Hello all, Seth MoonShade here. There's a bit of a problem with ranked PVP and I don't know if enough people are talking about it.
Now, to be fair, I have been away from this game for at least three years and a lot has changed since then. PVP has also changed, only for the worse. It used to be OK. Generally, you wouldn't get matched against puppet teams or warlords with unbeatable arena gear (I'll get into this shortly). Now, you'd be fortunate to find a match against someone your level and rank. I went into PVP with 0W, 0L, 500 private rating, expecting to find someone of the same level and the same rank. For context, I did this on a level 64 wizard. The very first opponent was a grandmaster warlord, level 50.
I lost. I lost even though I did nothing wrong in terms of strategy. I kept my defenses up, worked at tearing his down to get a good hit in, heck, I even used treasure cards to draw the cards I wanted to at the times I wanted to in order to solidify a strategy. I got a couple of decent hits in, weakened his healing, etc.. All of this was to no merit, useless. He simply built up his pierce rating even further than it already was, and hit me once with a treasure card that he wouldn't learn until at least achieving exalted. Mind that, my statistics are not so bad. My character is a storm with 35% universal resistance, 85% school damage and 30% critical chance. It isn't the absolute best,but it should be better than what someone half my level can achieve. Somehow, this is not the case.
So here's the deal..
The problems:
Privates are being paired with commanders and warlords of lower level to make the matches queue faster.
The gear available to those high ranking in PVP is not so much restricted by level. Any lower level player can easily achieve 50% resistance to all schools, 0-70% damage for their school of focus, some level of critical and armor piercing even in some cases.
Treasure cards are not restricted by level so much either. Any lower level player can easily get their hands on cards that they would not unlock until much later in the game.
Crafted gear is not really up to par with some crowns items, farmed gear and especially not with arena gear.
So.. here's how I say we fix this..
In a perfect world, we would -
Restrict matchmaking to only pair people no more than 5-10 levels above or below each other.
Restrict matchmaking to only pair people a maximum of 100 rank points above or below each other after corporal. (Anybody with 547 rank or less can be freely paired among one another within the 5-10 level threshold).
Make treasure cards only available by level. If you are not level 16, you can't buy a vampire. If you're not level 68, you can't buy sirens. It's that simple. Do this for every spell across the board. Look at the level which spells are unlocked by the school they are unlocked in and only make them purchasable by wizards of those levels regardless of their school. Life wizards who are level 10 should still be able to get a myth cyclops treasure card, for example.
Ban the shared bank trading of arena gear between characters, revert all shared gear back to the original characters if and where possible and finally, take every treasure card that violates the new rules away from everyone that has them.
A lighter approach to point number three would be to still allow people to buy whatever treasure card they want at whatever level they want, but restrict the use of cards unlocked at levels beyond the wizard's level in the ranked arena only. However, I am of the opinion that typically the only people who buy cards beyond their current level are people who want to get an unfair advantage in the arena and I am completely in favor of strict restrictions as punishment for this nasty approach to PVP that has poisoned the arena and made it a cutthroat, pay to win environment.
Moving on..
So, here's what I think would happen if these changes were implemented..
As a general outcome, only people of the same level and rank, will be paired in matchmaking, with only a 100 rank difference in order to keep competition and room for advancement in rank. No more warlords against privates, corporals or anyone lower than commander, even with massive level differences. Magus warlord will only fight magus commander and magus warlord as well, grandmaster will only fight grandmaster, private legendary will only fight private through early veteran legendary wizard at most, etc..
No one will be using a treasure card version of a card they could not have possibly learned at their level at any stage in ranked PVP duels.
More people will want to play ranked PVP at any level now that they won't get killed by a spell they probably never even heard of.
I think there are some other implications but I trust the administration at Kingsisle will understand what I am trying to say here. Let's deviate PVP away from pay to win and gear, towards what strategy a wizard can come up with given the cards that are available to them in their level range.
Thanks for reading, please share your thoughts and please, KI, look towards making these changes.
