MMR
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Further MMR adjustments for Rated Battlegrounds
You may recall that, a little while back, WoW Insider posted about the changes being made to MMR tolerance in order to repair the ladders after a bug. It seems, unfortunately, that these changes did not go far enough to rectify the issues for players of Rated Battlegrounds. It makes sense that, for this far less played discipline, MMR issues have not self-corrected. As a result of this, matches played are still resulting in 0 point rating gains with wins, which is disheartening at best. So Blizzard has come up with a simple solution that might have been a faster and more popular fix to the initial issue -- increase everyone's rating to get it closer to their current MMR. If these terms are confusing, I made a fair attempt at explaining them in the last post. This, coupled with the initial increased tolerance in MMR to rating parity, should result in everyone gaining points for wins. Hit the break for Lore's full post.
Rating issues for Arena and RBG wins
There is a strange issue taking place at the moment with rating. Rating itself is a tricky thing to wrap your head around, especially as it's recently gone thorough something of a shift. Right now, your character has two ratings for every bracket of arena, and for RBGs. One is the MMR, the matchmaking rating. This is the rating the system uses to match you up against similar level players. It's shown at the bottom right of the scoreboard after every match, as an average of your group's character MMRs. The other type of rating is CR, Current Rating. This is the rating that your character earns by winning and losing matches, the one that's shown in green and red letters in the main part of the scoreboard. It's also the rating that gets you titles and mounts. Every season CR is reset to 0, while MMR remains what it was last season. So, if you ended season 14 on an MMR of 1800 and a CR of 1880, you'd have begun season 15 with an MMR of 1800 and a CR of 0. What happens next is that as you win games, your CR increases towards your MMR. You should expect it to stabilize as you reach a CR that's near your MMR. As you win and lose games, your MMR will also shift. Your MMR aims to give you a 50/50 win-loss rate, as when that's achieved you're being pretty evenly matched.
Your PvP Questions: Spell announcers, MMR and patch 5.3
It's been a little while since I last did a PvP mailbag, and the emails have been piling up! So, if you have PvP questions, do drop me a line, I will do my best to respond to them, possibly in columns such as this one, or if I can fire off a quick email I will. Do note that I'm far from a PvP specialist in all the classes in WoW, and PvP questions which are class-specific would probably be better directed to the relevant class columnist. Janrana wrote: Hi Olivia, since reading about it a while back in one of your columns I've been a big fan of SpellAlerter, but it doesn't seem to have had any updates in a long while and is a bit broken for me. It doesn't seem to have all the spells any more and it also causes some errors to appear when it's on. Do you know of any alternative? As it happens, I do! First and foremost SpellAlerter is alive and well... ish. It was updated for patch 5.1, but hasn't had any further updates since then. It still works at least fairly well, but I wouldn't rely on it completely. At least, it still allows you to set up custom alerts, so if there are spells it's missing you can add them in.
Battleground gear disparity
Blizzard's Daxxarri responded to a thread recently in the official US forums saying the following: Quote: Simply tier the BGs by ilvl. It's not simple, unfortunately. It would a) require a retooling of how Battlegrounds assemble teams and b) even under ideal conditions, it would likely slow down queue times dramatically. As Ovenmitz demonstrates, there are a lot of players who are very opposed to that. source This isn't a bad idea, in itself. One thing I've long wondered about is whether it would be possible, as the thread's OP suggests, to make battlegrounds face players off according to their gear. This would, as the OP notes, perhaps avoid the situation where players are faced against hugely disproportionately geared teams, so full epics against crafted and PvE gear. While he didn't speak directly about this, taking two of Ghostcrawler's recent PvP Dev Watercooler points together could shed some light on Blizzard's plans for gear and scaling.
Dissecting the Dev Watercooler on PvP
A few days ago, Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street released a very lengthy Dev Watercooler on Mists of Pandaria PvP. Now that the dust has had a chance to settle, we're going to take a look at the blog and its implications for PvP right now. Next time we might look at some of their zany ideas for future PvP! MMR MMR, or Match-Making Rating is how teams are matched in rated PvP. MMR is separate from rating, but both are altered when you win or lose against other rated teams. Explaining the difference between the two is a little tricky, but essentially, MMR is how your matches are found. MMR is linked to players and teams, so a player forming a new team will carry some of their MMR with them from previous PvP escapades, in order for them not to face far lower-rated players. Rating is also linked to both players and teams, but doesn't dictate who you face. Rating is won and lost via winning and losing against teams with better and worse MMRs. Say you're at 1500 MMR and 1500 rating, and you face a team at 1600 MMR and 1600 rating, and you lose. You will only lose a small amount of rating, let's say 5, and they will only gain a small amount, again let's say 5. Both your MMRs will adjust similarly. Now say you beat them. They will lose a big chunk of rating, but likely not such a big chunk of MMR. You, equally, will gain a big chunk of rating, and depending on how many matches you've played, likely gain a reasonable amount of MMR. The MMR is saying "hey these guys beat a 1600 team. They're better than a 1500 MMR".
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: City of Heroes 2
Before the comments light up, I'm just going to say outright that City of Heroes 2 does not currently exist. We've heard no news about it, no announcements, nothing beyond the speculation of many City of Heroes players such as myself. I'm deviating (again) from the set schedule and talking about a purely hypothetical sequel that all of us are kind of expecting but that does not, at this point, exist. But considering all of the recent talk about Guild Wars 2, I think it's apropos. Let's assume, for the purpose of this article, that Paragon Studios is knee-deep in development of City of Heroes 2 and simply isn't telling anyone. What sort of things would the game need? What would be the best possible route for the game to take? How could it satisfy fans of City of Heroes while drawing in new players? I don't have the absolute answers... but it sure does make for some interesting speculation, based on the things the team has been doing over the past several years.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Assume I'm making a pun about the Super Pack
It doesn't seem that long ago that I was looking back on my past year of writing this column, mentioning how negative I had gotten overall and sort of quietly wishing that I could spend the next year being more positive. I don't really want to write a column on City of Heroes once again that winds up being full of complaints. But if Paragon Studios is going to do something to induce rage, I'm not really given many options. Case in point: the Super Pack. I don't need to tell a lot of you why this is a bad idea. I shouldn't even really need to say this is a bad idea. This is one of those ideas that shouldn't have ever made it past the conceptual stage. The moment it was suggested in a board meeting, everyone else in the room should have rushed for the person who suggested it, driving him or her into a closet for safety. That this did not happen speaks volumes.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Begin again again
If you like playing a few hundred different characters, City of Heroes definitely supports your terminal fear of the endgame. Unfortunately for me and my dreams of seeing that endgame with any reliability, I do indeed like playing dozens upon dozens of characters, meaning that my character select screen is an array of dozens of characters in carefully crafted outfits, many of which characters are not yet eligible for capes. It's one of those habits that I would dearly like to break, and so I'd eschewed making a new character despite the promise of a new starter experience for heroes and villains alike. Unfortunately, I am also a recidivist. When I talked about the latest update, more than a few commenters called me out, rightly, on the fact that I hadn't really played through much of the new content that the issue had to offer. So I decided that now was the time. I was going to make myself two new characters -- one hero, one villain -- and I was going to see what the new experience was like. And I was going to do so while smoking because it seemed somehow appropriate.
The Colosseum: A basic guide to the Arena rating system
The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, Furious, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We're especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player. When our new PvP guru C. Christian Moore wrote about a team skyrocketing to a 3206 team rating, a commenter pointed out to our staff that all the various language, acronyms, and "points" involved in the Arena can be somewhat confusing. It can be hard to figure out what the heck we're talking about.I think that probably makes sense when you consider there's probably about ten different kinds of "points," three different ratings, a few different ranks, and two different kinds of spendable currency. (While I'm not looking to delve into all the Battleground dynamics here, you have to keep in mind that Honor Points do have a pretty real effect on the Arena.)So, this time in your neighborhood Colosseum, we're going to take a break to enjoy a basic guide to the Arena rating system, and try to clarify the difference between Team rating, Personal rating, and Matchmaking rating. Check it out behind the cut.
2v2 team hits 3206 team rating, 3585 personal rating
A 2v2 team on US-Ruin has somehow achieved an unheard-of 3206 team rating. Paper Cut Your Eyelids' team leader is Cäke, a Blood Elf Priest in three-piece Deadly, one-piece Furious Gladiator gear. His Orc partner, Kwamo, a nearly full Furious Assassination Rogue, has somehow amassed a 3585 personal rating on the curiously successful team. This is pretty amazing when you consider the highest 2v2 team last season was rated below 3000. Red flags are going up over this one, folks. The team has a strangely unimpressive win ratio of 82-71. If each of their losses brought the team down 0 points, (which we know is untrue from their match history), each of their wins would average out to slightly greater than ~39 points per win. As they are nearly 400 team rating above the next highest team on the battlegroup, one would assume their gains would decrease dramatically the higher they ascend.
Arena teams hit 3k
A pair of 3v3 teams from the US Bloodlust Battlegroup -- aka BG9 and reputed to be the best US Battlegroup -- recently hit the 3000 rating, the hard cap for Arena ratings. A few other teams following closely behind at 2953 and 2949, making it likely that they, too, will hit 3000 before Season 6 is over. This has caused a bit of a stir in the Arena community, although it's not entirely unexpected considering all the changes that had been made to the Arena system since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. In fact, some had predicted that this season would see teams hit 3k legitimately (unscrupulous win-traders have hit the ceiling before).The two teams, big furious joke and sup fresh our turn baby, an RLS (Rogue, Warlock, Shaman) and a RetPR (Retribution Paladin, Priest, Rogue) respectively, are composed of members who have performed consistently well through different Arena seasons. The Rogue of big furious joke, Nutzz, is rumored to be the legendary Neilyo, who grew to infamy with his popular series of PvP videos. Its Shaman, Douja, formerly played pro for Team Pandemic. The other team's Paladin, Euneek, topped his Battlegroup last season using the Holyplay (Ret Pally, Priest, Shaman) comp. None of these guys are slouches and aren't likely to have win traded the way teams in the past have in order to reach the hard cap.Their recent achievement has brought the current Arena system under scrutiny, as Blizzard has stated before that they never intended for players to reach the rating ceiling. Considering the system has undergone numerous changes in the past few seasons, it's not unreasonable to think that it's due for another overhaul. Regardless of the system, a 3k rating is an incredible achievement. Congratulations on jobs well done.[Thanks to cigarillo for the heads up!]
New Arena matchmaking system FAQ
This will be like beating on a dead horse or something since Blizzard keeps making posts about it, but Aratil put up a comprehensive FAQ about the new and mysterious Arena matchmaking system. This is probably the most enlightening post of all, and should clear up many questions players have about their ratings versus their performance. It explains why some teams are experiencing drops in personal and team ratings even when they sport winning records.In a nutshell, the system is continuously trying to place players and teams in the bracket. This means a 50% win ratio, where teams are fighting other teams of equal skill (and thus have an even chance to win or lose). If players get winning records but still drop in ratings, it means that they are beating far inferior teams and the system will adjust their Matchmaking Ratings or MMR to the appropriate level. It is by far the best post about the subject, answering important concerns clearly and without any smoke and mirrors. The way Aratil explains it shows how the new system is superior to the old one. If you're going to read just one post about the new system (and there's a lot), this should be it.
