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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsNew Arena system: you suck more than you know
by Zach Yonzon 
Feb 4th 2009 at 1:00PM
Well, the changes to the Arena system haven't made the game any more fun for people. Players are still reporting losses on winning records, and Slorkuz hops over to the official forums to explain things. The short version is: if you're winning games and dropping in ratings, it's because you suck. You do. The system has been tracking your level of suck and adjusting your wins to bring your team rating down to the appropriate level of fail. Of course, Slorkuz puts it more diplomatically than that.He mentions that the new 'hidden rating' which determines the matchmaking process remembers your original ratings. Players who routinely dropped to 1200, for example, and reformed teams at 1500 are recognized by the system and are promptly put in their place -- even if they win. This is because the new system is correctly matching those players with others who suck equally. So, let me get this straight... because you're beating other players who don't have much skill to begin with, they're worth less points?
The sad reality here is that you're a marked man. Or woman. The system has been watching your Arena performance for an unrevealed length of time and now adjusts your personal and team ratings accordingly. In many cases, that's downwards. There's no way to get a fresh start, even with new teammates, because the system has tracked your 'skill', which apparently is nothing more than your win-loss record. The only way out of this slump is to keep winning, according to Slorkuz. The idea is that your hidden, personal, and team ratings all have to converge before it starts moving towards a (hopefully) better direction.
I understand the system the way it's explained. It makes sense. What doesn't make sense is how the system was unleashed to the community without a proper introduction. Or why. Breaking in a new system while a season is already underway is insanely bad. I mean, the official calculator on WoW Armory doesn't even reflect the announcement that teams below 1500 earn the same as a 1500 rated team. A detailed explanation would've been welcome, specially for changes of this magnitude. Their slew of blue posts revealing everything piecemeal is just a horrible way to go about it. In fact, it feels like Blizzard is deliberately keeping everything mysterious because they're still tweaking the system.
It's no fun for anyone to win and end up with a losing record. A win is a win. In the NBA, for example, if the Lakers win against the top-seeded Celtics, it's chalked up as a W right up there when the Lakers beat the lowly Clippers. It's the same thing. In what twisted universe does winning games result in getting lower ratings? It might make sense technically, Gaussian Density Filter and all that, but on a human level, as a player, it's just no fun.
You would think that Blizzard, in their great experience and success with game design, would be aware of this. If anything, it seems like the new system has become even more prohibitive and unenjoyable to a larger player base. If their aim was to make Arenas more enjoyable to more players, a lot of feedback from players tells me that they might have missed their mark.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, PvP, Arena
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 6)
Haar Feb 4th 2009 1:14PM
It's just like the BCS only better!
jrizutko Feb 4th 2009 4:49PM
Exactly!
Its a system designed to impart some measure of objectivity on a complex comparison. It has a clearly established goal, and it achieves that goal, but people are upset because they wish it had a different goal, so they blame the system instead of analyzing the reason for that goal.
Strahl Feb 4th 2009 1:19PM
All it's doing it keeping those people from playing for a week, losing 10 games, and then re-rolling the team the next week. It's 100% fair. If you're terrible at arena, and you re-roll a team, you'll continue to have a terrible rating because... well... you're terrible at arena.
Kinsbane Feb 4th 2009 2:35PM
I agree, but wouldn't it be easier if they just made you keep whatever your personal rating was even if you switch teams? They keep track of it anyway, why not make it so it simply sticks with you until you work to legitimately improve it?
Jar Jar Feb 4th 2009 1:20PM
Welcome to the beginning of the end for pvp, first wintergrasp fail, now this. I don't see any reason to pvp at all. Thanks for ruining a fun part of the game Blizzard.
blackw21 Feb 4th 2009 3:28PM
Wintergrasp Fail?
It seems to be running fine to me. If fact i've done about half a dozen in the last 2 days with know issues. Not sure what you are talking about except maybe a bugg a few weeks back that they fixed, are you living in the past?
Chronus Feb 4th 2009 9:15PM
"because you're beating other players who don't have much skill to begin with, they're worth less points?"
1. Precisely correct. I see nothing wrong with this. Should I gain the same amount of respect from stepping on a toddler as beating a master MMA practitioner?
2. The NBA isn't necessarily right. It isn't the God of competitive gaming, so even if they do it, that does not mean WoW has to do it; don't forget that basketball is a spectator sport that depends on turnout--and no fan wants to see his or her team being counted as less.
3. As a counter point, every game that uses the ELO system adjusts the amount of points you gain from opponents depending on their skill.
4. Agreed, however, on that it doesn't make sense to *decrease* points from winning, if only to please the fools who can't understand that their arena ratings are inflated right now.
smi04 Feb 4th 2009 9:26PM
"don't forget that basketball is a spectator sport that depends on turnout--and no fan wants to see his or her team being counted as less"
Exactly. No arena player wants to see this either, and the arena system is just as dependant on the turnout of low rated players.
Arkangell Feb 4th 2009 1:21PM
I haven't played an arena game in my WoW career, so flame me all you want. From an outsider's perspective, the blue post seems extremely logical and fair. You guys pick your own team mates, so if your rating drops because of a bad teammate, and you switch teams, your damn right your rating should stick with you to the new team. I think they should do a reset after every season (in my ignorance, they very well might) to keep it fair. But just because the Lakers trade Kobe to the Clippers doesn't mean that all of a sudden the Clippers are the best team in the league. They still have to WIN games in order to be ranked higher. Now, if the issue is that people are winning arena games, but are accumlating a loss stat for actually winning, then that is a problem. However, the way I interpreted the blues post, was that the ratings will average out over what the player has done record wise in the past. Assuming that is collectively to one season, I think that's as fair as it gets.
Nick S Feb 4th 2009 1:53PM
Your analogy is misleading, for reasons you stated later in your post.
It's like trading a player from a bad team, then marking an "L" in the W/L column whether the team he's now on wins or loses, just because he's bad.
Arkangell Feb 4th 2009 2:16PM
I agree that it was probably not the best analogy. The bottom line though, is that if you win games, your rating will go up. Which is exactly the point of ratings. There are several posts I agree with however on the flip side. There should be an equal amount of points that are distributed, you definitely don't want an abundance of negative or positive points in the 'bank' so to speak. What I'm saying, is that if a team plays another equal team, it should be a +x for the winning team and a -x for the losing team, where x is the same amount. Two 1400 rating teams should not receive separate values for winning and losing, this created a surplus of either positive or negative points that can never be evened out. That being said, if a 1400 team plays a 1800 team, the ratings should be equal as well. It makes perfect sense that if the lower rating teams wins, a bigger number should be used to adjust the ratings, and vise-versa. In the end, I think the important part is not allowing a different coefficient for each team. Each game should put out a specific ratings adjustment based on the two levels that are playing, be it +/- 10 or +/- 100.
M Feb 4th 2009 2:37PM
Well, on one hand, trading a single player to a large-number team won't necessarily affect their overall position much. But trading a partner in an arena team would. It would be like trading half of your hypothetical basketball teams membership. If the half you received were in the "suck" category, there's a stronger likelihood that the combined efforts of this new team would tend towards "suck" as well.
It's why battlegrounds are better than arenas, in my opinion. More well-rounded teams, rather than a few FOTM combos.
Mediumwell Feb 4th 2009 1:22PM
I am not sure what is going on with Blizzard. I have been playing WoW since original beta and things only recently seem to have changed at a corporate level. Old Blizzard would not released such a broken system.
Maybe Blizzard rewarded some of the original WoW developers with a position on one of the new games in an effort to boost the development quality of those titles.
Whether that is true or not, they need to get things fixed with their bread and butter game by reversing this new trend of undocumented "features" and unbalanced class design.
Duffy Feb 4th 2009 1:22PM
The system makes perfect sense, and your NBA analogy is flawed. You ignored that the NBA are professional athletes; top level players in their sport. There is no such distinction in the Arena, anyone and everyone can play despite different skill levels.
The new system no longer rewards you for beating the worst players in Arena, you are only awarded for beating players of a certain caliber similar to you, and each "level of skill" has it's own range of quality teams.
In all honesty I'm surprised it took them this long to implement it, and I personally now find Arenas worthwhile.
Arkangell Feb 4th 2009 1:23PM
I couldn't agree with you more. If anything, this layout makes me want to go see what Arenas are all about now.
Rob Feb 4th 2009 2:35PM
Yeah me too. I avoided arena since season 1 because of the huge skill/gear issues. I'm not that good, i don't want to be. i want to play and have fun with a friend. It's not a crime. I'm glad blizz has this new rating scheme now. I just wish they were more forthcoming about it.
B1ueliner Feb 4th 2009 1:24PM
It was bad enough with 1 rating, worse when they put 2 ratings in, and now terrible with 3 ratings in. When will they learn?
Netherscourge Feb 4th 2009 1:23PM
It's strange really - Blizzard can't think of a way to rank people in Arena's, which IMO is pointless considering that none of the classes in this game are designed for small-team PvP in the first place. Yet Blizzard persists in these uneven, unbalanced, pillar-humping contests.
But Blizzard won't abolish Arenas and start over. They are stubborn and won't admit failure. So, they just keep going back to the drawing board and drumming up these stupid algorythms to try and make things fair for people - wich as I said above, is impossible with these given classes and overall class structure.
Arena's only benefit the cookie-cutters. There's no customization or skill or uniqueness about them - it's nothing but a cookie-cutter Epeen, terrain-exploitation contest.
Speedmonkay Feb 4th 2009 2:05PM
I dont see the imbalance as being fully Blizzards fault really.
The majority of the issues you mention has to do with the players.
The classes are so complex and Blizzard is always trying to balance them out. They listen to what people say, they see the stuff on their end and they are endlessly trying to balance stuff. And balance is such a tricky thing to achieve that I doubt they will ever get it (Class designer + goal to achieve class balance = job security ?)
The players on the other hand find whats works best. They find the best dps for the job. They find the best teams and combos to work together. They find the imbalances in the system and many people copy that. Why? Because majority of the people want to be #1. You dont get rewards for being an original make up or for trying hard without copying other teams. You only get rewards and recognition for being on top. So you end up with this mess of cookie cutter RMPs or whatever the flavor of the season is.
Me - I play arenas have fun. I'll admit my 2v2 team sucks. Im a moonkin or resto druid and my partner is my bestfriend's warlock. Anyone who knows the smallest bit about PvP knows this combo isnt the best but it makes arena more fun. Every fight we know the scales probably arent tipped in our favor so it makes it more of a challenge. (My team is BeatMeLikeMyMommaDid btw)
Blizzard wiping out the arena and starting with a whole new revamped system wouldnt help either. People would still find it weaknesses, find what works best and then everyone else will copy it to try and be #1. There are too many valiable for them to balance out and the "Human_player" variable is going to screw them up every step of the way.
M Feb 4th 2009 2:41PM
The imbalance is very much Blizzard's fault, for the reasons mentioned above, as well as their stubbornness in splitting up PvE and PvP. By refusing to do that, every change they make to either PvE or PvP will have consequences to the other.
Small group compositions = bad.
Trying to balance PvE vs PvP = bad.
It's just a continuing saga of how they're making Arenas much harder to handle than they could.