAN THAT HAD THE MOST SKILL AQUIRED MORE FOOD AND GOT MORE POWERFUL, THE ALPHA MALE IS STRONGER BECAUSE OF THE FOOD (GEAR) THAT HE HAS BULKED WITH AS WELL AS HIS SKILLS.

Reflect reality in your game or see it die even more.

Unfortunately in PVE situation is exactly the same. 100500 ways of scaling makes your gear and stats worthless, cuz Blizzard want game to always have exactly the same difficulty level, making content potentially endless. Biggest problem - yeah, it's no longer RPG. It's arcade. Some sort of Super Mario platformer. Cuz RPG is about character customization and progression. No progression - no RPG. That's why I hate current direction of development.

[Alkizon]

A short answer to the title is YES, in the same degree as separate PvP talents. BUT! The same can be saying without Caps Lock and with sane and calm arguments. 1st system worked perfectly with resilience, honor and venders (there is no sense in complicating what already works quite efficiently and balanced), 2nd "sub-system" is part of working solid system, which in any case shouldn't be divided into parts in this game (I won't even mention how absurd some of these talents design is and how more stupid, longer and unbalanced such stuff compared with Honor system).

The main and most important thing is that previous design didn't detach any of these aspects from overall game design. These were the same rules as in PvE - system of obtaining, RPG-customizing and encouraging - whole organization was carried out with help of real RPG elements of customization - characteristics and stats (and yet easy divided scopes of activity). This is how any element in this game should work, rather than invent illogical, unreal, artificial "dividers". It's MMORPG it's solid World we have here!

I don't want to ascribe all this to only Holinka, but... someone must clearly be responsible for these stupidities.

WowIsDead64
Unfortunately in PVE situation is exactly the same. 100500 ways of scaling makes your gear and stats worthless, cuz Blizzard want game to always have exactly the same difficulty level, making content potentially endless. Biggest problem - yeah, it's no longer RPG. It's arcade. Some sort of Super Mario platformer. Cuz RPG is about character customization and progression. No progression - no RPG. That's why I hate current direction of development.

Agree! That's exactly why I don't want scold only Holinka. This is clearly new general direction and someone is more responsible for this

Venziir
I could mention so many rpgs which have nothing to do about gear or stats

*cough*, but seriously, in any case, design will be based either on this, or on mechanisms somehow replacing them. But this particular game wasn't created on basis of other conditions, what means that it's impossible to change rails, because it will be completely different game and different design. For the same reasons, I won't criticize shards-chanels world design, grind and upgrade system in games ex. kind of BDO. Simply: these games are completely made of this. So if you decided to play these games, you can be sure there is nothing to worry, game will last all its life under these conditions. For these reasons, I can safely avoid such games if it doesn't suit my play style, they're at least honest to themselves and with their community. But new Blizzard behave as sailor who returned from a long voyage - walking with swaying from side to side.

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Since we were talking about stats and characteristics...

System of rating characteristics was used for this, requirements for which grew with each level, and their numbers at the end of expansion (especially mandatory ones, with correct itemization) were excessive, thereby allowing them to grow further due to their redistribution by reforging. You repeat after people who write that items (as carriers of characteristics) are subject of discussion. This isn't true and this has already been explained more than once, since characteristics they give don't affect your mechanics, which is related exclusively to class mechanics, they complement only role part, and only "passively". Gear (as carriers of characteristics) isn't "that" borrowed powers, just lowest level of customization and urging/benefiting part of progress through content. And most importantly, they'll never become obsolete as long as they have at least 1 relevant characteristic or stat, and exists at least 1 character of appropriate level (I don't accept items' scalability within design of this game).

So, characteristics aren't same as borrowed powers.

There was conversation that old Blizzard did very cleverly when added rating characteristics at combat system (they're considered from calculation of requirement for needs at certain level). They didn't one-time damage/healing/health too big, they added rating, need value of which grew with level - they normalized character's performance in attack and survival (less/more miss/hit, crit frequency/size, swing/cast faster/slower, more/less damage pass/blocked relative to the base ones (without taking into account enemy's characteristics, own buffs/debuffs)), etc. It follows that growth of base stats per level and given to them by "new tier" will be very insignificant (+2-3 per tier, same true also for item levels, without wrong tf/wf mess), but secondary characteristics will grows much significant. So, deleteing following stuff that stupid people have been crying about was big mistake: like indicators of demands(hit, expertise, mastery (see further), mana restoration/spirit)/avoidence(evasion, parrying, defense, resistance)/secondary combat(haste, crit, multicast, liching)/universal (resilience, versatility). They helped characters grow without damage in form of their excessive amplification (which is also true for systems for improving/changing items' basic/secondary characteristics - RPG customization), so also reduced gap between characters of different levels (without using any unreasonable for the "game world" and silly mechanics like scaling, without making characters been with ridiculous overgrown powers in unreal short period of time and etc.), add part of justified for game world time-gate and catch-up mechanics and much more. Don't forget separate indicators of physical and magical mechanics - unlimited field for tuning and experimentation (together with some passive bonuses from old talents and much much more). Also, which shared and monitored progress for different areas of gaming activity (PvP/PvE).

tl;dr
1) tanking characteristics give bonus to effectiveness of "tanking" abilities (threat/damage/all-forms-of-avoidance), while damage abilities will naturally hit less because you'll have less common useful characteristics, hp-loss/receiving-damage in this case brings strong decrease in threat level without first ones; 2) outgoing heal significantly increases threat's level, and overheal even much stronger; 3) general PvE characteristics (hit/expertise/regeneration; don't confuse with generally useful ones) add efficiency bonus to all abilities for observing parameters of encounter (like soft-timers/resource-depletion/enrage, etc.); 4) resilience primarily affects only interactions between characters (for both having this characteristic: sums up for "supporting each other" abilities - maybe even up to a certain regeneration bonus with positive activity for healing/treating character, subtracted for "acting against" ones - up to significant decrease in effectiveness of recipient's "PvE tanking" characteristics = help attacker to partially ignore them), in other words, it gives that same increase in protection and damage in PvP activity and living without it will be very uncomfortable; 5) at the same time, if assumed, that its similar efficiency/work will be maintained in PvE, then group fully staffed in PvP stat will greatly lose in speed of achieving desired result due to insufficient PvE characteristics - they'll get misses/threat-disbalance/incoming-damage/insufficient-damage and regeneration to fulfill encounter's conditions; 6) since significant part of generally useful characteristics for PvE is taken (on items) by general PvE characteristics, and by resilence - for PvP, so generally useful characteristics/stats can remain here completely proportional to level of items received (~conditionally equivalent to each other) same as level itself, which makes use items "for other activity" still not entirely useless and creates some kind of similar to catch-up mechanics "in case of laziness/as last resort". 7) characteristics' efficiency isn't linear and grows along decaying/exponentially tending to absolute value, but never reaching it thereby creating its soft cap, only problem remains to determine stacking capacity of such within particular class, which, however, can always be compensated by talents of particular build)... in one of discussions we considered absolute case of separation, in which all white defense was replaced by "PvP-defense", and white attack by "PvP-attack" - as tier-bonus (by analogy with trinkets) from joint use of both PvP-weapons, but this deprives system of succession and catch-up functionality, which I don't like

Perhaps "pure vanilla" approach was a little dry, but I suppose if manipulate whole system of characteristics in gear at the same time, rather than twitch its different parts separately, everything will turn out much smoother.

Many, especially magic classes, were alarmed by behavior of such element (resistance) in PvP and PvE, but earlier there was characteristic of spell penetration for PvE, and for PvP this characteristic could, if question was correctly posed, be devalued up to 95% by presence of cap of resilience, everything can be easy and simple, you just need to not contradict logic.

Some reasoning about mastery
One more thing. Some people mentioned here about mastery (and about versatility, but everything is clear with last one, its problems are obvious, it doesn't perform functions assigned to it and devouring places of other stats/too universal, exactly cutting it out could serve as current thread's cause, and if there is solution/right&necessary stats, then it's simply becoming redundant), as I have already said many times, mechanism of its implementation was wrong. Consider situation of solid class, there're 3 branches with same number of X "talent's points" (yeap, I still don't see dividing ferals into two pieces as somehow right decision; and you can ask Doffen for my opinion about DH ; on the other hand, they can come up with more cunning division of type as in links-pictures below, while each talent will "act"/add-points in several of directions proposed there), there is Y "maximum number points that can be invested as a whole". We get kind of diagram in such form (it's triangle for our case) with "max dictance's direction" X, which reflects balance of mastery between them (sum of distances from figures' center to interior one's corners is Y). Thus, characteristic itself ceases to be tying/barrier factor (which it has always been, since Сata) for directions (so, you can safely exclude "closed" specializations, I don't think that this was reason for their closure, I have my own personal considerations on this account, but okay, topic isn't about that) and becomes characteristic for entire class. I.e. there's no locked mastery bonuses and direct characteristic gives corresponding "proportional" (Y - 100%, x1|x2|x3 - ?%) rating for each of "using" directions - depending on talent points invested in this or that one.

There is question of course: what to do then with professions? (stuff like this only putting big shame to devs, rather than honor) The same that they already did with old jewelry stones, they began to give a maximum of +10 base parameters, but parameters of secondary characteristics for such and more specialized (on secondary) stones could be very different per profession level. This applies to almost all professions that give such opportunity (alchemy/jewelry/enchanting/inscription, various specialized inserts from leatherworking/tailoring/engineering/blacksmithing etc). By the way, I don't really welcome removal of old reagents from the game, they didn't bother anyone.
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we discussed it recently and I added then, that base stats could also give less percentages per level and then there won't be need any stat squish at all; but I was told that this is very slippery road and with each level it will be necessary to calculate separately how much need to add "own-base" character stats (so that character doesn't become weaker with each level, but stronger), and this isn't always easy to determine; this general principle was laid down a long time ago and for some reason continues removed more and more over time or replaced by episodic characteristics (such as artifact's power) by new Blizzard
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On the other hand, I still think that in order not to "increase" numbers on gear, then, as minimum, it's worthwhile, within limits of "characteristics displayed on item", to display real bonus of this secondary characteristics compressed from level (moreover, cutting percentage of mandatory "dividing content sphere" (preferable to a greater extent only for PvP (res) or PvE (hit, exp, "avoidance", kind of threat generation bonus, etc)) characteristics should be much stronger than others, which means that player, first of all - at the beginning of expansion, will "customize" (some words about itemization's organisation here) (professions, choose from proposed items) these indicators (soft/hard caps), which, with next comming equipment, will be more for this "tier~ilvl" and player will switch to choice of secondary indicators, that amplifying character directly (perhaps, even in form of "deteriorating secondary necessary ones, for the sake of reinforcing secondary power" by professions' stuff, which will put needs of reforging in not much essential position), which will entail urgent need in switch to "new" ilvl with character's lvl growth (with deleting stupid "drop/reward's scaling"). And! all this is true also for all professions' products of customizing, so there're no problems with characters' "forcing" transfer to new recipes. In this case, I think, it makes sense to decide on "floor and ceiling" in order not to generate abnormal (negative/fractional/infinit) numbers.
Simplified example: same item displays for 10lvl character 50 hit/exp/def/etc points for getting rating, and for 50lvl already 1, but number of points for acceptable rating indicator of both are the same...

As I didn’t like almost linear dependence back then, still don't. Graph should rather be something more like flatter logarithm, which strives for certain value, but never reaches it (increase in efficiency slightly exceeds linear value at first, and then sharp drop occurs, which will be based on existing mathematical function and these incomprehensible percentages won't needed; at the same time, spell bonuses give increase not to percentage, but to quantitative indicator of characteristic, although in case of personal buffs this can vary from class to class using specific coefficient *heavy breathing with looking at s&d*), while percentage to total points' value is calculated from requirements of particular level (as it happened always before) and taking into account class (specific talents) individual possibilities of modernizing this value (with correct ratio latter one isn't even much necessary). Do you know what gets in the way of this approach? - scaling (all its levels bring certain amount of chaos to calculations) and current unification of level as absolute value (this is if we assume that you're now forever stuck on reaching level 60); although they're already usually trying to bypass it by raise percentage requirements(cost of each percent)/characteristic&ilvl squish at each expansion, which means this isn't insurmountable.

Let's take a look at hast for example: reaching absolute value (no matter for what level), which is 100%, will stream to these mythical cutoffs of 100% of total (any) casting/hitting time to 0 ms (instantaneous value, even without GCD+0,5s of its untouchable part ); for greater importance, it remains only to figure out at what point "bend" is most adequate, as well as indicator of its "sharpness". Indicators/abilities that give absolute value (aka 100%) don't add anything to characteristics, but simply temporarily replace that value for character('s spell formula).

ps. In connection with all of the above, not looking at fact that what Blizzard did with stat squish now was right direction, but it's implementation was organized very illiterately.

So, control by "stats and characteristics" philosophy works like this (from here):

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I can even fantasize over some stupid "addition" as a parameter (and design of this game was initially completely tied to control only through characteristics, but not the way they trying to push in last expansions). For example: raid gear will have separate additional line that will add a couple of percent of "benefits" in case when there are more than 5 people in the group (but only! raid gear) or something else trickier, but only! as characteristic. I hope you got the gist. Let's call it just for laughter "team spirit". This will some kind as resilience was for PvP, but for raid content. Here you go, now you have "your" content separate. If you do everything right, you don't even need higher ilvl (same for PvP) But what is now not making this part separate, only allowing "cheating with progress" and even worse - delivering huge demand for RNG to the market. Yes, I know that this role was performed by tiers earlier ("progress" carrot, addition for harder PvE part of content, little class tuning for its specifics, the only problems were 1) not(completely unreasonable demands) to overdo with such bonus, 2) not to lose logic during disconnectability/moderation, therefore, based on both points, manipulation with characteristics is much more neat and simpler, bonuses directly affecting performance tend to create a catastrophic gap between modes/classes/players, in any case, a significant separation between "PvE and PvE" is not recommended = since it's worth observing progress' ranking within limits of similar content activity, so "fake elite as source of toxicity" will cluster in places of final more universal loot (thereby protecting/freeing up space for "ordinary people" ...and here it's just appropriate to point out once again that M+ in its current form was/is/will always stay a crappy design decision), but its actual usefulness won't significantly outplay casuals in ordinary content), but since they conflicted with new designers' stormy "revolutionary" spirit to change everything, so now they don't work, and they're absent in new content.

Also from here:

They weren't useless, they were at same time: players strength's grows limiter + timegate/requirements + catch-up mechanics. They limited number of "reinforcing" characteristics, created certain requirements for participation in a specific level/area of content (separator on demand and required quantity), at the same time were more (faster) accessible over time (expansion progress, due to professions and variability of already available equipment).

And stuff from here and here about their demand, growth and balancing.

Also about forcing cross-(PvPvsPvE)-activity and solid design:

Forcing would look like demanding of guaranteed/inevitable participation (which, for correct option, doesn't negate possibility of such participation) by them in specific undesirable activity in order to achieve greater success in desired one, but neither open world, and therefore nor dungeons/BGs shouldn't impose such requirements, and, as mentioned earlier, conditional separation takes place through characteristics area, since they're the only controlling link in this game, condition of progress and content accessibility (in any case, game was created on basis of these conditions), and since they're universal (cross-class and inter-activity, have no restrictions on work and use), so game design remains solid. But this is if we're talking about correct implementation, and not this stuff like best gear for "PvP" with demand for "PvE" participation, their new "funny" ideas with "PvP" essences for "potential PvE" talents, etc. and this all is echo of previously wrong division decisions.

Some words about complexity of tuning from here:

If it's about "current playerbase" then don't know, it could be, may be. But I couldn't name any of my friends whom I could include in these 99% back then, if to make discount on "tolerance", so let it be 50%, but in fact there were not so many as you think. Yes, not everyone did it well, but they made attempts to understand, mash the brain at least. We aren't even talking about this, but about whole system (classes(mechanics)+talents+stats/characteristics+tuning=RPG), it was much less complicated before! easier to analyze and understand than now. Naturally, yes, you don't need to understand it to play now, but if you suddenly will want, it'll probably take more time... and for what? Most of dependencies and information are not even tied to your character, but lying around somewhere in the mud (PvP talents, Azerite armor, etc.) tightly adhered to it and not accessible to you. Therefore, as one of the most lazy, but curious people, I would gladly change current system to old one at any time.

Oh now I understand (after all I wrote here), why my new friends laughed at my perplexity in questions about characteristics at first. I was just trying to unnecessarily complicate the system, which in turn would entail crossing and breaking of dependencies, and as a result, subsequently to almost guaranteed errors... Well, did reach something myself at least

ps. Still they continue with rental $hit instead of working with adequate characteristics.

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...someone else's post

Kralljin
For me personally, a big charm that Hit (or ARP, which is also a stat that has had a hardcap) was that its value varied between classes.
In TBC right now, the value of hit vastly varies between specs (or rather, how much they need).

You have a spec like Elemental or Arcane that have massive amount of Hit just due to talents, they barely need any gear with Hit, whereas something like Warlock needs a ton of hit.
Anything item that has hit is naturally more suited for Warlocks, whereas items that doesn't have hit, is more suited for those specs.

Similiar story with Arp.
It was by definition a Physical dps only stat, but due to how the stat worked, specs like Ret or Enhance didn't favor it, whereas something like Fury or BM, who exclusively dealt physical damage obviously wanted lots of it.

It created a natural inclination that certain items are more built towards a given spec, with a pretty straight forward understanding why they're more favored by a given spec.

Perhaps those stats should be so rare that it's unrealistic to reach a given hardcap, altough that can obviously breed a lot of frustration, again, largely due to Weekly chest / Personal loot.

ARP had a hardcap, yet i don't think most physical dps were happy to see it gone.

I don't think stats with a hardcap are fundamentally a bad concept, it think the big issue however is that hit devolved from a pretty rare and sought after stat to something you just had from day one, especially with Reforging it just became a foregone conclusion to be hitcapped and there was little variety to them later on, it's "everybody needs the same amount of hit, there is no variance, no stat that works only some specific specs".

[Venziir]

I agree with some of your points gear should matter because it's a choice. Wow isn't a high apm game and doesn't require insane reflexes it's about choices.

The reality + wow argument is dumb it starts a slippery sloppy that can neuter the fun in this game cause the amount of head scratching shit that takes place is headache inducing.

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Role playing game are about stepping into another person shoes. Stats and gear help define a character they're a critical part of life and role playing games. He's on to a point but can't express himself in a serious way.

I could mention so many rpgs which have nothing to do about gear or stats

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

I could mention so many rpgs which have nothing to do about gear or stats

That doesn't change the fact those things help shape a character. I can name role playing games with no leveling system as well does that not make leveling a stable of the role playing genre?

Leveling is just aging or wisdom.
Stats can separate you character from another and define core parts of your character.
Gear is you appearance which people take pride in or gives you attribute like more armor or some shit.

The point is gear helps you role play and so do stats. Are they mandatory for a role playing game nope but they add to the game when done correctly.

He had a point he just brought it up in the dumbest way possible, I'm actually impressed.