Modernizing Arena Teams

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Originally Posted by Hornliu

How does MMR work in this proposed system?

- If your MMR is bound to teams and resets upon entering a new team, people will keep making new teams to smurf at low rating.

- If your MMR does not reset, people can leave their main team to intentionally drop MMR in another team, and I do not see how this can be distinguished from simply playing legitimately with weaker partners or team comps.

I do like the idea of making it easier to play with different people a lot, but I do not see how the proposed system will not be abused. As others have already pointed out and the only solution I can see, is to adopt the solo queue system (with the limitation that you can only queue as a full team).

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It seems these valid and important points have not been addressed yet.

Hello can someone explain to me how characters with 1800 personal/team rating 1500 mmr?

Merc mode doesn't even work correctly and you're implementing this? And risk alienating all players who don't use your custom client?

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Originally Posted by xxhummusgodx

Merc mode doesn't even work correctly and you're implementing this? And risk alienating all players who don't use your custom client?

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What doesn't work correctly about it?

Do we have any news?

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Originally Posted by Palutena

Devlog - January 6, 2025:

Arena teams have been an important part of the game from TBC until late MoP. In Patch 5.4.0 (and WotLK Classic) they were replaced by personal arena stats. We think Arena Teams are a good feature, it adds personality to the game, it makes you 'bond' with your Arena Partners as it requires effort from all members to get an Arena Team to high ratings, team names also add a certain charm.

There is one big downside however, it makes playing arena with your friends a lot harder as you lose your win/lose stats and team rating when you switch to a different team.

As such, we think it's time to make a couple changes, modernizing how arena teams work and making it easier to play with others. We are however still bound by the 3.3.5a game client and as such cannot remove arena teams entirely.

We have the following changes in mind:

• Arena Teams will remember stats of its members after leaving.
• Players will regain their stats upon re-joining an Arena Team.
• The personal rating will decrease by 50 points every weekly flush in teams you have left.
• Any Team Member can invite other players to join an Arena Team.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the weekly arena point flush and end-season routines will not change, you will only gain points and end-season rewards from teams you are active in and fill the criteria for.

We believe these changes will not change the core value of arena teams: Working together to get a team to a high rating, while still allowing the freedom to play with others.

We will await player feedback before we implement the above changes on TBC and WotLK. Please provide your feedback in this thread.

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Update after feedback:

The 'solo queue teams’ idea is indeed an option to consider, but we’re not looking to overhaul the whole arena team system at this moment. Especially not mid-season.

We might reconsider this at a later date, but there's a bunch of technical hurdles to overcome before we can do that.
Our belief is that the changes that were suggested will add more flexibility and quality of life without requiring a complete overhaul.

We accepted the feedback for removing the weekly -50 personal rating penalty for inactive team members, since it won't really add anything to the experience.
As such, we will move ahead with the suggested changes, most likely by the end of the month or even before it. The devlog will be updated when we do so.

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We are a great bunch on Onyxia playing 5v5 seriously as it is a lot of fun and indeed is a great bonding with fellow mates, which requires great communication. Many of us were disappointed to not get any rewards in the end of the season. Please implement this in your modernization, as it's nothing new and rewards for 5v5 has been given out before on this server.

So how are things going since the changes?
Every high rated team I check has a almost equal personal rating and mmr.
Are they all exploiting their mmr?

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Originally Posted by Hornliu

- If your MMR does not reset, people can leave their main team to intentionally drop MMR in another team

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I assume thats how the high rated teams exploit their mmr since the change?!

This was a bad idea, people are dropping MMR in one team and getting easy rating in another team because MMR is same. i just saw 2.2k rating character with 1500 MMR. my suggestion is to either restore how it worked before or perhaps have a different MMR for each arena team

Hey i can confirm that people are creating fresh character to bench in main team. If they fight at high mmr and lose agains other teams, they leave their main team make new one and dopping MMR. After this they rejoin old Team and Q on lower MMR with high personal Rating. So they gonna win more now. Until they are higher MMR the process will repeat.

often i fought agains 2100MMR Teams, and after 1 Hour they came back at 1800 MMR and this sucks.

There is a fluctuation of people that have hit 2.2k in 2s with around 1500 mmr which is the starting 2s mmr. That is actually way worse than mmr dropping, it's mmr dorpping on steroids. I guess we should keep reporting such cases to the GMs until they think of a fix for that.

I think this was a mistake indeed. You cannot introduce such a feature without establishing clear rules with it. How can you even punish the players abusing the system now? Like what is the line here. Is mmr dropping now bannable in general? Then a lot of people should be banned. Or only till a certain difference between mmr and personal rating? Not below personal rating at all? We need some staff member to clearly communicate a rule about this else it is pure chaos

I think the new system could make sense if they do not give rewards based on teamrating/persorating anymore but based on MMR. Then all the mmr dropping would be counterproductive actually. So not giving titles to e.g. the five best teams with highest teamrating and then checking who is eligible of the teammates but giving titles to the 15 best players with the highest MMR in the ladder. This would actually be a really nice idea, everything else would be just broken now because the said appraoch to leave team -> drop mmr -> rejoin -> farm more fast perso/teamrating with low mmr (=fast queues vs lows)

This seems like a really good idea (ranking by MMR) but still, the biggest issue is that people with higher personal rating are queuing against lower rated players just because of their MMR drop. This should definitely be bannable but people I already reported are still yet playing. Only really happens - oh wonder - on Blackrock Server as a potential ban on Icecrown is way to expensive.
Warmane staff, we beg you - please do something about this! Scripting and MMR dropping should be heavily punished.

There will ALWAYS be problems with MMR dropping untill you finally accept that the best way is to make every bracket like Solo Queue and boom, magically all the rating pairings are solved, on top of all the benefits of allowing more freedom to queue with different people. I understand it is not easy to implement but is definitively worth the trouble.

Hey, good topic, i think making soloq playable again would be enough.

Maybe adding 1v1 and thinking more about world PVP or make people actually care about battlegrounds (adding quests and rewards for kills, wins, flag caps etc). Introduce BG marks to WOTLK would be really great and making them swapable for arena points, honor points, mounts, skins etc.)

That Isle of Quel Thanas as main world PVP zone for blackrock, dude nobody wants to go there. Imagine having WG open with quests and flying mounts. Or just change zones from time to time, open new cities, just change anything...

So many people talking about it, asking for it, nothing is happening, no feedback. Players with 2,3k in 2v2 struggling to get 1700 in soloq on 200+ games. It is not posible to get rating in soloq anymore, definitely not as RELE geared starter to gear up. BIS people with high exp have trouble playing soloq close to 2k rating. 2500+ players can be easily stuck on 1600 rating.

Can i at least ask for a answer, is current soloq really working as intended?

We are old, have limited time, soloq was the thing why i always came back, but now, no motivation. I would love to make new characters and gear them up, but it is not possible for me anymore, no time to meet with 2v2 partners. Also que time for some classes is just amazing, 5-8 min waiting time just to get stuck on 1750 rating because of badly working MMR system.

Also making icecrown and lordareon players to visit que masters to que arena is really something. Imagine having those people in the world to do things, quests, achievments, farm proffesions, do world PVP etc and not staying in main city waiting 10 min to que one arena. Nobody want to just stay and wait there. Today i did 1720 rating in soloq on icecrown, playing just for arena points and i noticed its RANK 69, like wtf ?

Btw those tower defenses and battle royales, nice thing, enjoyable, good change, but i would prefer working basics instead of this.

Thanks.