BG's probably at their worst state ever

[Deleted]

I'm not sure what caused this to happen but when was the last time you had a good random battleground?

- Games are most of the time extremely one sided

- Healers dominating the fields, this is bad since most of the time one team has like 2-3 healers and the other team none, f.e.

- Russians. No I'm not saying they're better, but everytime I join a battleground people always give up at the start when they see russians in the enemy team, bring down the moral of the team by saying ''afk'' and ''instant loose'' (yes with 2 o's)

- The huge difference between gear makes skill almost non-relevant.

People giving up when the enemy team has the upper hand: See battle of gilneas when enemy has 2 bases, everybody idles at their only base waiting for the game to end, or temple of kotmogu where it's very common to have one team dominating the middle area with 3+ flags and everybody waits at the edges of the arena only to be farmed when they try to fight back.

So how do you fix this? First of all there must be a way to balance the healer problem. I've got no idea what the use of the role queueing system is because you can just queue as healer while join as dps.

- Make it so that you have to be in the appropriate spec before you queue AND join the game, disable switching between specs when you're in a battleground

- Defending a flag by AOE'ing is not pvp, yes this is the strategy you must use in 50% of the battlegrounds. Give a debuff for players defending a flag so fighting outside bases (fighting in the middle) is more interesting. It's also more fun and brings the random encounter aspect back to pvp.

- I dont know what to do with the russians. Personally I dont mind playing against them, it's just that most players give up every time they face them or rage in chat saying russians have some kind of advantage over europeans. If it's not that much of a problem to give them their ''own battlegroup'', do it. Otherwise this issue will keep haunting players for expansions to come.

- Balance the avarage item level in matches

- Give additional rewards for wins to encourage winning rather than waiting for a battleground to end quickly. I think something like this will already be implemented in WoD in the form of random pieces of gear, but I'm afraid this is not interesting for fully geared players. A small chance on getting a fancy mount, pet, item enchantment or whatever would probably improve this system.

Im sure these extra rules will cause longer queue times and maybe not everybody is satisfied with these changes. Maybe it's a good idea to seperate the item level/healer restricted matches into a different queue; calling it Selective Battleground or something along these lines.

I hope we as a community can give some appropriate feedback to blizzard regarding battlegrounds and make them more fun and interesting again.

edit: Not sure why I gave this thread such a bad title but it can't change it anymore. Just think of it as ''Current state of battlegrounds and how to fix them''

[moremana]

Cant can't and can't.

The system is set, what people do with it is what makes it the way it is. Just like everything else, people will find ways to sway whatever Blizz does.

You can't make people wait in que specced as a healer while they are trying to do dailies or quest. I do dailies and quest as dps but que as heals, when I pop in BG I switch specs to heals, so I am punished because others exploit the system? NO

Balancing ilvl for match, that would never happen, the q times would be astronomical.

Russian only BGs, that will never happen, there is no way to police it.

The BG system isn't the problem, the players are, and no matter what Blizz does, people will always find a way to jet the system.

The additional rewards system might be ok

[Deleted]

Cant can't and can't.

The system is set, what people do with it is what makes it the way it is. Just like everything else, people will find ways to sway whatever Blizz does.

You can't make people wait in que specced as a healer while they are trying to do dailies or quest. I do dailies and quest as dps but que as heals, when I pop in BG I switch specs to heals, so I am punished because others exploit the system? NO

Balancing ilvl for match, that would never happen, the q times would be astronomical.

Russian only BGs, that will never happen, there is no way to police it.

The BG system isn't the problem, the players are, and no matter what Blizz does, people will always find a way to jet the system.

The additional rewards system might be ok

Then make a different system where the outcome isn't determined by ''what people do with it'', hence this post.

Yes you can make people wait as a healer in queue, thats why they queue for this specific type of battleground. They choose to do so and if you want to play a quicker, more unfair game, queue for a random battleground.

I cant speak for balancing itemlevel, but you can divide the players in 2 groups : fully geared item level and ''gearing up'' item level.


Edit: Something I really dislike is when people keep saying ''you cant you cant you cant'' without giving any feedback regarding the suggested fixes. I keep seeing threads in WoW forums saying ''this is bad, that is bad, fix it'' without having any idea how to fix it themselves. I know some suggestions may be not the fixes we're waiting for, but trying to fix something and saying ''no'' to everything are 2 completely different things.

[lunchbox2042]

They did make an alternate system. It's called rated battlegrounds.

[Frozenbeef]

MoP bgs are heaven compared to vanilla :S

[Deleted]

They did make an alternate system. It's called rated battlegrounds.

Ranked system, requires 10 premade players, requires voice chat to be competitive, ''requires'' full pvp gear and worst of all it requires a lot of setup.

Dont get me wrong I play RBG's myself, but it's in no way an alternative to random battlegrounds.

[Deleted]

It's mostly the Alliance's fault in my battlegroup, I don't blame Blizzard. When I enter an Alliance BG I am teamed with afk, half assed, bots, pessimistic pussies and 250k hp players constantly. There is always about 60% of my team that adheres to one of the above making an Alliance BG unwinnable.

I play on my Horde characters (any gear or skill level) and we rolfstomp alliance 9 times out of ten. A bit confused as I would of thought Alliance would be at least equal with everyone playing human for the racial. I guess most good Alliance players go AV but don't see why good pvp players want to do the pve BGs.

Oh and as for Russians that IS blizzards fault. Most annoying thing I can't hit them with my melee characters due to distance I'm guessing.

[Deleted]

Isn't gear scaled down? Why do you think it makes skill almost irrelevant?

Most annoying thing I can't hit them with my melee characters due to distance I'm guessing.

That has always been a huge issue with MS. Try fighting against a feral druid with 200 ms. You won't be able to hit him because he pretty much teleports around you.

[Aliessil]

I'm not sure what caused this to happen but when was the last time you had a good random battleground?
- Russians. No I'm not saying they're better, but everytime I join a battleground people always give up at the start when they see russians in the enemy team, bring down the moral of the team by saying ''afk'' and ''instant loose'' (yes with 2 o's)

There's two ways to deal with the Russians and Blizzard should have done this in the first place:

1) Merge them properly so that teams are a mixture of Russian and European players
2) Give them their own battle groups and don't lump them in with Europe.

I've no idea wtf Blizzard were thinking when they decided this "them and us" design was good. No, language is not an excuse - not everyone in Europe does or should have to speak English; that's why Blizzard has servers for different languages.

- The huge difference between gear makes skill almost non-relevant.

Don't think you can really complain about this; PVE gear can close the gap quite a bit. It's mostly an issue when people join who've made no effort to get gear in any way, shape or form once they hit 90 (before anyone claims it's hard there's crafted pvp gear, there's the JP->HP conversion, hell there's Timeless Isle and world bosses).

People giving up when the enemy team has the upper hand: See battle of gilneas when enemy has 2 bases, everybody idles at their only base waiting for the game to end, or temple of kotmogu where it's very common to have one team dominating the middle area with 3+ flags and everybody waits at the edges of the arena only to be farmed when they try to fight back.

I usually see this as a cause of:
1) Playing vs a pre made
2) Too many party members who've made no effort at gearing
3) Too many bots / afkers in your team.

It's rarely something other than those.

- Make it so that you have to be in the appropriate spec before you queue AND join the game, disable switching between specs when you're in a battleground

Haven't Blizzard mentioned doing this already? I agree when applied to the DPS and healer roles, but I have an issue when it comes to tanks. There are some battlegrounds where having a tank or two can help a lot; there's others where they're kinda useless at the moment. Of course with WoD in beta at the moment, maybe that'll change.

- Defending a flag by AOE'ing is not pvp, yes this is the strategy you must use in 50% of the battlegrounds. Give a debuff for players defending a flag so fighting outside bases (fighting in the middle) is more interesting. It's also more fun and brings the random encounter aspect back to pvp.

No way, I hate this idea. It's hard enough getting people to defend at the best of times; nerf them whenever they do it and you can forget defence completely!

- Balance the avarage item level in matches

Balance them? No. Bring everyone up to a minimum level? Sure.

- Give additional rewards for wins to encourage winning rather than waiting for a battleground to end quickly. I think something like this will already be implemented in WoD in the form of random pieces of gear, but I'm afraid this is not interesting for fully geared players. A small chance on getting a fancy mount, pet, item enchantment or whatever would probably improve this system.

You get Conquest for winning; most PvPers quickly reach a point where they don't need honour at all any more. Those guys mostly do random BGs for Conquest IMO.

[Kolvarg]

If I'm not mistaken, it has been announced (at least in patch notes or forum posts) that:

- You will be forced to play the spec you queue for. Let's say you queue as healer/dps. You are questing in dps spec while waiting. The queue pops and you are selected as healer. When you enter you autimatically change to healer spec and simply can't change to dps spec.

- You will get rewards for simply "trying" to win. For instance if you're playing WSG, even if the enemy wins, you'll get extra rewards for your team capturing 1 flag, making it more efficient to do as much as you can instead of waiting till you lose (Something like 1 flag = small extra; 2 flags = medium extra; 3 flags = full extra rewards).

- Gearing should be a bit softer, as there will be 3 "levels" of pvp gear (current honor & conquest, + a new level between those 2).

- Gear shouldn't scale up so much with ilvl with the stat squish, so it may be a bit less important than in MoP.



Balancing with ilvl or at least some sort of personal MMR *should* be possible. Either the more you win the higher the MMR of the players you'll play with and agaisnt; or simply have all teams have a few high MMR players and a few low MMR players, if they feel the less skill/geared players should have the chance to be carried. But as low MMR would play agaisnt other low MMR it shouldnt be a problem I tihnk. However it COULD lead into significantly longer wait times but let's see; the current changes might be enough to make BGs enjoyable.

Russian only BGs, that will never happen, there is no way to police it.

Of course there is a way to police it. In fact, it used to be that way: /wow/en/forum/topic/8965477907 (on EU official forums)
Very unlikely they'll change it back though.

Moremana is right in one thing though: The true problem is the players, and blizzard can't really do much about that. The fact is this is a reward-driven game for the big majority of players. Most of us do random BGs for the rewards they give us, not for the intrinsic fun of it. So in that sense it's being fixed, as afking if your team is not dominant IS the most efficient way to get the win rewards atm.

Let's hope these changes will be enough to allow the players who play for fun (instead of just being consumed by a loot skinner box) will actually be able to enjoy. It's so much fun when everyone (from both teams) is actually trying.

[morislayer]

Let's see how the bronze chest pvp from bg's works in WOD. Because it really is at the point where base ilvl pvp gear must be handed out to fresh level caps if they don't want to ruin the bg experience for the entire team.

Ilvl 480-500 doing bg's are free kills, thats all, they detract from the team, this is an issue. If they started in green 510-20 ish gear at least they can do something and have 400k+ hp.

Next, I agree with a proximity to flag buff, where moving away and doing combat reduces damage dealt by X% (Fuck you rogues)

ilvl bloat might be fixed with handout bronze, easy silver, and work for gold gear.....but missing one season still fucks you over completely back to noob level

Quitting, I don't know how to fix this. A resolve buff might be warranted, but then it would get exploited. Quitting once you are down is poor sportmanship and really hurts the BG atmosphere. Hopefully a gold chest reward for "trying to comeback" would solve that.

AFKers, Botts and ppl who generally do not give a fuck ruin a bg more than anything else you listed. Being 8v10 in WSG is a huge setback. Blizzard needs to set up haptic feedback somehow through the mouse or striking some button to remove botters. AFK'ers need a 1 minute window until a button pops, assholes running around need scripts to inform them they are going the wrong way and boot them after being warned to engage in combat multiple times

Premades and vent / skype also make doing randoms by yourself less fun, but that's been around since vanilla, it won't change..nor should it

BG's are not at their worst. Vanilla was so much worse at cap. But on the contrary low level bg's were the best in vanilla and horrible now.

[Gigana]

I play random BGs rather often, and been farming them lately to cap my honor/jp (I'm taking a break until WoD).

- Games are most of the time extremely one sided

Nope. There are on-sided games, but in the majority one side gets at least some points, and quite a few are very close.

- Healers dominating the fields, this is bad since most of the time one team has like 2-3 healers and the other team none, f.e.

THis is not a healer problem - if it was, they would also be op in arena or RBG, yet they're not - it's the problem of players in random BGs not paying attention or knowing how to deal with healers.

There is no healer problem. Random BGs are for people to have fun and play casual pvp. There is a reason everyone is allowed to play whatever spec they like.

- The huge difference between gear makes skill almost non-relevant.

This always happens late into expansions.

- Defending a flag by AOE'ing is not pvp, yes this is the strategy you must use in 50% of the battlegrounds. Give a debuff for players defending a flag so fighting outside bases (fighting in the middle) is more interesting. It's also more fun and brings the random encounter aspect back to pvp.

This is the stupidest thing I ever heard. BGs are built around objectives, not mindless zerging. If anything, people should get more benefits from defending flags.

- Balance the avarage item level in matches

Would make massive queue times. If you meant that everyone's gear should be put to a certain ilvl, that would be awfully boring + terrible for certain specs.

[Deleted]

This always happens late into expansions.

So because it always happens means you shouldn't bother changing it?

There is no healer problem. Random BGs are for people to have fun and play casual pvp. There is a reason everyone is allowed to play whatever spec they like.
.

A team with 2 healers versus a team without healers IS a problem

This is the stupidest thing I ever heard. BGs are built around objectives, not mindless zerging. If anything, people should get more benefits from defending flags.

Of course you should keep objectives, but a map is larger than a few flags in a battlefield. One team using aoe attacks on a flag is not pvp, its not fun and clearly nobody wants to do it that's why people always leave flags. What could be better than designing a bg playstyle around what players want in stead of what they don't?

[Osmeric]

Mixed faction BGs (with a single queue) would solve most of the problems.

[Deleted]

Mixed faction BGs (with a single queue) would solve most of the problems.

*Wouldn't make any sense lore wise
*Would kill faction pride

Only Rift did this but only because their population was circling the drain pipe so they had no choice.

[Osmeric]

*Wouldn't make any sense lore wise

Morph characters into appropriate faction, like in certain PvE dungeons/scenarios.

*Would kill faction pride

Have separate non-shared queues for those for whom that is important. I doubt there are many.

[Deleted]

- Defending a flag by AOE'ing is not pvp, yes this is the strategy you must use in 50% of the battlegrounds. Give a debuff for players defending a flag so fighting outside bases (fighting in the middle) is more interesting. It's also more fun and brings the random encounter aspect back to pvp.

Giving a debuff.... to someone that is actually doing the objective.... wtf?

[Deleted]

Bgs are bad becouse there are 2 billion bots playing there. Queue system is bad idea becouse RANDOM bgs are meant to be unbalanced and easy to get to. If you want more balanced and challenging battlegrounds then you can play rated battlegrounds.

[Notnicebb]

Just do like me and cancel till the xpac comes out. They pretty much gave up on MoP when they started working on WoD. It's what it is.

[Deleted]

Morph characters into appropriate faction, like in certain PvE dungeons/scenarios.



Have separate non-shared queues for those for whom that is important. I doubt there are many.

Then people will whine they get turned into specific races. Humans will whine about being turned into orcs because they wanted trolls instead, etc etc... Add button to specify what race? Ahahahaha.

People won't use this feature, just as people in Wildstar don't use the LFG system's "same server" option because they don't want a slow queue for choosing it. So it will end up killing faction pride anyway. Horde vs. Alliance will turn into I Don't Give a Crap vs. Whatever, and this game is being marketed AS Horde vs. Alliance.