RSS Arena rating system changes, Blue posts

Rating system changes last night <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from: Kalgan (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/11/14697623231-rating-system-changes-last-night.html" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</div><div class="blizzquote">We made some adjustments to the rating system last night that are now in effect. <ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li>1. Personal Ratings will now always trend toward Team Ratings (instead of the internal matchmaking rating). This should eliminate the odd behavior players noticed of seeing their PR change in ways that seemed bizzare. It also eliminates the possibility that you can play every game with your team, yet be ineligible to get items when the team qualifies for them (or ineligible to receive full points).</li><li>2. You will now gain or lose around 12 points when winning or losing to teams of roughly equivalent matchmaking rating to your own team (previously this number was 8 ).</li><li>3. The rating scale has been extended to a range of 240 to about 2800 to more accurately reflect what was possible under the old system. This means that most players over 1500 will experience some slightly easier than expected rating gain as their team adjusts upward to the new scale.</li><li>4. Players with less than 1500 rating will still get the same number of points as players at 1500. </li></ul> It is now easier to get higher ratings It is easier to get higher ratings due to the scale adjustment. However, I'd still expect a very small percentage of the population to get the arena master achievement, by no means would I call it trivialized. Q&A Is hidden rating wiped on character transfer? No What determines hidden rating besides win/loss? Resilience, damage, healing? Only winning/losing determines the rating What is the min/max amount of points able to be lost/won now? 24 Is the TR/PR cap still 3000 with these changes? Yes TR/PR do still have a hard cap at 3k, although we don't expect players to get that high regardless. Is any of the rating affected by your gear? None of the rating systems have the slightest clue or are in any way affected by what gear you have. How can the ratings not get that high if numerous teams get to 2700+? Are there diminishing returns on the amount of rating you can gain off another team despite team ratings being similarly high? It certainly is possible to get that high legitimately, although it would be unusual. There's about a 2% chance of seeing a 3000 rated team in a population size of 20,000 teams... about a 5% chance of seeing one in a population of 50,000 teams. So, with the number of battlegroups in existence it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility to see a 3k team. Grats to them. =] </div></div></div> Blue posts <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from Blizzard staff</div><div class="blizzquote">Ulduar gear quality It's not likely. Some of the heroic dungeon and heroism gear is fully comparable to some of the Naxx 10-man stuff. Keep in mind though that heroic 5-man and heroism progression won't be keeping pace with 10-man Ulduar when it comes out. You won't be as likely to find items in 10-man Ulduar that are sub-par to the heroism and heroic 5-man loot. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/14697303593-10-man-naxx-gear-needs-a-buff-imo.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Class balancing / Target Dummy DPS We don’t treat classes like children, making sure everyone has the same number of cookies. I see players sometimes listing patch notes as “Their class got 41 buffs while ours only got 12” which is a silly thing to say on so many levels. We buff when we need to buff and nerf when we need to nerf. We don’t dwell on how often or what magnitude those changes are. We are more concerned about balance than fairness, if that makes sense (note to self: you will almost certainly be clarifying that statement for months to come). When we don’t make a change that we want to, it is almost certainly because there is a technical or design limitation preventing it. Players may perceive that as “it doesn’t matter if they’re overpowered for awhile.” One more thing I would like to add is that there is no concept of “hunters do X dps.” You can generate numbers on a target dummy, or numbers on Patchwerk, or numbers for Naxx, or numbers for Naxx bosses. All of those are numbers are likely to be different, and that is something we want. We want every encounter to be different. We want some classes to so better on some fights than others. It’s more interesting that way than if every encounter in the game always produced the same classes in the same stack rank. A big disconnect between the community and the developers is that we don’t accept dps as an absolute number. It is relative and it is nebulous. The community with its spreadsheets and target dummies more often views it as an absolute. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14697301211-so-whats-the-plan-for-hunters.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Buffing vs Nerfing Look, all things considered we would much rather buff than nerf. Players love it when they get buffed. The sun comes out and the birds are singing. When we nerf a class we get (I kid you not) death threats. So we must have a really good reason for nerfs. Usually the reason is that we have absolute, not relative targets. If you are in a raid and someone is doing 8000 dps, sure the "fun" solution is to buff every other class up to that point. If we end up over-buffing someone to 8500 dps, well then we can go back and give everyone else additional buffs. Maybe at level 90 everyone will be doing 12,000 dps, but inflation is inflation, right? Right? Of course we'd have to buff all the monsters too. We'd probably have to buff gear and talents because otherwise their contributions might seem paltry (I get 20 more dps when I do 8000 dps? lol.). In short the changes necessary to avoid a nerf just spiral out of control. I am talking mostly about PvE here. The balance for PvP is quite different and while raw power is certainly a factor, specific abilities and their cooldowns and synergies are usually far more important. The same thing is true though. If a particular form of CC is too potent, then in order to avoid nerfing it, we would have to give lots of other classes better ways of breaking CC. Then the original player feels gimpy so we give him the "this CC cannot be broken" ability. The vicious cycle still exists. Sometimes a single nerf, even if it's unpopular, is a ton less work than a lot of buffs, and sometimes it is just better for the game regardless. Some players ask: Isn't this what betas and PTRs are for? That is true. But it often isn't enough. MMOs are living games. Things change over time. Players are crafty and find new ways of using abilities to do things we didn't anticipate. Software has bugs, and sometimes they aren't uncovered even with the most rigorous QA. Rather than denying that these problems can arise, we would rather just be open about them and get them fixed as quickly as we can. (I didn't say "quickly," I said "as quickly as we can.") One of the things we are trying to do is get changes turned around in a more timely manner. In the past if a class or spec was too weak they often had to just suck it up until the next tier of content is released. I think the community wasn't necessarily prepared for this, which is why you see some "roller coaster" feedback. Other players, we know, are thrilled that issues might actually get looked at quickly instead of going on and on. And to be fair, we can be even faster and there are problems that have persisted for longer than we would like, but WoW is a big game and supertankers don't turn on a dime. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/14697593054-gcplease-stop-the-nerfs.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) [EU] New English Realm - Saurfang The basics Realm name: Saurfang Language: English Realm type: Normal (PvE) Battlegroup: Misery Migration: No Realm forums: <a href="http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=8637322" target="_blank">http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=8637322</a> In a few words Today we're opening a new English Normal/PvE realm, named Saurfang, in the Misery Battlegroup. This is a fresh realm, thus no migration will be allowed to the realms during the first 90 days. Also, the Ahn'Qiraj gates and Sunwell will be closed, and you can't create a Death Knight on the realm until you have another level 55 character there (or 90 days have passed). The realm will open this afternoon. Please note that the starting areas may be quite flooded in the beginning, and the population cap is intentionally set a bit lower than normal to not have them even more flooded. The cap will be raised over the coming days as the population spreads out more. Class balancing methodology (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/14697301234-sorry-blizz-doesnt-balance-based-on-qq.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) 1. Lets accept that class balance for PvP when it comes to this forum (Healing) is at an all time low. If you mean there are too many paladins and not enough other healers, then we agree. 2. Lets agree that by opening up the raiding content to everyone by easing its difficulty level you have increased the number of players who will express their opinions about the state of their class. We also agree. We also think this is a good thing. 3. We all already agree that balancing classes around both Arena and PvE is what creates many of the problems here. It creates problems, sure. I’m not sure I would argue it is the overwhelming factor though. Many players are worried about, e.g. ...</div></div></div>

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