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  1. #1

    The death spiral that is AV

    I was just in an AV pug as alliance where the horde managed to take all the GY's and then bottle up the alliance in the cave, resulting in a near zero bonus honor ass kicking of the alliance (198 bonus honor for the alliance 4554 for the horde... . 110ish avg honorable kills for the horde, only 15ish for the alliance)

    It seems in recent days that the horde are not just steamrolling the alliance pugs, but also actively defending towers and lieutenants to prevent the alliance from getting any bonus honor (or substantially limiting it). I've done about 70 or so pug AV's in classic now as Alliance and 3 of those were wins. The other 67ish were almost always not even close, they were complete ass kickings.

    While of course this speaks volumes about things like afk'rs, the horde's better PVP prep and coordination, the effect on pugs of good alliance players always going with premades, etc., I think the more troubling thing is that this is not a sustainable situation for the game.

    The time and effort involved to play AV, (even if playing to someone = afking) is not worth it for 198 bonus honor. That means that once Alliance have the rep they need from AV, the vast majority of players will stop suffering through AV battles.

    Less alliance playing means the Horde ques will get even longer, which is surely going to be frustrating to the horde players, which will eventually cause them to give up on AV too because then they will have super long ques (1+ hour?) only to have a very strong likelihood of facing an alliance pre-made, or worse, an alliance team of afk'rs. It will also mean for horde that reaching the highest pvp ranks requires 18+ hours a day of AV and is only accessible to people who bot or account share.

    In retail wow, it doesn't really impact much (at least not fatally) when people chose to completely ignore BG's. PVP and PVE are for the most part completely separate game paths and you don't need any PVP in order to be competitive at PVE and vice versa. However in Classic, for many classes and specs, much of their BiS gear for PVE comes from the high PVP ranks.

    When players (horde and alliance) decide that the high rank PVP gear is simply unobtainable to them (due to frustration as alliance, or the inability to meet the time requirements as horde) those players will get disheartened and frustrated with the game. I suspect many will quit. And ironically, given how the PVP ranking system works, having less people playing (and PVPing) will make it harder for everyone to get higher ranks, further speeding the death spiral.

    In Vanilla, when there were problems with the game, there was at least hope. Blizzard would say that they were looking into a particular problem and would hint at making changes in a future patch. So the community was willing to endure game-mechanics that were obviously broken.

    In classic however, we are ""hopeless", we have self-imprisoned ourselves with the strict mantra that classic must be "pure". And while I too want it to be pure, I realize that it cannot be 100% pure and survive. I think that some "tweaks" need to be made by Blizzard to keep the game fun.

    I don't know what the tweak would be for AV (change the PVP rank system? Maybe make WSG and AB as meaningful as AV?), but I do know that keeping it like it is, with Alliance pugs no longer being worth it because even the bonus honor is disappearing, is not a sustainable situation and will ruin it for both sides.

  2. #2
    Ironically, before av launched in classic, the consensus was that Alliance had a definite advantage over horde, that it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

    So now, horde players played, reviewed what was happening that made them lose, and invented a new meta.

    How about the alliance does the same?

    I’m an alliance player myself, saying get good, and most of all, get organized and have an actual plan.

  3. #3
    Are the alliance pre mades having this problem too ?

  4. #4
    Yeah but it's no like you're in a rush to get anything - Classic is a finite game, you can take 10 years to get whatever you want. If you get it too fast, what will you do in a couple years?

    That's why people wanted Classic - to know that it will never get changed, never get fixed, never upgraded, that it's a game you can count on never evolving. Which, of course, people will take advantage of - they'll exploit it the best they could, they'll optimize everything to the best efficiency. Yeah, with a "live" game you can't do the same tactic forever because the devs will change it sooner or later, but here, you can.
    This is exactly why some people said Vanilla wasn't good, because they could figure that taking it out of context and making it a single unchangable experience is not as amazing as it was back in the day.

    But I think eventually the devs will come around and make some changes to Classic. Not sure when, it's not gonna be soon, but it will happen - they'll even explain why. They'll say it's because the players are much more knowledgeable and can organize a lot easier than back in the day, they need to make some changes to balance things out to ensure that it's closer to Vanilla experience.
    Some people will moan, saying #nochanges, not understanding the concept at all. Some will say the same, knowing their efficiency just suffered a hit. And we'll all be on this forum moaning one way or another.

  5. #5
    We (horde) don't play better, we just play the game the way it was meant to. Blame it on the coordinated groups that win AV in 8 mins rushing Drek. If horde manage to counter the initial rush then it's always a win. Problem is PUG are filled with CasualJoeMySituationIsMoreImportantThanTheRest and trying to recreate top players win rush but fail horribly. So quit moaning and play the way it was meant to be.
    Last edited by PieBob; 2020-01-03 at 09:43 AM.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    I was just in an AV pug as alliance where the horde managed to take all the GY's and then bottle up the alliance in the cave, resulting in a near zero bonus honor ass kicking of the alliance (198 bonus honor for the alliance 4554 for the horde... . 110ish avg honorable kills for the horde, only 15ish for the alliance)
    This is absolutely not common scenario... but i can immagine how its frustrating to be in such a game.. then i suggest just leave with /afk if there is really nothing you can do to make it better...

    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    It seems in recent days that the horde are not just steamrolling the alliance pugs, but also actively defending towers and lieutenants to prevent the alliance from getting any bonus honor (or substantially limiting it). I've done about 70 or so pug AV's in classic now as Alliance and 3 of those were wins. The other 67ish were almost always not even close, they were complete ass kickings.

    While of course this speaks volumes about things like afk'rs, the horde's better PVP prep and coordination, the effect on pugs of good alliance players always going with premades, etc., I think the more troubling thing is that this is not a sustainable situation for the game.
    This is absolutly not true... at all
    But i know why it seems for you like that.

    The problem is:
    AV is the most honor profitable activity -> most of the ranking players go to av
    But then horde start to defend like madman's and make av inefficient...
    This drag all ranking people ( not a rule, but they are often good in pvp and have knowledge how AV works in details...) from pugs to premade groups.
    So most of the pug players aren't pvp players with deep knowledge of AV mechanics.
    Often they are people who dont give a ..pineapple... and often afk, don't listen guy who try to lead if there is such a guy or they are not willing to use pots or granates.
    So yea, pug group is often just pile of junk from alliance players ( not everytime, there are for sure good players as well, but they are in minority, just drop in the ocean of noobs)


    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    The time and effort involved to play AV, (even if playing to someone = afking) is not worth it for 198 bonus honor. That means that once Alliance have the rep they need from AV, the vast majority of players will stop suffering through AV battles.

    Less alliance playing means the Horde ques will get even longer, which is surely going to be frustrating to the horde players, which will eventually cause them to give up on AV too because then they will have super long ques (1+ hour?) only to have a very strong likelihood of facing an alliance pre-made, or worse, an alliance team of afk'rs.
    Exactly... horde and they stupid defending cause only longer queu and more often face premades.. and it will be worst and worst... have fun

    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    It will also mean for horde that reaching the highest pvp ranks requires 18+ hours a day of AV and is only accessible to people who bot or account share.
    This is the same for Alliance...
    For example look at firemaw... 500k+ first day after reset for higher brackets. You can't reach that playing less then 18h per day...

    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    In retail wow, it doesn't really impact much (at least not fatally) when people chose to completely ignore BG's. PVP and PVE are for the most part completely separate game paths and you don't need any PVP in order to be competitive at PVE and vice versa. However in Classic, for many classes and specs, much of their BiS gear for PVE comes from the high PVP ranks.
    And that is exactly what is wrong with retail...

    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    When players (horde and alliance) decide that the high rank PVP gear is simply unobtainable to them (due to frustration as alliance, or the inability to meet the time requirements as horde) those players will get disheartened and frustrated with the game. I suspect many will quit. And ironically, given how the PVP ranking system works, having less people playing (and PVPing) will make it harder for everyone to get higher ranks, further speeding the death spiral.
    Everybody know that it will be like this...
    But its not goal of everybody to reach rank14 ... at least if they know how honor/ranking/brackets works in vanilla.

    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    In Vanilla, when there were problems with the game, there was at least hope. Blizzard would say that they were looking into a particular problem and would hint at making changes in a future patch. So the community was willing to endure game-mechanics that were obviously broken.

    In classic however, we are ""hopeless", we have self-imprisoned ourselves with the strict mantra that classic must be "pure". And while I too want it to be pure, I realize that it cannot be 100% pure and survive. I think that some "tweaks" need to be made by Blizzard to keep the game fun.
    Hope for TBC seems like solution for you?

    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    I don't know what the tweak would be for AV (change the PVP rank system? Maybe make WSG and AB as meaningful as AV?), but I do know that keeping it like it is, with Alliance pugs no longer being worth it because even the bonus honor is disappearing, is not a sustainable situation and will ruin it for both sides.
    I agree that its a shame that wsg and AB aren't even close in efficiency of AV.

  7. #7
    Old God Mirishka's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hawg View Post
    While of course this speaks volumes about things like afk'rs, the horde's better PVP prep and coordination, the effect on pugs of good alliance players always going with premades, etc., I think the more troubling thing is that this is not a sustainable situation for the game.
    So rather than expect Alliance players to improve and be more strategic, you actually expect Blizz to modify the Classic version of AV to cater to inevitably AFK/inept players? All based on your uninformed assumption that the game cannot be sustained as is? What?

    Am I reading this right?

    Classic is what it is. It does not need to changed, it does not need to be Classic+'d, the only reason Classic servers exist at all is because millions of people love that version of the game and clamored for it. So the idea that Blizz should make changes to Classic PvP systems because of your personal experience with bad AVs is almost explosively laughable.
    Last edited by Mirishka; 2020-01-03 at 10:14 AM.

  8. #8
    It cannot be solved because the root cause of the issue is the faction separation.

    It leads to hugely different mentalities on both factions. And by that i don't even mean the different mentality of players that make them chose a faction which is determined by the way Blizzard potraits factions - no, what i mean is that players will generally lump together on one faction to be able to play with likeminded players. This inevitably leads to imbalance...and imbalance coupled with faction based PvP leads to drastically different Qtimes.

    Look at AV: The Horde is now going towards 30min+ Qtimes at peak times and 60min in off-hours. After that amount of wait they will obviously make every single minute spent in AV count. The same is not true for Alliance with instant Q. If you can instantly reQ without any wait time at all you will not take the BG as seriously and will be more willing to simply give up if things don't go well right from the start. It also means that the Alliance is able to effectively join as groups, which also causes Alliance solo-Qers to often start BGs with 10-15 players in their team and only get filled up very slowly.

    Separate factions were a complete shitpile of an idea back in 2004. And 15years later, it has not gotten any better. Just worse. Separate factions are the main reason PvP in WoW always has to suck. Even if a new event or system manages to breath some life into it for a few days (or weeks at max) it always spirals down into a complete shitpile very quickly. With long Qtimes for the red faction and a horrible experience for anybody on the blue faction who does not put in the extra effort to premake.

    There is a reason all rated PvP ignores faction. There is a reason why they had to introduce merc-mode.

    I am not asking them to go back to Classic and abolish factions there. That would be insanity. Classic is Classic and Classic had factions. What makes me really depressed is that even in current Retail, where they themselves wrote the story to lead to the death of the faction separation and they themselves introduce four new CHANGEABLE factions in the new expansion that would have been perfect to serve as that expansions PvP factions.....they are 100% unwilling to change anything.

    As long as the factions remain separated by character creation there is no fix. You can band-aid with systems that work around it (like merc-mode), but that does not fix the fundamental flaw at all. Retail does have merc-mode and it is not enough to prevent a permanent 20-30% bonus from warmode for the blue faction. It's simply not enough.

    PvP is the most extreme kind of content in this game when it comes to player mentality. You do not want all players with a similiar mind-set forever separated from anybody else. You simply do not want that to happen because it will destroy your PvP and anything it could ever be. Yet here we are...15 years in...with the story right there to pick it up and all of the systems in the game crying out loud for this change to happen - and Blizzard refuses.

    It seems they WANT to lose players over this. They simply want to and cannot be stopped.

    In all of these discussions that were had over the last 1 1/2 decade it always boils down to some smug Horde player claiming everything would be perfect if the Alliance players would not suck so bad and simply embraced PvP more, just like the Horde. What this incredibly intelligent person totally neglects is that in a faction-based game all players with this kind of attitude are pushed to join the same faction. If an Alliance players gets too frustrated with the mentality of his fellow Alliance players, he will simply faction change to the Horde, making the situation worse for everybody: For himself, for the Horde and for the Alliance. That's just how separated factions work and what they do.

    Edit:
    Quote Originally Posted by scelero View Post
    Let get this straight. You love classic servers because of the progression you feel leveling and how it feels to get a new piece of gear, but don't want that to be a part of your BG/PVP worlds as well?

    Go on a retail server, and play AV. You get the same alliance complaining and the same horde winning. Nothing's changed.

    Horde have the same time frame as alliance to cordinate once a Q pops. Horde have the same tools to communicate with one another as the alliance do.

    Do what I did. Stop hanging out with the turkeys and come fly with the eagles. I do NOT miss Alliance one bit. NOT ONE SINGLE BIT. Everything you thought was a problem, isn't once you decide to make an actual change in your life. Or, you can keep going insane. We horde love killing insane alliance players.

    If you know the 'meta' for AV, how come Alliance hasn't counterbuild it yet?
    Any more questions?
    Last edited by Nathasil; 2020-01-03 at 10:40 AM.

  9. #9
    Let get this straight. You love classic servers because of the progression you feel leveling and how it feels to get a new piece of gear, but don't want that to be a part of your BG/PVP worlds as well?

    Go on a retail server, and play AV. You get the same alliance complaining and the same horde winning. Nothing's changed.

    Horde have the same time frame as alliance to cordinate once a Q pops. Horde have the same tools to communicate with one another as the alliance do.

    Do what I did. Stop hanging out with the turkeys and come fly with the eagles. I do NOT miss Alliance one bit. NOT ONE SINGLE BIT. Everything you thought was a problem, isn't once you decide to make an actual change in your life. Or, you can keep going insane. We horde love killing insane alliance players.

    If you know the 'meta' for AV, how come Alliance hasn't counterbuild it yet?

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by scelero View Post
    Go on a retail server, and play AV. You get the same alliance complaining and the same horde winning. Nothing's changed.
    I hope you did not compare Retail's Korrak-AV, since all that BG teached players was to ignore PVP, quest in the mine and be done with the farming in 2-3 hours.

    As EU alliance I did my 100k honor essence (R4) farming in just a few evenings. As soon as the normal playing population is involved, you win the honor/hour by default as ally, since you have much shorter queues and the same/better winrate.

    My experience is from the early essence farming by the active/mythic/regular player population. If you play now with seasonal/LFR/classic-quiter players your experience might be a different one in retail.
    -

  11. #11
    I was at probably 85% win for av in 7 minutes (alliance). Games that looked like they would take longer were simply /afk'd out.

    I only queue wsg and do world pvp now, as there is nothing to gain from doing av anymore. You're just behind the curve playing with other casuals and like minded players.

    Nothing needs to be done.

  12. #12
    I was actually planning on grinding R10-11 via AV, but got bored after like 1 hour. Holy fuck that was some snooze fest. There are no nostalgia goggles that would make it fun enough to spend hours and hours a day doing it.

  13. #13
    Join a premade and everything is fine. Even most premades don't simply rush anymore, but take one tower/GY at a time.

    Joining a random AV currently as alliance is pure nightmare. 50% of AVs start with less than 20 players, because premades lock the slots (and either don't decline fast enough or get repeatedly the same AVs).

    It's week 4 in AV, and alliance still is not clever enough to realize that there is no point in doing galv or pressing through the first towers when they don't have IB GY - which was obviously a bad thing to capture when you were just rushing forward, but that meta shifted 3 weeks ago. But still people are not going for it, and even complain when someone's tapping it. Now 10 horde defenders with close by respawn are more than enough to wipe the alliance. I've seen more than enough games where 30+ alliance players are trying to take IB tower, and still fail until Vandar dies. Instead of just taking IB GY first, you would think they realize that after they've been wiped the second time.

    No alliance is deffing, and once again people that try get flamed upon for wasting peoples time.

    And that lethargy of not even trying to win is obviously a major bummer on people's motivation, so more and more people simply go afk. There are five to ten people sitting at SH GY at all times, because they know it does not get attacked by horde and yet is is a good place to get rid of any AFK flag due to passing single hordes.

    The difference between instant invites and up to 45 minute waiting time simply is too big. Horde is trying hard to get the best result out of their waiting time, while alliance is trying even less. And you cannot really blame them, with that ratio of getting 1/3 of the hordes honor per game you still make more honor than the horde.

  14. #14
    Simply put, there's two conflicting strategies. Alliance have a map advantage, if they choose to use it. They can rush, all 40 peeps, and kill Drek before the horde can down Van. If the Alliance is unified, there's very little the Horde can do to stop it, other than pushing for a complete turtle. Even then, it would take a large presence to stop all 40 of the Alliance from just pushing on through.

    Luckily, the Alliance is often fragmented ion that approach, and when they filter a couple times through IBGY and TP, then they can be picked off with only a few Horde defenders.

    Simply put, the Alliance doesn't know how to win a turtle, and the Horde does. That's because that's the Horde's best strategy, and the one they employ far more often.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by scelero View Post
    Let get this straight. You love classic servers because of the progression you feel leveling and how it feels to get a new piece of gear, but don't want that to be a part of your BG/PVP worlds as well?

    Go on a retail server, and play AV. You get the same alliance complaining and the same horde winning. Nothing's changed.

    Horde have the same time frame as alliance to cordinate once a Q pops. Horde have the same tools to communicate with one another as the alliance do.

    Do what I did. Stop hanging out with the turkeys and come fly with the eagles. I do NOT miss Alliance one bit. NOT ONE SINGLE BIT. Everything you thought was a problem, isn't once you decide to make an actual change in your life. Or, you can keep going insane. We horde love killing insane alliance players.

    If you know the 'meta' for AV, how come Alliance hasn't counterbuild it yet?
    Good one
    and now serious discussion...

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Mirishka View Post
    So rather than expect Alliance players to improve and be more strategic, you actually expect Blizz to modify the Classic version of AV to cater to inevitably AFK/inept players? All based on your uninformed assumption that the game cannot be sustained as is? What?

    Am I reading this right?
    Individual players can be exhorted to improve. Whole populations of players cannot be. A game designer has to tailor a game to the demographic realities of the players, even if the designer can just tell any single player to git gud.

    To put it another way: when this sort of collective failure happens, you're making each individual player's enjoyment be dependent on other players. They have no control over that. So, there is nothing an individual can do to fix their own lack of having fun, and they tend to quit.
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  17. #17
    It’s called adaptive strategy. Ally won like 90% of av after launch, so horde changed tactics recently and the alliance players still try and rush Zerg it

  18. #18
    Alliance pugs are losing because of premades. It's not rocket science. Premades take the bulk of good players and probably 50% or more of the people with 100% mounts. On top of that, they're causing pugs to start shorthanded, resulting in even more midfield splits that get wiped. It has zero to do with Horde's skill and adaptation and everything to do with the player pool available for pugs because of the existence of premades. And no, the solution to the premade problem is not "if you can't beat em', join em'." There is a reason that AV is designed not to allow premades. They've got to go.

  19. #19
    Old God Mirishka's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    Individual players can be exhorted to improve. Whole populations of players cannot be. A game designer has to tailor a game to the demographic realities of the players, even if the designer can just tell any single player to git gud.

    To put it another way: when this sort of collective failure happens, you're making each individual player's enjoyment be dependent on other players. They have no control over that. So, there is nothing an individual can do to fix their own lack of having fun, and they tend to quit.
    Its an MMO. Any group activity you do is dependent on other players. If Jimthedodo doesn't run the bomb out of the raid, you wipe/fail. If you get someone that screws up in M+, you wipe/fail.

    Sometimes people lag, sometimes stuff is overtuned but the answer isn't usually 'wahhh change the content' - and it certainly isn't the case for AV. I've won more than my fair share of them as alliance and I've lost just as many (if not more). And never once in any of those losses did I run screaming to the forums that Blizz should change AV because of myyyyyy bad AV groups.

  20. #20
    Horde did not get better and "adapt". Alliance did. The only significant difference between the 2 populations is that more players on horde are queuing so alliance can more reliably premade. There are 3 main populations of AV players on ally side. Those who want rep, those who want honor, amd the ppl fucking around / casuals.

    Those who want rep spammed the shit out of it in the first few days and have either stopped queuing, or joined 1 of the other 2 categories. The hardcore ones in that group are nonexistent now.

    The ones who are hardcore about honor, are using the premade discord, and are queuing together. These premades have a very high win percentage. They coordinate tactics because they all have the same goal.

    Then you have the leftovers. The hardcore pvers with good gear that just wanted rep for their purples, arent in this group. The hardcore pvpers that want max honor efficiency are not in this group. This group is the ppl too lazy to find the premade. Just wanna queue up and play a few games for fun or just slowly gain some rep or honor. This group has the lowest win percentage because the majority of better skilled / geared players are not here. They also have different goals so no strat gets agreed on. Some are 51 and want quests. Some want fish. Some are afk. Some want to rush. Some want to def bal. Some want to back cap. Some want to turtle.

    Horde arent better or smarter. They just have less options than the alliance so their groups arent as split in skill level. When horde pugs start reliably beating ally premades, then you can talk abt them being better. Until then, horde are getting stomped by premades but beating up on casuals.

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