Solution/Improvement to War Mode: Dynamic Bonus

[Kolvarg]

Not sure if this has been suggested before or not, but here it goes.

Right now the solution Blizzard found to motivate players to use War Mode, and to reward the outnumbered faction, is to increase the base 10% bonus.

What if this "solution" is applied on a more practical and logical level, on a player-basis instead of faction-wide (that motivates disabling War Mode until the bonus is increased)? The whole idea behind War Mode is awarding bonus xp and currencies because of the risk you are taking - essentially, it attempts to overall offset the time you spend fighting/dead.

So why not just apply this on a player-basis? For instance, every time you kill or die in pvp combat you get a stacking 1h buff that increases the War Mode by 5%, let's say up to 20% or 25%.

It could award a smaller amount (less stacks of 1% for instance) to the one who dies than the one who kills, so that it is rewarding to win a fight in the open world, but you still get something even if you lose. If somehow possible, it could even reward double the stacks if you died in an unfair fight (you vs 2, for instance) and it could divide the winning reward through party members (so winning a pvp open world fight alone increases your reward 5%, but if you are in a party of 5 each member gets 1%), to discourage ganking to increase your bonus.

Other measures could be implemented, like not awarding increased bonus for "farming" the same player over and over again, or for killing players 3 or more levels below you. Some measures could also be implemented to discourage abuse, like having a cooldown, or getting new stacks not refreshing the buff duration.


The main problem is making it good enough that it's a nice incentive, without making it so good that people feel they "need" to exploit the system (for instance with "win-trading" mentality) just to have the most efficient leveling/questing possible. But with a reasonable cap and measures like I described above it could be at least a better system than what it is right now.

TL;DR: Instead of increasing the bonus for a whole faction, increase it for individual players as a stacking buff for killing or being killed in open-world PVP.

Thoughts?

[Hekazi]

That's actually a great approach, promotes PVP be it you kill or die, with the dying player getting a bigger bonus to compensate for the time lost leveling.

[Erolian]

The solution is PvP related rewards that aren't tied to PvE as a starting point. As it is you just have a bunch of people on both sides grinding out AP with a bonus with no downside because anyone out there for the AP quest doesn't lose efficiency if they happen to die once or twice as the WQs themselves are finite and based on a much much longer timer. They basically just managed to turn the PvP mode into the superior PvE mode if you have time which is kind of silly

[munkeyinorbit]

Not sure if this has been suggested before or not, but here it goes.

Right now the solution Blizzard found to motivate players to use War Mode, and to reward the outnumbered faction, is to increase the base 10% bonus.

What if this "solution" is applied on a more practical and logical level, on a player-basis instead of faction-wide (that motivates disabling War Mode until the bonus is increased)? The whole idea behind War Mode is awarding bonus xp and currencies because of the risk you are taking - essentially, it attempts to overall offset the time you spend fighting/dead.

So why not just apply this on a player-basis? For instance, every time you kill or die in pvp combat you get a stacking 1h buff that increases the War Mode by 5%, let's say up to 20% or 25%.

It could award a smaller amount (less stacks of 1% for instance) to the one who dies than the one who kills, so that it is rewarding to win a fight in the open world, but you still get something even if you lose. If somehow possible, it could even reward double the stacks if you died in an unfair fight (you vs 2, for instance) and it could divide the winning reward through party members (so winning a pvp open world fight alone increases your reward 5%, but if you are in a party of 5 each member gets 1%), to discourage ganking to increase your bonus.

Other measures could be implemented, like not awarding increased bonus for "farming" the same player over and over again, or for killing players 3 or more levels below you. Some measures could also be implemented to discourage abuse, like having a cooldown, or getting new stacks not refreshing the buff duration.


The main problem is making it good enough that it's a nice incentive, without making it so good that people feel they "need" to exploit the system (for instance with "win-trading" mentality) just to have the most efficient leveling/questing possible. But with a reasonable cap and measures like I described above it could be at least a better system than what it is right now.

TL;DR: Instead of increasing the bonus for a whole faction, increase it for individual players as a stacking buff for killing or being killed in open-world PVP.

Thoughts?

They already have something like this. It is called honor at the moment. People should stop their pathetic attempts at trying to fix warmode when the only thing that would fix it is the removal of rewards. I am all for ganking people in 21 v 1 combat, it is the best knowing that they are on their way to forums to spew another shitty way to improve warmode. But we all know warmode is dead and blizzard are just using it as a way to slowly get rid of world PvP. And I am ok with this.

[Soisoisoi]

But we all know warmode is dead and blizzard are just using it as a way to slowly get rid of world PvP. And I am ok with this.

I'm confused, because that is so far from the truth it makes me question if you even play this game. Every moment I get online is spent in Warmode, out in the world, PvPing. It's far from dead. There is always a lot of people to fight.

[Kolvarg]

The solution is PvP related rewards that aren't tied to PvE as a starting point. As it is you just have a bunch of people on both sides grinding out AP with a bonus with no downside because anyone out there for the AP quest doesn't lose efficiency if they happen to die once or twice as the WQs themselves are finite and based on a much much longer timer. They basically just managed to turn the PvP mode into the superior PvE mode if you have time which is kind of silly

This guy gets it^ WM should be PvP rewards and have nothing to do with PvE.

Thing is, how do you make World PvP have meaningful PvP rewards that can't be easily abused?

If you can get good gear from it, it would be very hard not to be abused, and much harder to control than possible abuses in rated BGs or Arenas.
It would also make people who are into ranked PvP feel like they had to grind World PvP (which is by default a much less balanced setting than rated PvP just to be competitive.


I suppose there could be cosmetic rewards tied to it, transmogs, pets, mounts, toys, titles, but personally I don't care that much about those things - especially when they'd come down to just grinding down World PvP kills - they aren't really that meaningful by themselves.

[munkeyinorbit]

I'm confused, because that is so far from the truth it makes me question if you even play this game. Every moment I get online is spent in Warmode, out in the world, PvPing. It's far from dead. There is always a lot of people to fight.

Sure it is. Except for every other post on this website saying that they are ganked 30 to 1. This means that one faction is always dead -> dead wpvp -> blizzard will remove it instead of fixing as it can't be fixed.

It's pretty obvious if you take a second to think.

[LanToaster]

Sure it is. Except for every other post on this website saying that they are ganked 30 to 1. This means that one faction is always dead -> dead wpvp -> blizzard will remove it instead of fixing as it can't be fixed.

I feel like its not a problem with Participation, but with Sharding.
I rarely group up for Invasions or WorldQuests, and its like 50/50 on Invasions which side is 30/1 massacering the Other. When I hop into a group for the EliteQuest(s) I switch to a Shard where the balance is heavily in my Favor.

While just roaming around leveling its obvious that you encounter MaxLevel groups of the Opposite faction on their WorldQuests, this is to be expected and isnt indicative of the overall participation of WPvP.

[Soisoisoi]

Sure it is. Except for every other post on this website saying that they are ganked 30 to 1. This means that one faction is always dead -> dead wpvp -> blizzard will remove it instead of fixing as it can't be fixed.

It's pretty obvious if you take a second to think.

Trolling. Gotcha.

[docterfreeze]

What happened to PvPing for fun? WM should have 0 incentives, bonuses, or rewards.

[Flaim]

I feel like its not a problem with Participation, but with Sharding.
I rarely group up for Invasions or WorldQuests, and its like 50/50 on Invasions which side is 30/1 massacering the Other. When I hop into a group for the EliteQuest(s) I switch to a Shard where the balance is heavily in my Favor.

While just roaming around leveling its obvious that you encounter MaxLevel groups of the Opposite faction on their WorldQuests, this is to be expected and isnt indicative of the overall participation of WPvP.

Essentially blizz needs to modify sharding to match groups of equal sizes on a shard.

[Evelyn]

What happened to PvPing for fun? WM should have 0 incentives, bonuses, or rewards.

I mean if you look back at older xpacs. There was plenty of world pvp and I don't remember much zerging and raid quest camping. That and it felt more organic, but there were incentives - mats from farm spots, rep quest hubs, other purchasable items, purchasable pvp gear and later on gear with resilience on it. Today people (mainly alliance and from what I gather mostly pvers) are incentivized to behave like this, huge numbers zerging a few, camping quests etc. What incentive does horde have to turn warmode on? To be griefed? To get less warmode bonus? To get a 360 item level piece? This sytem encourages the worst behavior in pvp, dishonorable pvp and cowardice and it pushes away actual pvpers.

I did a lot of world pvp in vanilla, but I'd say the best model for world pvp we have is TBC. Not that there wasn't a ton in vanilla, just if we're talking about incentive more than just hks and maybe rep spots. I just don't know why blizz seems to bent on getting rid of things that work, all while trying to salvage the things that clearly don't, or don't work well/aren't popular among the base. I think a lot of people left wow specifically because blizz seems to not really care about pvp and the community as a whole.

I mean we waited how many years for a new bg and we got seething shore? Though I got to say the revamps of WSG and AB looks great. They took out Ring of Valor which sucked. They took out Strand, which wasn't my fav but still shouldn't have been removed. Then we got Ashran, yay? Even Timeless Isle was better. Maybe go back to a Tol Barad model where you have like half Isle of Quel Danas, half Wintergrasp.

[LanToaster]

Essentially blizz needs to modify sharding to match groups of equal sizes on a shard.

Thats what i´ve been thinking yea.

The only question is: "How would one do it?"
I just assume Blizzard is not so Stupid and just fill the zones up as they come, (Zone: 4 Alliance, 5 Horde players, and it just throws the next 40 Alliance players that travel there into the same shard), if they do that, well it (should) be easy to fix and see a quick improvement.

The bigger Problem is however "Realmhopping" or choosing your shard.
E.g. if I´m on a Shard where the factions are evenly Matched, and I invite 39 People into a raidGroup, suddenly the Alliance is 39 people more, and even worse, all together. You could play the system and create two raids originating from the same shard, and you have 78 people more.

WoW is not suited for Massive Battles, (And Honestly its not really fun [At least for me] on either side. Neither the side with fewer people getting stomped, nor the 40 man Raid that does the stomping)

Maybe one should encourage people to not use overwhelming numbers. For example you could add airstrikes like the Paraxis from Argus if there are more than X players (of the same Faction/Group) in a Certain range. Both Factions have AirShips and Tanks that can Bombard areas, so it would make in lore sense that they would use those to bombard large groups of enemies. (Like you often do in Quests)
Or add other things that shows increasing resistance against larger Groups of players. Maybe More/Tougher guards the more players camp in a City/Hub.

Though this might not be the best Ideas, but I feel they could be fun.

[Flaim]

[...]

there's lots of ways to go about it. i'm just not getting paid enough by blizz to fledge out even a single one of them.

[LanToaster]

there's lots of ways to go about it. i'm just not getting paid enough by blizz to fledge out even a single one of them.

And I bet anything you could come up on the Spot would be abused like hell.