Random Battlegrounds: Time for a change?

[Arcanimus]

Battlegrounds in their current incarnation are nothing more than team deathmatch, in the case of non-40-man BGs, or pve races in theirs. It is my opinion that the focus needs to be moved away from HK farming, and towards completing objectives. It can be done many ways, but this is what I propose:

Drastically reduce the amount of honor gained from HKs (think 5-10% of current rate)
Drastically increase the amount of honor gained for completing objectives (think 300-500% current rate)
Increase the amount of honor gained for winning a BG (think double the current rate)
Increase the effect of the Honorable Defender buff to grant honor from at 100% of the current rate without said buff (avg 30 honor when alone/ungrouped) and within 40 yards of the flag only.
In the case of 40-man BGs (Isle of Conquest, Alterac Valley) these battlegrounds need to be heavily reworked both for balance issues and for defensibility issues.

Alterac Valley:
Bunkers and contained NPCs need to be equivalent. Either Horde Towers need to be changed to allow inshooting, or Alliance Towers need to be changed to disallow it.
Alliance bunker archers need to have their range reduced to match the attacking range of Horde archers, or Horde need to be increased to match (talking about graveyard defense here)

Isle of Conquest
Turrets need to have their range increased when firing downhill, or Glaive Throwers need to have their range decreased all around.
Boss AoE damage needs to be lowered (Leap)
Refinery and Hangar should increase player damage, and have a reduced effect on Siege damage.
Siege Engine damage should be increased, and Siege Turrets should do some damage to walls with their spammable ability.
Capture point for both Docks and Hangar should be moved closer to the middle of the map, equidistant to both factions' start points.

Also: as a general rule, Magma Totem should not interrupt flag captures in Arathi Basin, Battle for Gilneas, Isle of Conquest, or Alterac Valley. one GCD shouldn't be able to interrupt everyone capping a flag multiple times, especially since totems are no longer targetable by macros

Thoughts? Good ideas?

[Dundebuns]

I've always been in favour of removing honor from HK's and pushing it all onto getting objectives. not only would this cut down on horrendous play, it would make a team work together, and mean that you have to at least go some way to winning to get any honor, since you would get non/little for a loss.

[koljach]

Another ungrateful horde who whines about having disadvantage in AV. What about horde getting faster to BS in AB? What about having better win / loss ratio in random battlegrounds, even better in rated, and fact that around 80% top arena teams are horde?
You wouldnt change that, right? Didnt even think so.

About other points of your topic, i couldnt care less. Been playing battlegrounds for 5 years and they are just fine

[Mokobishu]

Another ungrateful horde who whines about having disadvantage in AV. What about horde getting faster to BS in AB? What about having better win / loss ratio in random battlegrounds, even better in rated, and fact that around 80% top arena teams are horde?
You wouldnt change that, right? Didnt even think so.

About other points of your topic, i couldnt care less. Been playing battlegrounds for 5 years and they are just fine

Trying to compare AB with AV is just retarded.

[Very Tired]

We seem to have opposite views on BGs... Personally I think they are to much focused on completing the task than the player vs. player aspect. Waiting around in AB defending isn't really as much fun as the offensive part but we are forced to do it because winning leads to the majority of the honor gain.

[Raugnaut]

I agree with your first few points. However, the problem with the 40 man BGs isnt the positioning, but the lack of cooridination.

[Arcanimus]

Another ungrateful horde who whines about having disadvantage in AV. What about horde getting faster to BS in AB? What about having better win / loss ratio in random battlegrounds, even better in rated, and fact that around 80% top arena teams are horde?
You wouldnt change that, right? Didnt even think so.

About other points of your topic, i couldnt care less. Been playing battlegrounds for 5 years and they are just fine

Alliance can reach Blacksmith sooner than Horde if they have both a Paladin and Death Knight or Shaman. That happens more often than not, in my experience.

We seem to have opposite views on BGs... Personally I think they are to much focused on completing the task than the player vs. player aspect. Waiting around in AB defending isn't really as much fun as the offensive part but we are forced to do it because winning leads to the majority of the honor gain.

If the honor gain is shifted, the action zones in point defense maps will shift as well. Rather than camp at a road and farm, you'll be trying to capture objectives, and killing other players (hopefully) in the process.
I do see where you're coming from though.

[Stanton Biston]

As it stands, most of the honor comes from objectives. You can't kill your way past objective honor, especially since kills on the same person have diminishing returns.

Making objectives worth crazy more honor would just create a bigger rift between the people attempting the most efficient honor gain and the people that just want to kill people. You do know that there are people that don't care about honor, right? Kills could be worth nothing and they would still farm the middle.

[tinyqt]

I think your just a mad from getting killed so often so either. 1. QUIT. or 2.Get Good(highly unlikely if your creating a thread like this) Goodluck.

[ophion1990]

Another ungrateful horde who whines about having disadvantage in AV. What about horde getting faster to BS in AB? What about having better win / loss ratio in random battlegrounds, even better in rated, and fact that around 80% top arena teams are horde?
You wouldnt change that, right? Didnt even think so.

About other points of your topic, i couldnt care less. Been playing battlegrounds for 5 years and they are just fine

Thats because horde has better players? There are actually top PvPers who go human so they can use a double dps trinket, nice try pal. Also most top RBG teams are alliance, but if you had ever played rbgs you would know that being ally or horde doesn't matter since you start at a random side and rbgs can be horde vs horde or alliance vs alliance. If alliance thinks getting LM and then rushing farm EVERY SINGLE AB match is a smart strategy, then I'm not amazed they lose more often then not tbh...

OT: Not sure about reducing honor from kills... Right now if you want honor you still go for a win, if you want kills you farm. Winning the bg or in other words completing objectives already gives more honor then farming kills, no need to change it imo. A change for IoC and AV would be needed tbh. No tank in your group means a loss most of the time, simply because no UH DK would go blood presence to tank for example. AV is the worst of the 2 though, since you take a bit more damage there since you have to pull at 2 towers left.

I wouldn't mind them redoing those 2 a bit and strands, if you have a decent team setup you can hardly even fail at stopping the other teams demo's anymore since damage is so high. On the other hand buffing siege hp isn't ideal either. I'd rather see this BG reworked a bit aswell, might just be me hating the whole siege stuff though.

Something I wouldn't mind is making WG and to a lesser extent TB a queable BG. WG was actually more fun then strands for me and its a shame to see it go to waste.

Oh as for your honorable defender idea, it sounds great. Currently if you defend you lose a ton of honor gained if noone attacks that base. Buffing it to 100% and thus increasing the honor from those periodic gains at certain points (x resources in ab for example) would help.

[Phoenexis]

They are very good incentives, and I am all for your suggestions. But just as Stanton Biston said, some people just want to kill. Although you did prove your point about more people wanting to go to objectives and kill others in the process.
In the end I think it's all about habits. Whenever you wanna kill stuff, you go "mid" for a zergfest, and sometimes you might not fin anybody.

I personally aim for objectives in a bg most of the times. But now and then I just tell myself "screw this, I wanna kill stuff" and go mid.

[Feral Camel]

Sorry Arcanimus, while I agree with what you are aiming for, I don't feel these are the best ways of making BG's more objective base. As its has been said, some people just wanna kill stuff.

I do agree that the honourable defender buff needs a bit of a boost.

The only Isle of Conquest point I agree with is that the flags for Docks and Hanger should be a little more centralised. The change I would make to IoC is randomly removing one of the 3 middle nodes (Workshop, Hanger and Docks) at the start of the match. I would hope this would make each match a little different for the previous one and increase pvp (as players would be less spread out)

I really disagree with the glaive thrower range / Turrents range comment. They are VERY easy to kill. That's why they have a longer range. The idea is that you have to group up and take them out. It's all about communication, which people tend to lack in BG's (except when insulting one another!)

[Mormolyce]

Well I disagree about BGs being deathmatches with no objectives. It's certainly true that a lot of bad players TRY to play them like they're deathmatches with no objectives. An opposing team with the slightest shred of a brain will grind said morons into the dirt. You ignore mechanics, you lose.

That said I do like some of the suggestions. Glaive throwers being on the walls out of range of cannons is just complete crap, it gives further incentive to just ignore the cannons which already see hardly any use. I think cannons in all BGs that use them need a boost to damage versus vehicles to some extent and players to a huge extent. It's absurd seeing a priest tanking the laughable damage a tower cannon does. Similarly the boss NPCs in AV and Isle really need a buff.

Partly these issues are caused by players continually gearing up while mechanics/NPCs remain at the same level, which I think should be addressed, and partly because they are just too weak to begin with. It should not be possible for a sloppy undergeared AV pug with half its players across the map and no proper tank to kill the faction boss with only 2 towers down (as is the case now).

The tower archer issue in AV is really bad, like Horde need any more of a disadvantage in AV. Capping a few seconds earlier is win or lose, especially now that you win with 2 towers.