I dont see the confusion people are receiving.

Your team MAY BE 1500, but you are facing teams with HR LOWER THAN 1500!

IF YOU LOSE, YOU GO DOWN!

balanced

I understand where you're coming from, but if the quality of play improves at the 1200 rating then that will be the standard for a rating of 1200. If EVERYONE'S standard rises, then they will all rise together, if certain classes/ teams get more of an edge out of the patch then they will slowly rise through the ranks, where classes/teams that are not as evenly matched will then slowly begin to take their place at the 1200 mark. Just remember it's all relative - The rising ocean lifts ALL boats.

well put

Okay....

I understand the MMR and the Rating Change and that you guys are going to make new gear rewards but...

Now I really want to try to play harder because being below 1500 rating sucks... Thats YOUR fault. You guys are the ones who made 1500 the middle grounds for the past three years or whatever. No wonder people are pissed.

So now if I'm going to try harder I need to be able to change specs more easily. I am a rogue and right now pvp, wait, not pvp, but arena totally sucks in combat. Yet, I still used to arena as combat spec 'cuz I could still make 1500 or close to it. I'm not gonna bother at all now and I'm definitely not paying 50g every time I want to arena (oh yeah I almost forgot about the glyph changes too). At least not until we can get gear at lower arena ratings as you suggested.

You are severely hurting your customer base by not doing anything right away. Yeah, you got 11.5 million players but you are not immune to electronic competition. Motorola damn near lost out completely in the cell phone market in six months after their CEO took too long R&D'n their new phones.

So I guess my suggestion is if you can't fix the gear ratings or create new gear quickly at least make it easier for the PvE players to jump on the arena bandwagon (i.e. dual spec training for 500g or something like that). Although, it's not the ultimate fix, I would definitely still continue to arena knowing that I am playing to my characters full potential without being penalized for getting to that potential (the 50g spec change and changing all my glyphs). I am sure that at least some people out of the 11.5 million would follow suit.

P.S. Do something about ret pallies will ya? lol

There was a post earlier that said in order to have a rating of 1650, you currently need to be "better" than 68% of Arena teams in your bracket, in your battlegroup. If this is true, it seems to imply that a 1500 rating still requires that you be "better" than over 51% of your battlegroup, rather than sitting right at 50. Is this true? It seems rather discouraging that more than half the arena participants will go down in rating after crafting a fresh team, rather than going up. Maybe this system might be easier to swallow if people felt they were working their way UP to their right rating rather than down =P. As for me personally, I'm fine with the new system, but I agree with the other players that there comes a point where there is no reason to play another arena game, but there is always a point to playing another BG.

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That's what we plan to do, along with revising rating requirements and a few other tweaks.

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Ok, so basically till "then" , we should stop wasting our times with arena...kk....thats cool....

How about hotfixin' the honor cap so we can at least have BGs????

I think the biggest problem people are having with this is they don't understand why they are gaining/losing X amount of points against other teams. Why not show the teams hidden rating? You guys have clearly explained what it is and I don't think anyone could exploit it too much. By letting teams see their hidden rating and the opposing teams hidden rating, it would be much easier to understand why a team won/lost a certain amount of points.

Could we have an explanation of why the hidden rating is hidden?

Sounds like a good FAQ question to me.

Reading the responses to this thread, I haven't seen any posts from anyone of high ratings posting their opinions on this change. Personally I greatly appreciate how the system has changed, there are no more waiting for 5-8 minutes to catch a team that will give a +1 win or -29 loss ( the loss part occasionally happened with being comped hard or the game deciding it didn't want to stay connected to the internet ) only to have to win 10 games in a row in order to make the rating back up.

This system works very well for what I see it trying to do - stop point selling, match teams against teams of even rating and preventing large swings of rating due to luck. There may be other goals of this change but I haven't seen what they are and I appreciate what has happened. It is a very nice feeling to get together with friends and create a team that immediately plays against high ranked teams ( and have our team rating skyrocket and theirs drop normally ) rather than stomp 2x prot war setups who are just playing for points for a while.

From what I've read it would appear the issues that I see in the system are being addressed and will be changed either at the start of S6 ( probably starting at 1300 rating ) or earlier ( rating req. for gear ), so I would just like to thank the team behind this change for creating a more flexible system - and one that allowed me personally get get higher rating immediately due to no more random -22 losses ( now it's only 8 or so! ) to comps that are just plain better.

I fully agree, as a high rated player, this system reduced queue time, and removed penalties of RNG loss, and DC losses.

I am a strong supporter of the new rating system. I think it is very clever and works well, plus it is nice to finally be rid of the gladiators loling before they pwn me in the 1500 bracket. However, three changes are needed NOW before too many more people get too frusterated and quit arena altogether.

1) New teams need to start at 1100 or so rating. There is nothing more disheartening then starting a new team with friends only to watch your ratings tank 25 points a pop while you gain a few points for a win. We understand that this is the hidden rating bringing you to where you should be able to maintain a 50% ration and that's great but no one wants to feel like an absolute failure watching their rating rapidly go down the first day in arena. Let people work UP to their 1400 rating so we feel a sense of accomplishment rather than shame.

2) Hateful gear needs to be taken off rating requirements or drastically reduced (to like 1100-1300 if ratings start at 1100). There is ZERO incentive to play unless you are rated 1650+ which 60% of the teams aren't. This is an absolute disgrace for 60% of your population to receive NOTHING while the rich get richer so to speak (elite players get all sorts of great epics). And please, don't argue the blue set is incentive. 1 it takes only a few weeks to get it at the points 1500 rating gives. 2 You can get it through AFKing in AV while you watch a movie. 3 No one wants to replace their easily obtained PvE epics with !*!%ty PvP blues which don't even help you survive much longer anyway.
I also think the deadly nonset pieces rating requirements can be lowered a 100 points or so to give more people incentive to keep playing after getting 5/5 hateful. Any gaps in rating requirements should be filled in by number 3

3) This is not a NEEDED change but one I think would be good, add other incentives besides gear for people to keep improving in arenas. Pets, mounts and tabards are wildly popular in this game and would make a nice incentive, have some as a reward for rating achievements and some purchaseable for arena points so people can still have stuff to spend points on after they get their arena sets. There are many pets/mounts/tabards available from PvE, it's time to add some to arena.

4) Resilience needs a buff, simple enough.

These need to be added WAY before 3.1/wotlk season 2 or you will see an even larger exodus away from arenas than you saw in the failure that was season 4.
Stop catering to the 5% of arena hardcore pros at 2k+ ratings and screwing the meat and potatoes of your player base.

People need to understand that if you never played arena before, and you just started playing, your "hidden" rating will be around 1200, not 1500. So the system will try to match you up against people who are also 1200 hidden rating.

What happens when you do 50-50 against teams around 1200 hidden rating? Your own rating begins to drift to 1200.

1200 is the new starting point. With that said, they need to adjust the reward system. Heck, every new team should just have their team rating start at 1200. A lot less QQ this way.

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I dont see the confusion people are receiving.

Your team MAY BE 1500, but you are facing teams with HR LOWER THAN 1500!

IF YOU LOSE, YOU GO DOWN!

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Before the change when you lost to a team that had a lower rating you lost 20 and they gained 20. It made sense. They beat you, you should lose alot and they should gain alot. Now when you lose to a team with a lower rating you still lose 20 but they only gain 5.

This hidden rating given to you seems to be automatically lower than your team rating and drags it down.

In the post from kalgan where it showed the MMR (Magical Mystical Rating) and OMMR - when Shadoweric's team lost to a team with an MMR rating 28 points higher they had a -15 TRC and -72 MMRC and later on when they BEAT a team with an MMR rating 64 points higher they only had a +6 TRC and +60 MMRC.

This makes no sense at all.

Before this change was made I enjoyed my bit of pvping and had no thought whatsoever of quitting WOW. After this '"improvement" I am taking a look at other MMOs

What about the other end of the spectrum? I'm pretty much the opposite of the OP, with two teams in Gladiator range at the moment. You are investing a lot of resources in making sure the bottom rungs of the ladder are having fun; this is a good thing no doubt. But you talk about the need for gear rewards for the people playing at 1200 and 1300 ratings. Where does that leave the players who are actually good at arena? You seem to be saying to the low ranked players "we understand that playing the game alone isn't enough, and that you need a reward structure of worth to feel you've accomplished something." But if you start giving things of value out at 1200-1300 or whatever, can you leave things of value for the 1800-1900? More likely, you've shifted the "fun for funs sake" role from the bad players to the good players.

Is it simply an issue of scale? There are a lot more bad players to appease than good players to appease, so thats where you need to focus? Or are you also aware that through this, there needs to be a worthwhile reason to compete at the high end as well, and not just for competition's sake? WoW, to me, is about personal progression first and foremost; be it in professions, raiding, farming, or PVP. Are you prepared to devalue the achievements of the top end to appease the masses at the low end?

I've got Deadly Shoulders. This, to me, was an accomplishment. It sounds like you now view that structure as a failure. I personally find it rewarding. I know others do as well. Is this no longer a legititmate feeling in the eyes of Blizzard?

WotLK has been fun, but I keep feeling like I'm losing out because I'm a good player. I actually had the thought the other day "if only I were worse at WoW, I'd enjoy it a lot more." I can't imagine that's a feeling you want to cultivate, but this latest series of posts is starting to reinforce it.

Please tell me if you still have plans for the upper end of Arena other than hoping you can queue when teams even remotely close to your rating are, and you won't have to farm 2-4 points all night long. Please tell me good players still rate in World of Warcraft.

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You are only right about one thing...it's optional. TOTALLY off-base about it being simple. When you win a match against an even rated oponent and get 2 points, ok...keep winning. Then you lose one against that same oponent and you lose 20 points...NOT FAIR. The system is dropping everyone in order to create a larger baseline. You would have to play well over 50 games a week at this rate to bring your rating up above 1600 if you were to average winning 60% or higher...(if even that).

Another point, alot of us that PvP DONT or CANT raid to get the raid drops...thats why we DONT RAID! We PvP. It doesnt make any sense to be honor capped or to have 2000 arena points and not be able to spend them on things.

The system is VERY QUICKLY loading the bottom end of the arena ladder and there is no change in gear to support it. Until the system is changed and re-calculates the hidden ratings of people, it is nearly impossible to gain rating changes enough to get into the 1650 rating gear.

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The argument that you are making is that it is hard...which is not the opposite of 'simple'. Hard is to easy as complicated is to simple.

What is simple is the process for gearing up pretty substantially to the point that you are playing within a reasonable margin of the best gear for arena. 5/5 savage + 6/6 hateful + best pvp trinket is all achieveable with just honor from bgs. Throw in some wintergrasps and you can get a 2nd good trinket and a hateful-quality helm...it's not complicated. Without retyping my previous post, my point is that all you have to do is focus on making sure you are bringing the absolute best you can into the arena, with the best partner for your class/spec that you can find (or want to play with). Once your hidden rating normalizes, just focus on winning more than 50% of your rounds and the system will keep adjusting to try to make sure you only win 50%.

Yes the mechanics of the system have changed from previous seasons. All i'm saying is that the process as a player hasn't changed a bit, and I get the sense that folks are so wrapped up in how the pairing system works that they're forgetting the focus on the basics -- max your gear, find teammates who are cool and mature enough to stick it out, and just work away at it.

And that...is simple. Much more simple than getting upset and coming up with crazy assumptions about the long term behavior of a mathematical function. The important thing is that it's based 100% on direct and secondary consequences of the outcomes out rounds, and not spying on gear or damage done or anything like was rumored at one point.

For what it's worth, I have found the actual rounds to be way more enjoyable since the change. Far more rounds seem to be pretty close matches. Same old dynamics with the rock paper scissors reality of comps and such, but the overall experience is more stable. So amidst the noise here, I'd like to say good job to the folks who implemented the change -- even though I still believe it may have been a lot cleaner at the start of a new season :)

Ok, this is what irritates me about this system:

1) For 3 out of 4 seasons, we got challenger in 2v2. ie. apparently we were in the top 35% of players. In most seasons, this followed approximately the same system: we would lose a fair bit in the first few weeks, slowly shifting towards even and then to winning slightly. We sat between 1400 and 1650ish most of the time. Now, we are at 1260 or something, and still agressively losing points...I would estimate our hidden rating to be about 1000. That puts us in what, the bottom 10% of players? Whats worse is that I feel like we are even comparitively better geared at 80 in the 1200s than we were at 70 in the 1600s (I did most of 3 seasons in pve blues). I am pretty sure we shouldnt suddenly have gotten so bad at pvp that we drop 70 percentiles.

2) In the first two weeks of arena, we didnt do that great. 1-9 and 3-7. After that, the matchmaking system came in, and we have gone 4-6 and 3-7. We are doing about as well at 1300 and dropping as we were doing at 1500 before: and as subjective as it seems, it feels like the teams we are playing are actually *better* than what we met before. I the first 2 weeks, we saw zero rogues. In the next two, we saw 6 or 7. It is much more fun to be losing the same amount of games at 1500 and not dropping by much than at 1300 and dropping by *alot* - I had no problem with getting a handful of teams we werent going to beat every week, since there were teams at 1400 or 1500 we could beat just as well.

3) Playing 10 games a week, it is going to take an incredible amount of time to "fix" our hidden rating. Like, I think the season will be over by the time that happens. Especially considering that we improve just a little every week, and that it is possible that our somewhat underrepresented classes will themselves make it easier to win with if burst gets normallized (note: I am not saying that our classes are the reason we are losing, I admit we are bad, and that any class comp could break 2k given non-terrible players).

4) In earlier seasons, there was *noone* below 1300. Well, I never saw anyone below it, at least. This means there is kinda a "stigma" attached: only the worst of the worst were below 1400. If you are rebalancing so that you actually expect people to be below 1000, you should try and find some way of removing that stigma. It feels terrible to be at a rating which, for 4 seasons, would have meant that I did arena naked without assigning any talents and clicking all my abilities.

I am sure there is more, but I kinda lost them somewhere, and these are the key points.

Edited for emphasis.

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What about the other end of the spectrum? I'm pretty much the opposite of the OP, with two teams in Gladiator range at the moment. You are investing a lot of resources in making sure the bottom rungs of the ladder are having fun; this is a good thing no doubt. But you talk about the need for gear rewards for the people playing at 1200 and 1300 ratings. Where does that leave the players who are actually good at arena? You seem to be saying to the low ranked players "we understand that playing the game alone isn't enough, and that you need a reward structure of worth to feel you've accomplished something." But if you start giving things of value out at 1200-1300 or whatever, can you leave things of value for the 1800-1900? More likely, you've shifted the "fun for funs sake" role from the bad players to the good players.

Is it simply an issue of scale? There are a lot more bad players to appease than good players to appease, so thats where you need to focus? Or are you also aware that through this, there needs to be a worthwhile reason to compete at the high end as well, and not just for competition's sake? WoW, to me, is about personal progression first and foremost; be it in professions, raiding, farming, or PVP. Are you prepared to devalue the achievements of the top end to appease the masses at the low end?

I've got Deadly Shoulders. This, to me, was an accomplishment. It sounds like you now view that structure as a failure. I personally find it rewarding. I know others do as well. Is this no longer a legititmate feeling in the eyes of Blizzard?

WotLK has been fun, but I keep feeling like I'm losing out because I'm a good player. I actually had the thought the other day "if only I were worse at WoW, I'd enjoy it a lot more." I can't imagine that's a feeling you want to cultivate, but this latest series of posts is starting to reinforce it.

Please tell me if you still have plans for the upper end of Arena other than hoping you can queue when teams even remotely close to your rating are, and you won't have to farm 2-4 points all night long. Please tell me good players still rate in World of Warcraft.

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You do realize that there is a hateful set and a deadly set right? The elitists like yourself can keep your deadly gladiator stuff and feel all spiffy, but why should 66%+ of the wow player base not even receive hateful sets and be stuck with a crappy blue set they can already buy for honor points? You need to be two tiers higher than everyone else instead of one for your pride to remain intact?

Its surprising to me the amount of people who cant seem to grasp how this system works. So far I find it to be working perfectly, currently I'm at the 1900+ range and have won just a little more than I've lost which is perfectly fine because I find with every match there is a perfect complementary opponent. This is how it is supposed to be, if you are still losing you have yet to find your bracket it is as simple as that.

Just to add one or two more things, please please please dont allow people in the 1200-1300 ratings to get equivilant gear to those 1800+. Logically it does not make sense, a reward should be on the merit of the action.

o and I always wondered what the thinking was behind allowing hateful/deadly gear to be purchased by emblems. What is the point of a rating requirement if it can be bypassed through PvE content. Also, deadly gear dropping from a boss that requires the raid to simultaneously smash their face against their keyboards to win also confuses me.

Whats gonna happen to the hidden rating when the next season starts? Does it get reset like the teams do?