Ashran: The Good, the Bad, and the ug-err...the solution!

[Deleted]

Cross-post from the battle-net forums.
I recently started Ashran out of curiosity.
I had really low expectations due to the lousy reputation that it has earned during these first months, but I must say, it’s not as bad as people make it look.
However, I must admit that Ashran shows how inexperienced Blizzard is with PvP that strays off the Battleground paragon they honed through the years. I sometime play other MMOs, so believe me when I say that Ashran really doesn’t look adequate for a game as big as WoW.
While Wintergrasp was quite well received, it was also more close to a bg than it looks, with a time gate, and objectives to claim for a single goal.
I wanted to discuss Ashran, highlight what they did good, where it fails to deliver, and how to fix it.
In case you are unfamiliar with Ashran, there is a good guide on WoWhead, but since I'm new on MMOChampion i can't paste links :P. However, I'll often refer to Ashran mechanics such as main event stages, bonus objectives, and the like of that.

The Good
Ashran has one main goal(Road of Glory) , 4 side objectives(The Bonus Objectives, and extra rewards to claim simply by fighting (minibosses, Artifacts that can be turned for Honor). These rewards also give you bonuses for your factions(guardians, gates, etc). In short, in Ashran you have many different objectives, unique mechanics, and even unique spells! The concept is really intriguing, and the map itself is nice, but the problems arise from Blizzard's inexperience with this kind of game mode.

The Bad.
I’ll have to list them because it’s rather hard to discuss all reasons that cause Ashran to be unfun in a single paragraph without derailing. However I will try to keep a certain order of importance/priority.
1) “Zerg” groups: In short, no matter what are you doing in Ashran , the bigger is your group, the better.
Now, "big group" is always a relative term, but, if we compare the average Ashran raid to the dimensions of the Bridge at Warspear/Stormshield, we can’t say that the numbers are fairly tuned. Zerg groups are particularly bad because WoW in general, and Ashran in particular, both lack a way to counter Zerg groups in design.
In Wintergrasp having a single large zerg usually meant that you left other sides vulnerable, and losing workshops meant losing other siege demolishers if they destroyed your currents.
Other games that do the WvW quite better, like Gw2, have different mechanics: In WvW you can build anti-players or siege machines on the spot with the help of other players, and ranged classes are vulnerable to walls/reflects/body block from tankier characters, so staying outside of melee range isn’t always possible.
In WoW, we have boomkins and locks doing their thing from the backrow , and it’s really hard to reach them unless you have the bigger group advantage and can force your way in.

2) Objective/rewards: The usual raider who gets into Ashran will push mid for his strongbox, complete the Road of Glory with relative ease, then attempt to join an event group and leave if the events raid is doing bad.
Why so?
Well, simply put , the rewards aren’t well distributed: it’s pointless to do Road of Glory more than once a day, so it’s often left uncontested, and people on the defense don’t bother claiming it.
Same goes for events, since if the opposing faction has a better, bigger raid going around, there isn’t much you can do to stop them. There is just usually one event up at a time and with addons a raid is efficiently able to maintain control over them until enough people leave the winning side/enter the losing side. The fact that the single player contribution has little to none impact, given the size of the raids and the fact the factions usually have just one single big raid for the single event going on at a time, makes players feel like they waste their time when the raid is not winning events.

3) Strategy: Finally, not all that is wrong comes because of Blizzard’s fault.
Ashran is rather unique in its mechanics, but it can be considered a World vs World Zone, or, in WoW terms, OpenRealm faction vs faction PvP zone.
Because of this, players usually lack the right attitude when entering Ashran. I often find players entering a raid group, going at the closest event straight away without grouping , dive the bulk of the opposing faction raid, and then blaming their death on healers. Now, I’m not an expert in Ashran strategy, but when this kind of player joins Ashran they of course have an awful experience , (thus giving Ashran its reputation).
Also, when a player joins he usually prioritize Tremblade/Val’roth for the Gleaming Strongbox, regardless of where the raid he’s joined is .
PS: a lot of players don’t use the unique Ashran mechanics such as Whistles, Class-specific skillbook, scrolls, etc., but I’d say that’s a minor problem compared to the rest.


How to improve Ashran.
The intended role for Ashran was a dynamic pvp zone where both factions incessantly fought over control of the zone and its resources. However, this failed to deliver because after winning the Battle players lose all incentives to keep trying to hold the main road (this leads to win trading) and because once a raid has enough numbers to destroy the opposing faction in zerg vs zerg , the losing faction has nothing to do in between.
These three issues are strictly related: people organize in zerg (1) because it is the better way to get rewards (2) which in turn is not immediately evident/convenient to the player who just zoned in (3).

So, in order to make Ashran better, they need to:
1) Disencourage/Punish Zerg groups.
2) Make a better system that distributes rewards (Strongboxes/Conquest/Honor).
3) Make each objective in game keep importance , even for player who already completed them.

Now, those aren’t really “innovative” ideas, since Blizzard is apparently trying to solve those issues with the numerous Ashran hotfix who change this or that other reward, but I think that just shifting rewards this way won’t really help improving the Ashran experience in the long run, if these core issues remain.

• 1) Instead of winning the Ashran battle by killing the opposing faction leader, make so that the reward is earned by “completion” points earned like with Apexis dailies: each stage of battle gives you a certain % of completion, and once you fill a bar you win your Ashmaul Strongbox/Reward.

• 2) Participating in an event and losing it grants a stack of a temporary buff like LFR(temporary name: resolve) . The more you lose an event, the stronger you get.
• After a certain number of stacks, even raids with fewer participant will be able to win an event.
• Winning an event removes multiple stacks of this buff, so people cannot stack this buff by losing events intentionally to pile up this advantage and exploit it.

• 3) Participating in an event and winning grants a stack of a temporary buff (temporary name: Pillager) . More events you win, the higher the rewards you get from winning events: this makes players unwilling to trade events with the opposing faction because the more you win, the better the rewards. A good raid group will keep winning until the opposing faction has enough resolve stack to cut them down even when at a massive disadvantage

• 4) Increase the importance of holding points in the path of glory: this will a reason to participate to raid groups who already earned their Strongbox .
• Example: Holding a Tower affects the losing faction with a debuff that reduces the effectiveness of the Event Buff(more damage/health/healing when on an event loss-streak, temporary name of the debuff: Cut Out).
• This, paired with the event buffs, encourages large raids to separate into smaller groups to try to keep control over the whole zone, rather than just seizing the current point of interest (i.e. the current event).

• PS: OPTIONAL 5) Give melee classes a item that detects your specialization and gives melee classes a on-demand shield/prolonged cc immunity to actually REACH the enemy group before blowing up.

Now, how would these 4 changes pan out together?
Let’s make a simulation of what would happen.
Live:
Alliance has a massive number advantage over Horde: They would win RoG fast, then move to events, with the horde maybe able to take RoG if the alliance left them do that, and then they would be unable to contest events.

Proposed changes:
Alliance has a massive number advantage, but they need more time to win RoG, and not everyone completes it at the same time, with players who, as soon as the main battle restart, leave the main raid for fighting at the crossroads for completion point toward their Ashmaul strongbox, while others shift to events.
In the meantime Horde is also fighting for RoG because they also need their strongbox, but a smaller group is attempting to cap events .
The Alliance event group is also smaller due to some players having to complete RoG , but they still have the advantage. They win 2 events.
Then the Horde , despite the lower numbers , win an event thanks to Resolve stacks: They are back at zero, but Horde has seized an Artifact. They win also the next event, more players have completed RoG from the horde side and are trickling in the Horde event group.
Alliance is unable to win events any longer(or at least is no longer uncontested), and despite the Resolve stacks, they lost Tower, and thus are affected by Cut Out which reduces the effectiveness of Resolve. A group of them keeps fighting the events, a smaller part defects and goes to secure the tower , gaining 3 minutes of Cut- Out immunity for their faction.

IMHO those changes would improve the Ashran experience, wouldn’t harm the chance for players to earn their rewards (although players who play on a realm dominated by their faction would inevitably feel like the rewards are slower, since the win/losses would be more balanced).

Thoughts, opinions?

[Deleted]

How to play Ashran

1. Queue up and enter, now it's like 5 min tops queues.
2. Find out which faction is deathballing the events.
3. If it's not yours, leave Ashran and requeue after the 10 sec have expired. Recommended to give it like 2 min or so before you queue again to ensure you're not placed in the same instance.
4. Repeat until you find an instance where your faction is capable of farming the events or at least it's not kicked out of each and every event. If you're Alliance, you will have to repeat this a lot due to a large number of retards who are hellbent on killing Volrath for a couple of fucking blues instead of joining the event raids, which are likely to get overrun by the more zergy Horde raids because of this.

[Water Heals]

I like this idea a lot. I looked forward to ashran, but dont like how its been done thusfar. I think i would find myself doing it a lot more if it worked like this.

[Deleted]

How to play Ashran

1. Queue up and enter, now it's like 5 min tops queues.
2. Find out which faction is deathballing the events.
3. If it's not yours, leave Ashran and requeue after the 10 sec have expired. Recommended to give it like 2 min or so before you queue again to ensure you're not placed in the same instance.
4. Repeat until you find an instance where your faction is capable of farming the events or at least it's not kicked out of each and every event. If you're Alliance, you will have to repeat this a lot due to a large number of retards who are hellbent on killing Volrath for a couple of fucking blues instead of joining the event raids, which are likely to get overrun by the more zergy Horde raids because of this.

I know that this is how Ashran is ran currently, and I can't say it's really fun, or interesting.
If they removed conquest and strongboxes from Ashran people would stop attending: the only reason people are doing Ashran in its current form it's due to how potentially fast you can get content if you find a nice group.
And if they don't find a nice group (i.e. their faction is not dominating events) they quit.

BGs can be biased, but they are actually reasonable: winning 4/3 out of 10 bg is a lot better than spending 2 hours in Ashran only for a Gleaming Ashmaul strongbox and then losing all events.

[Deleted]

I know that this is how Ashran is ran currently, and I can't say it's really fun, or interesting.
If they removed conquest and strongboxes from Ashran people would stop attending: the only reason people are doing Ashran in its current form it's due to how potentially fast you can get content if you find a nice group.
And if they don't find a nice group (i.e. their faction is not dominating events) they quit.

BGs can be biased, but they are actually reasonable: winning 4/3 out of 10 bg is a lot better than spending 2 hours in Ashran only for a Gleaming Ashmaul strongbox and then losing all events.

Don't hate the game, hate the stupid dev who thought this is a good idea.

[Warlord Booty]

I liked Wintergrasp and Tol Barad. Can't wait to try this. If you're not in my raid, how are you expected to get my choice heals?

[Deleted]

Don't hate the game, hate the stupid dev who thought this is a good idea.

I don't hate either.
I'm just saying that Ashran could be a lot more fun if they made small changes that prevented these awful scenarios with a zerg dominating ashran just by being the bigger group.