Arenas, why it's good and dispelling myths.

[Armyantsrule]

Completely irrelevant to this game. An excuse used by anti-arena players that has no basis.



As we've established in another thread, and you put in tiny lettering medicine-company-style, "active" does not at all mean they are actively playing arena or would switch to a game simply because of arena.



It doesn't destroy balance, you're right. It puts the microscope on balance. It makes individual classes (or souls in this case) all the more overpowered or underpowered because of the situation they're in. Which makes making the game balanced impossible, because MMOs will inherently never be balanced unless classes are homogenized. At that point you run into the same problem Blizzard has, with spending inordinate amounts of time & resources on a function of the game that suits a minority.





A counter at a competitive level is just that - a counter. If you're playing vs good or equal players, you simply cannot beat your counter. I can't remember offhand how many times my shaman ret hunter stomped the living hell out of RMPs because we countered them.



Mentioning other games holds no basis in this game. As an overall business strategy, Trion would serve their company considerably better to pander to the majority - the zerg PvP people.



This is a legitimate concern for those that want world PvP.



I would play it too without rewards too, I won't lie. But that doesn't make it a smart decision for this game company. It makes it what you want.



It does harm the game. It focuses too much time & resources on a function of the game the minority will spend time on actively. Not to mention it will hurt the longevity of the game simply because balance will never be good in arenas in this game, and it will be competing with an already stable arena system via wow.



Assuming gets us nowhere.

This is coming from an avid WoW arena player. Since BC has come out, I have played no other game (besides HoN sometimes) other than WoW arenas. I haven't raided. I play simply to PvP - and I'm a multi time gladiator as well as for the course of 4 months the rank1 hunter in the world, holding the #1 3s/5s in the world, and the #1 2s in my BG. I do enjoy arenas. I would play them in this game. But it is a terrible decision to implement them as a serious ladder-based game.

The only way I would say arenas would be good in this game, is if they added a (no ladder) system where you group up, do a command line ie /battle x player, and it faces you against that players team on your server only. This would serve to strengthen server relations, competitiveness, and rivalries. And the only way this could ever survive in Rift, is if they made it abundantly clear from the very beginning that while this option exists, it is in no way a major part of the game, and will not serve as any basis for Class Balance.

This was well stated, and I'd like to add something in. I am fine with arenas. I really am. I am not fine with adding in a rated system of any kind. Reason? The elitist, ******* attitude that it invites, and which ultimately destroyed PvP for me.

PvP should be about killing other players. If you're good, that's fantastic, have at it. There's no need to flaunt it all over the place, though. Your reputation will carry itself, you don't need a team-comp-based number to point to and go "lookit! lookit! lookit what I can do!"

If Arenas award exactly the same thing that warfronts award now, I am in full favor of it. No ladders, no special titles, no special gear, nothing. I love the idea of just going into a match with the intent of killing someone else - that's why I PvP. I don't want titles. I just want to kill other players.



(Oh, and that 500k people you quote as active arena-goers...That's in a game of...what, 11-12 million people? That's a 1/24 fraction of the population. Sure seems like the "silent majority" to me, or at least the one everyone seems to be quoting).

[Tenkenlol]

I've heard it myself many times that arenas destroy PvE balance. My question to the statement is since when was a dragon not able to be downed because of those changes. Never in all of WoW was there PvE content that was deemed "impossible" . Anything that was actually hard usually got nerfed(see sunwell, Kael'thas etc).

Every time I see a world first raid group I also see quite a bit of diversity most of them having a well rounded raid group rather than stacking a few specific classes. As long as well rounded groups continue to rule(as they generally do) PvE really doesn't need balancing as long as your dragon goes down. Most people complaining about their dps for the most part need to do more research into their class and less QQing.

[Delphya]

First before you atuomatically post "OMG DAOC was better" without reading this big block of text, might as well adress a few common missconceptions:

Arena was a mistake, even Blizzard admitted it.
Not exactly, read it again Rob Pardo clearly said that he didn't want the game to verge between competitive PvP and PvE they were nerfing abilities that PvE players wouldn't understand why. He also states that the idea of arenas and esports was so popular, that's why they decided to "tact" it on to WoW rather than effeciently adding it. If they truly thought it was a mistake over all, why did they add rated BGS?

A paltry amount of players play Arena, so it's useless feature.
According to statistics, over 800K+ "active" teams exist in arena just for 2v2 alone in season 8.
Source: http://www.arenajunkies.com/tools/title-calculator/
*By blizzards definition active means, they played at-least 30% and 20 games.
Even if you where to assume that half of them were actually inactive because of the low limitations, that's still over 500k players. Take note this only counting 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 wasn't counted.

Arena destroys balance.
Wrong, arena just shows which class synergies to well or which class is doing too much burst damage. It doesn't magically make things unbalanced. More often than not... the classes that are overpowered in arena are also overpowered in mass scale PvP too.


Arenas only has over 500k Players because it's required for gear, titles and vanity awards.
This is a common misconception, but in season 8 had limited 2v2 rewards. There were no titles that season, and shoulders and tier weapons were impossible to get. If you wanted those, you had to play 3v3 or 5v5. By this conclussion, either more casual players played 2v2 arena or they enjoyed it overall. Quite often, you could 2v2 with your friend.

Arena promotes FOTM Builds, and impossible counters in equal elo rating.
You're right, which is why it should never award gear or any advantages other than vanity overall. However, it's not completely impossible for you to kill the enemy. The whole point of arena is to kill the people who have won just as much as you. Killing your counter shows how skilled you are.

If you want Arena, go back to World of Warcraft... I heard it's doing well over there.
It also did well in Guild Wars, and SWTOR and Guild Wars 2 both will support arena, Rift and Tera are really the only games without arena in reality. (For the next generation)

But I prefer World PvP, if they make Arena I will never see it again?
Which is why games like Guild Wars 2 will feature both, because they know what they're doing. If Ranked PvP awards no gear, you can have both.

Arena players just want too look like a special snowflake, and gank those who cant get it.
Nope, many arena players in this forum agree they could care less if no gear was awarded. The point of an arena is to face people within the same skill level as you, and PvP progression... not gear.

So if you were told you would get no gear, vanity, and even titles would you still play arena?
Absolutely, I could care less about what the rewards are, it's a progression for me to continually increase in rating and defeat challenging opponents.

I don't like arena.
What's the harm of adding arena if it doesn't harm the game overall?

PvE balance get's destroyed by arena
Scott Hartsman mentioned a feature in Rift to be able to nerf abilities only for PvP without harming PvE, we have yet to see this. But we assume if this ever came, all nerfs for arena would only be in arena... and nowhere else.


In the end, I play arena to progress. My opponents get harder, and I have to overcome difficult challenges consistently. I'm one of those "small" crowd of 500k players worldwide.

Arenas for bragging rights is a awesome idea!
Rewarding arena with gear is not so awesome.
Arenas should not be a primary form of PVP, unless it is done in the world at a actual arena that people can watch.
For example in a city that is neutral to both sides.

The winner should receive a title, maybe some gold and a pat on the back.

They should not receive honor, gear or special privileges with the exception of the ability to climb higher on the ladder.

The top people may receive a cosmetic weapon that they can display as proof of their ability to min/max and pillar hump but they should never receive anything that cannot be gained through actual combat with the opposing force.

A professional wrester will never earn a Congressional Medal of Honor, nor should they.

[Marok]

Yes by all means let the developers waste their resources creating something that will appeal to less than 10% of the game population in the slim hope it would add more subscribers, as opposed to using those same resources to fix what the other 90% of the game population actually wants. Yeah that makes good business sense.

Have fun ;)!

[Gazrael]

Payne, for some reason I was under the impression you've mentioned 5 times that you're unsubbing.

That considered please tell us why you keep inflicting your opinion on us over and over and over in stupid threads.

[Chase Payne]

Yes by all means let the developers waste their resources creating something that will appeal to less than 10% of the game population in the slim hope it would add more subscribers, as opposed to using those same resources to fix what the other 90% of the game population actually wants. Yeah that makes good business sense.

Have fun ;)!

Is it also good business sense to ignore your competitors from the past... and the future? There are games coming out with arena in the future, that look just as good as Rift.


You're not avoiding World of Warcraft here, you're avoiding around 4 games with rated PvP.

[Armyantsrule]

Is it also good business sense to ignore your competitors from the past... and the future? There are games coming out with arena in the future, that look just as good as Rift.


You're not avoiding World of Warcraft here, you're avoiding around 4 games with rated PvP.

But why is it you feel the incessant need to inflict this view of yours upon us? I'm fairly certain we all know where you stand by now. You don't like the game. You don't like that it doesn't have arenas. We get it.

Why are you still here trying to bash it into our heads?

[Gazrael]

But why is it you feel the incessant need to inflict this view of yours upon us? I'm fairly certain we all know where you stand by now. You don't like the game. You don't like that it doesn't have arenas. We get it.

Why are you still here trying to bash it into our heads?

Judging by the post count, even having people universally flame him at this point is better attention-getting behavior than any other alternative he might fall back on.

Sort've depressing.

[Tenkenlol]

Getting gear from arena is not really needed. Great most people agree with that point. But why would it be any different if you got pvp gear from any other aspect of PvP. Whether it's world pvp, RvR or WFs getting gear from them is no different than getting gear from arena. The only difference is that you want to get gear from something that YOU enjoy.

Not getting gear from arena is one thing but most of you don't like this because you have to spend time doing something that you do not enjoy to get pvp gear. Want to guess what would happen if you got pvp gear from any of the other facets of pvp? Anyone who disliked doing it would be miserable....nothing changed.

[Marok]

Is it also good business sense to ignore your competitors from the past... and the future? There are games coming out with arena in the future, that look just as good as Rift.


You're not avoiding World of Warcraft here, you're avoiding around 4 games with rated PvP.

Honestly who is trying to avoid WoW and who cares about what is allegedly on the horizon. The original GW was a clunky PoC, I know because I played it. How people aren't screaming and tearing at their eyes in WoW arena having done the same old same old for years now just shows how uncreative the arena crowd actually is. Nobody gives a rats patoot about WoW or those "other" games, because this is Rift, and what we care about is Rift.

The arena crowd is a niche market and any developer that caters to the niche as opposed to the majority deserves to go F2P and eventually be forgotten about. To use your own examples, do you honestly think WoW got as big as they did by catering to the arena crowd? No they got as big as they did by doing "loss leader" marketing in Southeastern Asia, and by convincing people in the US/EU that whey were gigantic because of this. It got those markets that had people with real money to spend more money and had nothing to do with Arenas whatsoever. Look at Warhammer Online, it was built on a world wide recognized franchise, with big financial backing and it more or less flopped. StoR will more or less do the same thing.

If you want to be part of the sheep that exodus to these games, and then the next one, and the one after that looking for arena salvation, by all means do so. Trust me not only will you not be missed, you will be easily and eagerly replaced. So go for it, or go back to WoW and duel in front of Orgrimar between your twosies, but for the love of Mike shut up already about stuff that 90% of the people playing Rift could care less about. Thank you.

Have fun ;)!

[Scars]

There is a reason people don't like arenas.

They have a loser.

Wanna know why people enjoy world PvP and zerg v zerg combat? Because there is never a loser.

Get ganked with your friend 1v2? You didn't lose cause you didn't try.
Get ganked at 1v1? You didn't lose cause you didn't have "X" cool down.
Get ganked 1v1? You didn't lose cause you were at "X" health

Get zerged? You didn't lose cause you got zerged
Get zerged? You didn't lose cause you managed to kill lots of their players before you died.


In anything rated, people have to lose.
In anything with sieges/world pvp, there is no loser.

That's really the only thing behind it. You can just read everyone's post about why they think rated PvP is "bad, awful, terrible", apply the above, and see the underlying message on why they hate it.

World PvP mirrors real war. Heroes are made in war. Respect is earned in war. There are no clear winners in war. Just a death count.

Arena mirrors sports. The people playing the sport may look cool, but the majority of the viewers who sit on their couches drinking beer and getting fat would get laughed off the field.

[Chase Payne]

World PvP mirrors real war. Heroes are made in war. Respect is earned in war. There are no clear winners in war. Just a death count.

Arena mirrors sports. The people playing the sport may look cool, but the majority of the viewers who sit on their couches drinking beer and getting fat would get laughed off the field.

PvP is PvP, not player versus faction.

[Scars]

PvP is PvP, not player versus faction.

This game is based around two factions at war with each other. That makes it Faction vs Faction. You can't go kill someone on your own faction.

[Chase Payne]

This game is based around two factions at war with each other. That makes it Faction vs Faction. You can't go kill someone on your own faction.

Because they're aren't any traitors in this game that kills it's own faction. It's something so commonly written that I don't even have to check twice to see if anything backs up that statement. If there isn't... well then it explains the uninspiring lore from GameSpot.

Very well then, the PvP should be be FvF and not PvP


World PvP is not PvP, instead it's World FvF.

[kuronese]

I want my 5 minutes back.