Structured PvP (arenas) - suggestions

Grimzar

From what I have read there will be instanced pvp in form of arenas with ranking system.
I know that it is super fun to smack noobs whole day long with your BIS equipment but my suggestion is to make structural pvp more balance.
GuildWars2 could be an example where every one is on the same level gear and stats wise, with some gear templates allowing to tweak player stats. Boosting some while sacrificing others. It would make instanced pvp more balance and fair to those who can't spend whole day farming, but still want to enjoy a little afternoon pvp battle.
This would be applied only for small scale arenas up to 5 players.

From my experience with WOW for example, I really enjoyed arena pvp only in one expansion where they introduced pvp gear templates, where players power difference would be max 5-10%. So I finally could stand a chance vs players who plays X times more than me. Without it, playing arenas was like being smash by truck over and over hoping for noobs enemies...

What do you guys think?

Jimmy

I would rather have a PvP defining stat like resilience/pvp power. I don't like templates or scaling.

If there were a defining stat then even someone who doesn't play as much will eventually get all of the required gear and be on a level playing field.

I don't like the idea of a skilled player being 90-95% as powerful as equally skilled player if they only put in 50%, or less, of the time. I understand the desire for that to be so but I play gear/loot focused MMOs to feel my character and my skill in playing them become more powerful over time and then being rewarded for that. I'm not interested in LoL, CoD, CS:GO, etc.

We also don't know if there will be seasons and gear sets etc. I'm hoping that Arena can provide a fulfilling endgame for people who wish to focus on it but from what I can tell from reading the forums I am in the minority.

I personally hope for a possible endgame breakdown close to as follows:
40% Arenas
20% Misc PvP/Real World/Node Objectives
20% Dungeons/Raiding
20% Professions


What would your desired personal endgame breakdown be?

Caeryl

Custom builds are important in an RPG, reverting players to templates is a good way to ensure hardly anyone would play Arenas.

There should be a system that takes into account level, gearscore, and winrates. I don't know that there should be any hard splits within those categories, as that just increases wait times.

Jimmy

Caeryl wrote: »

Custom builds are important in an RPG, reverting players to templates is a good way to ensure hardly anyone would play Arenas.

Exactly this. Players enjoy seeing how their choices make their character performs.

Caeryl wrote: »

There should be a system that takes into account level, gearscore, and winrates. I don't know that there should be any hard splits within those categories, as that just increases wait times.

Arena should either only be available to max level players or have level brackets. I'm not certain there should be a ranking system for people not at max level.

I'm of the opinion that gearscore should only directly affect character performance and have no direct impact on matchmaking or rating won/lost.

Win rate shouldn't make an impact on matchmaking as teams can play a significant amount of games and as long as they are above a 50% win rate and the system isn't broken they will climb in rating/ranking over time. Now, if somehow 4 teams within the same range queue up at the same time then I can see how win rate could be used as a deciding point putting the two highest win rate teams against each other. That wouldn't affect the points won/lost in either match though as it would be based on both teams rating. Did I miss the point on this?

I would prefer a simple Elo rating system.

Now to a bigger question, should ratings be tied to your character or tied to teams? Should it be a PR/TR system where you have a personal rating on the team and to be rewarded you have to be within a set % of the teams rating and have played a set % of the teams games? It's much more fun to have teams but having the rating tied to each character is a much cleaner system. What do you think?