It's not exactly a negative thing towards PvEer's, as ultimately it will make it a better game AND it will bring more players to the scene on release. I have a good 5 or so friends who don't want to buy the game now that the arena system has no looks to be in any way competitive. Of course, there's no way in telling how many people are actually waiting for something big like this, but I think I can fairly say there will be a lot. And more players would just be better all around, for blizzard's income, for the in game queues for player searching, etc..
The confusion aspect: Skills should not change. Duration of effects should change, that is all. lets say u have a move that stuns for 5 seconds in pve. 5 seconds in PvP is a long time, to long, so they can(because jay has said so in his latest interviews at the conference) change the duration and scale it down in a pvp scenario, and relatively easily. The more players you make in a team the easier it gets. 3v3 is generally pretty good for balancing without much work so 3v3 arena is pretty ideal. I suspect that is why it was chosen in the first place.
These issues are at the core of why Blizzard isn't iterating on pvp for D3, at least not right now. They realize it's an entire game apart to balance and they've expeienced that before.
PvP is optional. Its not a must, you don't have to pvp. Some people take it very hardcore(i do) and some just jump in and wanna beat the shit outta there buddy every once and a while for a giggle. So make a rated arena system, and make a non rated arena system.
Participation is optional, development isn't. Blizzard would still have to spend many man-hours iterating on pvp balance if they made rated pvp a realtiy because creating that content essentially says to the world "this is a serious pvp game too," and opens the flood-gates for wow-forum-esq whining about balance 24 hours a day. Leaving it out washes their hands of it. They can (rightly) point out the game isn't about the pvp aspect and that a level of imbalance is par for the course. They might express an interest in making things more balanced at some point, but they won't be delaying other content to make it happen.
Hell they had simple rated and non rated options in wow when you go 2 the arena master 2 que up, its really not hard. They have a mountain of options to chose from in the actually pvp contest structure(last man standing, death match, capture the flag). there is such potential for all of them it sounds like so much fun, especially considering this is a game with NO HEALERS! Every1 is there to beat the shit out of each other and skill cap will be so high on every class because of it. Its exciting!
I don't know how many times someone has to say it, but this game was not intended for the WoW audience, and the pvp-players of WoW in particular are not the people intended to buy and enjoy D3 in the long-run. They've made it abundantly clear their target market is the relaxed PvM (pushing for more co-op) player who may on occasional dabble in shooting at other players. Just that mention of healers alone makes me shudder to think of what the wow-arena population would do to the Diablo community.
Just wish blizzard would make the game for the people. They don't want to split players up, what a load of shit. we want to be split up! DO IT.
I'm glad they aren't going to just "DO IT," really. They're showing integrity (mock the RMAH all you want) and adherence to the genre that Diablo is a part of while continuing to innovate and iterate on the (largely dungeon-crawling cooperative) gameplay itself.
I hope you don't take my post as insulting or insinuating that the game isn't for you, but it's my read of Blizzard's posting thus far that they're really not trying to develop pvp for the above reasons. As an oldschool gamer this really doesn't affect me one way or the other, but I do feel it's unjust to simply rant on about blizzard's position in this matter as though it were unreasonable. To my thinking, they are actually being very reasonable about it.
Proletaria, we aren't asking for any of this "because it's like WoW." Nobody is looking to take the game in the direction of that piece of garbage (Incoming flame Storm.) I personally love the diablo series and I will be spending the hours upon hours completing the game and finding gear. What I don't like is that the arena feature is such a joke at this point. Unless someone else comes out with their own tournaments and ladders (I'm not even looking for tournaments really,) the arena is going to have most the teams queuing up with almost no strategy and no incentive to play their best. Think of WoW (I referenced WoW I must be a fanboy) and how their non rated games consist of constant leavers and teams who just charge in with no strategy. I wouldn't mind if they made a split non-ranked and ranked mode, so that if you don't want to fight against the more serious, you don't have to.
Nuvian, Diablo 2 is over 10 years old, expecting the PvP to be almost exactly the same in Diablo 3 as it was in Diablo 2 in terms of features wouldn't be right. Besides, people made ladders anyways because of popular demand (Some sanctioned by Blizzard I believe.) All I'm saying is that PvPer's are going to be really disappointed if the current news for the arena is the full extent for the release of the game.
Two things that would help out would be:
-Adding Last Man Standing back along with TDM
-Some sort of ranking system to liven a little competition
It would make the veterans to the diablo series who like PvP happy, and bring in new players who feel the same way.
I don't think anyone here is truly asking for more balance in this thread (There may be a couple.) What people really want though is something to strive for in the arena, aka. making it a little more competitive. This can be achieved With any sort of ranking system. If people, including Jay Wilson, are so bent on keeping it from turning into an E-sport, then simply implement a system like how Battlegrounds were in Vanilla WoW. Ranks based off of dedication and performance. It would be better if they made a ladder in-game that people can compete in.
And before I get attacked about how they wouldn't do that because it'll show the imbalance, look at any game on the market with a competitive multi-player, besides Counter-Strike (Incoming massive flame storm) and tell me if they are in any way balanced to the point where nothing stands out on the leaderboards. Starcraft 2 has the Terrans (though recent patches may have overbuffed the zerg, I haven't payed attention enough recently,) based off my gladiator friends on Darkspear US for WoW, Warlocks and Shaman dominate, with Mages slightly under, etc..
TLDR: Need a ranking system in PvP, there is almost no completely balanced game.
PS. Before you respond read my signature.
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Proletaria, we aren't asking for any of this "because it's like WoW." Nobody is looking to take the game in the direction of that piece of garbage (Incoming flame Storm.) I personally love the diablo series and I will be spending the hours upon hours completing the game and finding gear. What I don't like is that the arena feature is such a joke at this point. Unless someone else comes out with their own tournaments and ladders (I'm not even looking for tournaments really,) the arena is going to have most the teams queuing up with almost no strategy and no incentive to play their best. Think of WoW (I referenced WoW I must be a fanboy) and how their non rated games consist of constant leavers and teams who just charge in with no strategy. I wouldn't mind if they made a split non-ranked and ranked mode, so that if you don't want to fight against the more serious, you don't have to.
Two things that would help out would be:
-Adding Last Man Standing back along with TDM
-Some sort of ranking system to liven a little competition
It would make the veterans to the diablo series who like PvP happy, and bring in new players who feel the same way.
And before I get attacked about how they wouldn't do that because it'll show the imbalance, look at any game on the market with a competitive multi-player, besides Counter-Strike (Incoming massive flame storm) and tell me if they are in any way balanced to the point where nothing stands out on the leaderboards. Starcraft 2 has the Terrans (though recent patches may have overbuffed the zerg, I haven't payed attention enough recently,) based off my gladiator friends on Darkspear US for WoW, Warlocks and Shaman dominate, with Mages slightly under, etc..
TLDR: Need a ranking system in PvP, there is almost no completely balanced game.
PS. Before you respond read my signature.