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  1. #1
    Legendary! Firebert's Avatar
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    Preform AV Enabler

    Originally Posted by Vaneras
    This is not something that we are encouraging, but it is also something that we currently have no realistic way to prevent. That being said, this is something that may change soon, which is why we always advise people to not use any type of add-on designed to circumvent or bend our balancing safeguards... using such add-ons can lead to severe account penalties!
    (Source)
    This clearly leads to the following question.

    Does the use of the Preform AV Enabler addon by many players constitute circumvention of the balancing safeguards in place?

    The Battleground queueing system currently supports easy entry into Battlegrounds for groups of players of size five or less. This could possibly be a technological limitation, and as such an unintended limit.

    The "balancing safeguards" of Blizzard's queueing system for Battlegrounds is unknown, but, they have said in the past about the LFD system that they try to mix high- and low-geared players together for dungeons. This means that if a similar balancing safeguard is used for the PvP queueing system, premades made up of mostly high-geared players (most premades have a reasonbly high resilience prerequisite to join) could be breaking the rules by attempting to fill a battleground with such a group.

    An easy way around this is to have a wide spread of gear levels in your premade, as this would constitute a "balanced" group of players, and premades would still be able to accomplish their goal of farming HKs or getting achievements by the sheer amount of organisation they have over a (highly likely) random opposing team.

    Vaneras does say that "this is something they may change soon". Either they are going to ban the addon and attempt to prevent multiple groups from entering the same battleground, or they are going to allow raids to enter battlegrounds. Note that Vaneras said "this is not something we are encouraging" as opposed to "this is something we are discouraging".

    Just some thoughts. But, please, be aware. If you believe that Preform AV Enabler is causing an imbalance in battlegrounds, you're liable to be actioned.

    As this is the first (to my knowledge) known blue post on the Premade issue, it's probably worth having a discussion about it here.
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  2. #2
    Stood in the Fire Crieve's Avatar
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    Just fought a group from Korgath and Darkspear. (in the same battleground) It's a bunch of crap if you ask me.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Firebert View Post
    Originally Posted by Vaneras
    This is not something that we are encouraging, but it is also something that we currently have no realistic way to prevent. That being said, this is something that may change soon, which is why we always advise people to not use any type of add-on designed to circumvent or bend our balancing safeguards... using such add-ons can lead to severe account penalties!
    (Source)
    This clearly leads to the following question.

    Does the use of the Preform AV Enabler addon by many players constitute circumvention of the balancing safeguards in place?

    The Battleground queueing system currently supports easy entry into Battlegrounds for groups of players of size five or less. This could possibly be a technological limitation, and as such an unintended limit.

    The "balancing safeguards" of Blizzard's queueing system for Battlegrounds is unknown, but, they have said in the past about the LFD system that they try to mix high- and low-geared players together for dungeons. This means that if a similar balancing safeguard is used for the PvP queueing system, premades made up of mostly high-geared players (most premades have a reasonbly high resilience prerequisite to join) could be breaking the rules by attempting to fill a battleground with such a group.
    The 5 person limit is one of the balancing safeguards in place.

    In the distant past, it was possible to queue much larger groups, then Blizzard removed that and only allowed single-queuing, and eventually put the 5 person limit in.

    It's been pretty clear that these addons are circumventing these measures but Blizzard has turned a blind eye to it for many years. It's a bit of a bear during AV weekends as it's essentially free honor when you have a huge organized raid against randoms.

  4. #4
    Legendary! Firebert's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cows For Life View Post
    The 5 person limit is one of the balancing safeguards in place.

    In the distant past, it was possible to queue much larger groups, then Blizzard removed that and only allowed single-queuing, and eventually put the 5 person limit in.

    It's been pretty clear that these addons are circumventing these measures but Blizzard has turned a blind eye to it for many years. It's a bit of a bear during AV weekends as it's essentially free honor when you have a huge organized raid against randoms.
    Information like this is useful. I'm relatively new to WoW (a bit of Vanilla and then started playing properly during WotLK) so I was unsure of the history of the grouping for battleground queueing.

    Are we going to see people being banned for using the addon, or are they going to do what they did to AVR: ban the addon and leave things as they are?
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  5. #5
    I have no problems with people using this addon to get a premade into a battleground. What I do have a problem with, is people using this addon to create a group solely for farming HK's. People getting camped at a single GY for 40 minutes with little to no hope of getting any honor themselves is horrendous. I am quite happy for these people to form their groups for the purpose of winning an AV along the intended means, but not for farming.

    Are we going to see people being banned for using the addon, or are they going to do what they did to AVR: ban the addon and leave things as they are?
    I expect they'll look at the source for the add on, see if there is anything they can intentionally break to stop it working without affecting the game, and then put out a statement or contact the mods original creator asking them to not develop it further.
    RETH

  6. #6
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    This addon has been about for a long time. It's just now it seems to have come to light. I used to join up for the 40man premade runs in TBC/WotLK on Al'akir, nothing was ever said about them. I can understand the frustration of coming up against this, I never have personally, but if I did, I'd simply /afk out.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Firebert View Post
    Are we going to see people being banned for using the addon, or are they going to do what they did to AVR: ban the addon and leave things as they are?
    No because blizz bans nobody who uses certain addons; they simply make them unusable by breaking the API - here the JoinBattlefield(index[, asGroup[, isRated]]) function. But you can still try to join at the same time via voice chat.

  8. #8
    Legendary! Firebert's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dundebuns View Post
    I have no problems with people using this addon to get a premade into a battleground. What I do have a problem with, is people using this addon to create a group solely for farming HK's. People getting camped at a single GY for 40 minutes with little to no hope of getting any honor themselves is horrendous. I am quite happy for these people to form their groups for the purpose of winning an AV along the intended means, but not for farming.
    Surely, a "recently slain" debuff would fix this (much like the debuff of the same name that is applied in Wintergrasp): each time you are killed, you aren't worth any honor points to that enemy for a short duration, stacking if killed within that duration.

    Seeing as graveyard camping (probably) has negative feedback for all those involved (because of the 40-man HK premades at least), we could see the end of graveyard camping in whatever change they are going to roll out over this issue.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dundebuns View Post
    I expect they'll look at the source for the add on, see if there is anything they can intentionally break to stop it working without affecting the game, and then put out a statement or contact the mods original creator asking them to not develop it further.
    Similarly is to not put more than 5 people of the same group into one instance if all are queued for the same instance. I'm not sure how many Alterac Valleys are going at once (queue times for the eighth group would be lengthy), but to implement this and put out a statement saying it's now impossible to make a 40-man premade with this change, effectively breaks the addon and retains the 5-player group limit for premades per battleground without having to go through the addon source code and banning specific lines that way, and so on.

    ---------- Post added 2012-03-27 at 01:17 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Stunlol View Post
    This addon has been about for a long time. It's just now it seems to have come to light. I used to join up for the 40man premade runs in TBC/WotLK on Al'akir, nothing was ever said about them. I can understand the frustration of coming up against this, I never have personally, but if I did, I'd simply /afk out.
    Players feel that when they join a battleground either solo or as a group of up to five people, they don't expect to meet a team of 40 organised players that play to the longest possible objective (300+ reinforcements in Isle of Conquest, 600+ reinforcements in Alterac Valley), and also feel that being told that upon meeting such a team to take a 15-minute debuff isn't satisfactory gameplay.

    I've been on both sides of this: AV games that take one hour because the Horde took both mines and kept adding to their reinforcements, to 45-minute Isle of Conquest games where I shouted in chat that the Horde were a premade and to just sit in our base or everyone spread out (but no-one listened, and everyone subsequently got farmed in the Horde Keep for the majority of the battleground).

    As a member of a 40-man premade it feels great to rack up insane amounts of HKs and honor. As a member of a 40-man battleground watching the rest of my team being instagibbed and farmed, it felt terrible to have no chance of winning just because of some organisation and a single addon. Hopefully they redress this balance a little.

    ---------- Post added 2012-03-27 at 01:18 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Draeblin View Post
    No because blizz bans nobody who uses certain addons; they simply make them unusable by breaking the API - here the JoinBattlefield(index[, asGroup[, isRated]]) function. But you can still try to join at the same time via voice chat.
    Would that be an easy fix? I'm not an API expert.
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  9. #9
    I love making preamdes, and love playing in preamdes, and there is definitley an argument to be made that they are a way of circumventing the balacing thingys in place, hopwever, i think the game would be worse off without them. Premades provide an fun way to play battlegrounds without the hassle of formign a rated BG team, and alow much larger tactics to be tried (in terms of numbers of players). The easiest way to (somewhat) resolve the issue, would be to have premades queing into each other as much as possible, and only queieing randoms into premades when there are no other premade groups queing.

  10. #10
    Legendary! Firebert's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Raenz View Post
    I love making preamdes, and love playing in preamdes, and there is definitley an argument to be made that they are a way of circumventing the balacing thingys in place, hopwever, i think the game would be worse off without them. Premades provide an fun way to play battlegrounds without the hassle of formign a rated BG team, and alow much larger tactics to be tried (in terms of numbers of players). The easiest way to (somewhat) resolve the issue, would be to have premades queing into each other as much as possible, and only queieing randoms into premades when there are no other premade groups queing.
    Testing tactics should be reserved for War Games. But having a seperate "40-man group" queue would kill premades immediately: their purpose is to go up against a disorganised team and destroy them out of the sheer amount of organisation the premade has (as well as any gearing requirements to further aid thier cause).

    See what happened to twinks once they got their own queue. The only twinking brackets I know of are 20-24 (the F2Pers), 60-64 (Vanilla players) and 70-74 (TBC players).
    37 + (3*7) + (3*7)
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  11. #11
    Lets make RA enabler so u can bring 40 ppls to a raid... it's super cheating. or since the limit acctually is 5! for pvp grps... bring 40man to a hc.

    " A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities "

  12. #12
    preventing this addon wont necessarily make it harder for people to get 10+ into a BG

    the only difference between this addon and getting everyone into a vent channel to say when their que popped is the convenience the addon gives

  13. #13
    Legendary! Firebert's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by orderschvank View Post
    preventing this addon wont necessarily make it harder for people to get 10+ into a BG

    the only difference between this addon and getting everyone into a vent channel to say when their que popped is the convenience the addon gives
    ...which is why I proposed that the solution might not be "ban the addon", but "prevent groups from joining the same instance".
    37 + (3*7) + (3*7)
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  14. #14
    If they intended to break it they would almost certainly do it by changing the matchmaking system so that groups queued very close to each other in time ends up in different BG instances, since this is how you currently "circumvent" the limitation.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dundebuns View Post
    I have no problems with people using this addon to get a premade into a battleground. What I do have a problem with, is people using this addon to create a group solely for farming HK's. People getting camped at a single GY for 40 minutes with little to no hope of getting any honor themselves is horrendous.
    The problem is that pretty much the only reason to use this addon is this purpose.

    And the reason for this is entirely the fault of Blizzard themselves.

    I posted a thread only last week pointling out that AV is no longer a PvP game but a PvE dungeon and therefore needs serious redesigning. If Bgs do not perform what they are advertsied to do, ie Player versus Player battles, then Wow players will work out and implement their own methods of achieving what they want.

    In this case AV returns approximately 5-10 hks per game, the top killer is lucky to hit 10 killing blows. This is due to everyone playing PvE 'all rush to the boss' and avoiding PvP at all costs.

    Are u really surprised that players r seeking out more reliable methods of adding hks to their account?

  16. #16
    Legendary! Firebert's Avatar
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    I don't understand why people think that Alterac Valley is a PvE instance. All the Alliance have to do is cap Iceblood Graveyard, and all the Horde have to do is cap Stonehearth Graveyard, and PvP manifests itself by forcing players together at either end of the battleground.

    People that complain about such battlegrounds actually do very little to seek PvP in those instances.

    If players wish to farm honorable kills, they should do so in addition to playing to the objective of the battleground, and not instead of it.
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  17. #17
    Yeh its not a technological limit what so ever you used to be able to que with a org raid 40 people for AV.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Firebert View Post
    I don't understand why people think that Alterac Valley is a PvE instance. All the Alliance have to do is cap Iceblood Graveyard, and all the Horde have to do is cap Stonehearth Graveyard, and PvP manifests itself by forcing players together at either end of the battleground.
    I cap this every single random AV and 99% of the time the game still only lasts 5minutes. Its a total phallucy that capping these gys will 'force' a pvp game.

    The reason why this doesnt force AV into a PvP fight is simply because nobody is pvping, therefore nobody is being killed, which consequently means that nobody gets forced to spawn back to the start. And this means capping Stonehearth and Iceblood does not work. basically, if nobody is getting killed in AV then nobody is forced to respawn at the back.

    The only way u can 'force' PvP and extend the game in AV is to arrange a group to camp your own boss area and kill the first couple of groups who arrive. This coupled with the aforementioned gy capping should force enough players back to the start.

    Now, herelies the problem... u try convincing players to defend at the start of an AV! lol
    Last edited by mmoc978ad45763; 2012-03-28 at 02:27 PM.

  19. #19
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    I'd rather seen solution of removing AV and IOC completely or at least from random queue.

  20. #20
    Legendary! Firebert's Avatar
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    There's not enough people behind either updating Alterac Valley to encourage PvP or to remove the 40-man battlegrounds from the random battleground queue, and neither of these solutions do anything of note. The former must mean that Blizzard siphons off developers and makes them update old content instead of working on new content. The latter would mean that queue times for those battlegrounds would increase, which is something Blizzard won't actively do (see the Satchel of Exotic Mysteries for when DPS queues were incredibly long).

    Removing the addon and discouraging large premades from entering battlegrounds is battleground balancing (which Blizzard should have the power to do, not players with addons).
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