The Problem with Warmode - and how to fix it

[Kagthul]

THe problem with Warmode is the people who somehow think that wPvP is relevant, was ever relevant, or was ever good, or that the infintessimally small number of people who give a shit about wPvP should be placated, catered to, or given a fuck about.

And i say this as someone who has been playing since the original beta on PvP servers.

wPvP is, always was, from day 1, absolute garbage. Its about who has the most people, who takes the cheapest shot, who abuses the terrain/mobs the most, etc.

Its never, ever, not once, been about skill of any kind.

Its trash. It always was, always will be.

Flying didn't kill wPvP. BG's didn't kill wPvP.

The only thing that killed wPvP was wPvP. If it was good, people would still do it, even with BGs being available. Even with flying.

The fact that it died almost immediately when BGs came out (within weeks) is a testament to how shitty it was.

The only thing that killed it was that it sucked. Warmode is no different.

Just get the fuck over it already.

[melodramocracy]

yeah why should people put in the work to be able to beat other players up...

Because excellent implementations of PvP are skill based, not gear based.

But you already know this... and really, there's no level set on wPvP anyhow. Bottom line is that you have tons of players who do it for nothing other than the perks, because if those weren't in place, there'd be no practical reason to get involved in it. Outside of instanced play, this game simply isn't designed to have a good, healthy pvp implementation, and likely never will.

[trapmaster]

How to fix it? Disable flying while warmode is on. Ground mount all the way... how is this hard?

[MrLachyG]

biggest thing that pisses me off about WM is that Alliance get a buff. sure, they might be outnumbered by Horde in the US.... but in Oceanic realms we are exceptionally Alliance heavy. so you're giving the dominant faction a WM buff because.....?

[Kagthul]

How to fix it? Disable flying while warmode is on. Ground mount all the way... how is this hard?

This will not fix wPvP.

wPvP shriveled up and died the moment a better alternative came around.

It wasnt flying that killed it.. it died the moment there were BGs.

Its not flying.

its not carebears.

Its not anything other than wPvP being a shit-filled raging trash-barge fire.

It always was, from the very first day it was enabled in the OG beta.

Thats why it died the MOMENT there was something better.

[Nathasil]

The sad truth is that WM was by far the cheapest solution for Blizzard to spice up their "world content".

Instead of working on something better than Worldquests, why not just entice players to enable PvP so they will spice it up for us? Now we can tell everybody who claims WQs are boring that he is just not playing the proper version of it: WM ON! because getting GY camped while doing boring shit is much better than doing boring shit. Obviously.

It was a cost saving measure, nothing more.

Of course, WM will never work as long as the Alliance does not use it. But why should Blizzard care? Since WM was intended to save development time, they will only improve it if it does not cost them any development time. Which means it will not get improved.


@Raelbo:
I actually agree with most of your ideas...especially the removal of additional rewards. But i also agree with some of the posts in this topic that wPvP per se is simply not a good system if it gets tagged onto a faction-based game without any real connection to other systems in the game. Nobody enjoys being GY camped - which is what wPvP always comes down to if you let it go unchecked.
All the problems of WM are based on the enormous faction imbalance in this content (and the game as a whole). There is a reason rated PvP - where faction only exist in the sense that you have to faction change to the Horde to get invited into most groups - works so much better than the other PvP systems in the game. There are many, many reasons for this imbalance - and all of them are Blizzard's fault. Even if you strongly believe that Alliance players are just bad and cowards by nature....there still has to be a reason why those bad cowards are all attracted to the faction that Blizzard created; which means even if that is your belief: It's still Blizzard's failure.

[boz0]

Warmode is identical to PvE and PvP servers without the $25 price tag to change servers when you want to play with friends.

This. 200% this. My guild is on what used to be a PvP server, and while I enjoy the occasional consented PvP, I strongly dislike having to deal with it when I only have 20 mins to do a few WQ, for instance. War mode allowed me to continue playing with my friends without having to put up with permanent world PvP.

As to the PvE incentives for playing PvP, I agree, it seems pretty ridiculous, and I decided not to bother with that, but I still feel the appeal of the "bribe".

[WskyDK]

This will not fix wPvP.

wPvP shriveled up and died the moment a better alternative came around.

It wasnt flying that killed it.. it died the moment there were BGs.

Its not flying.

its not carebears.

Its not anything other than wPvP being a shit-filled raging trash-barge fire.

It always was, from the very first day it was enabled in the OG beta.

Thats why it died the MOMENT there was something better.

Where do I sign?

[Rucati]

The only way they can fix wPvP is if they make it so that every zone is phased and both sides have the exact same amount of players. The second Horde have 40 people in a zone and Alliance have 15 is the second wPvP dies.

That's honestly the biggest problem, it's nothing more than a number's game. Makes no difference if there are 5 of the best players in the world on one faction, if the other faction has 20 people that side wins.

[Amarys]

I think what needs to be done to fix it is they should balance shards first. All need to be roughly 50:50 with overflow going into 100% one faction shards. Even though someone might think that a chance to get a 100% safe PvE shard with 10% increased reward is unfair, it's actually more fair since you might get a 50:50 one and only 10% bonus, whereas the other faction gets 25% increased rewards as opposed to guaranteed in just dominating the less populated faction for a free bonus.

And second, remove all scaling and arena bull**** from world PvP. All abilities need to do full damage. Currently with over the top healing and everything being so hard to kill and with world PvP being inherently unbalanced, if you run into 2 or more enemies when solo, you lose automatically(well unless they're insanely bad and DC or something). If you run into a healer solo, they won't die till they get help or manage to escape. This basically means world PvP now is just large groups ganging up on solo players and small groups and if you're a solo player or want to PvP with a friend or 2, there is no point in turning it on as you either get zerged down by huge groups or be part of that huge group and just kill players who can't fight back.

[munkeyinorbit]

I would put everyone (many realms) with WM ON on a huge shards. reward still should be better than WM OFF but with everyone in one place, it would force those people with WM ON to engage in PvP as it should be just because of many people trying to fight over mobs. That's war mode. Everyone in one world fighting over resources and not 100 different WM ON shards. One huge battlefield.

rewards ofc should be much better to compensate for everlasting pvp. like 50%+

Imagine a world where you turn your self to pvp and you know you cant leach that system and must decide if it is worth to you,

But that would need a better server which can handle like 500 people in one zone and not start to lag as shit when 60 people fight.

And then one faction gains acendancy and we are back where we started.

When BFA started everyone had WM on. By the time raid hit alliance had basically turned it off. In theory, sharding should work. There should be ways to ensure balance between factions except that it needs to be as granular as subzones. I might misunderstand it but what's the point of alliance having large number in kill Turan and horde being in zandalar? When you go to other place you're out numbered

- - - Updated - - -

How to fix it? Disable flying while warmode is on. Ground mount all the way... how is this hard?

Because retreat is a legitimate PvP strategy. All mounts do is increase a dominant groups advantage. There must be an easy way to retreat, regroup and counter attack.

- - - Updated - - -

biggest thing that pisses me off about WM is that Alliance get a buff. sure, they might be outnumbered by Horde in the US.... but in Oceanic realms we are exceptionally Alliance heavy. so you're giving the dominant faction a WM buff because.....?

If they were dominant then the buff would be less. Alliance might be more represented but they are hardly dominant. As the system works now, alliance deserve the buff. I would prefer no buff. But you take what's on offer.

[FuxieDK]

Way to fix Warmode and wPvP:

- Disable flying when WM is on
- Lock gear to a specific iLevel when WM is on (e.g. all players have iLevel 400 in all slots) to have skill matter more than gear
- Make it impossible to progress in quests/WQs while WM is on, unless the quests are flaged as PvP quests (similar to raid quests)
- Give Tenacity bonus to underdogs (Wintergrasp style)
- Phase players with WM on, so you cannot see them without WM on
Last but not least
- Remove ALL PvE bonus from PvP aspects (quest bonus, PvE gear, Azerite Power etc etc)

[birdynumnum]

warmodes great people hate on it, rly confuse me, its like they want a single player game, this is meant to be an mmo after all..

[GeorgeDb]

Gear in warmode must make a difference, it is not a rated enviroment, so people that are geared should be able to stomp others. If you enjoy small skirmishes warmode is pretty fine atm but i am a bit bias since i play 1 character that is pretty much ahead of the curve so i am able to fight back. Flying is making fights unpredictable tbh it's klinda funny even when i am getting jumped by 5 people out of nowhere. So when we talk about 2v3, 4v4 battles etc i just say embrace the chaos and have fun, but big group fights are hard to pull off because there is no clear objective, because hardly 80 people will just go to a place and start fighting each other for no clear reason.

I am actually happy with warmode atm, if i am in a hurry and need to finish some quests asap i can turn it off, in any other condition i enjoy the possibility of a fight in any given moment...Specially now with the N'zoth toy that you join his faction you can make so new many "friends" :'D

By the way just remember the shitfest of legion world pvp or the non existent wod pvp. I think this is the first expansion after a while that we are able to enjoy some fights.

[Koloss]

Sorry i didn't read it, but fixing war mode would be easy, it should just make what they said it would do. It would make you choose whether you want world pvp or not. Now it's not that, so simply just don't give any rewards for it, no essence, no wq bonus, no xp bonus, only some pvp rewards would make sense. This is the only way it could be what they promised us.

[Raelbo]

How to fix it? Disable flying while warmode is on. Ground mount all the way... how is this hard?

It's not hard, it's just that it won't fix anything.

Firstly, if they were to implement no flying in WM, that would massively incentivise most players - including many of those who like WPvP - to switch WM off. We'd be exactly where we are right now, except instead of people selecting to play with +10% rewards, we'd simply have people selecting to play with flying enabled. The whole PvP thing remains a side issue which barely enters the equation .

Secondly, flying is not, nor was it ever the source of any problems related to WPvP. Yes, yes, I know that a lot of people believe it is. I mean it's a popular, easily repeated sentiment, but there really is zero substance to the argument.

What flying actually does is to expose the grim truth of WPvP - namely that most people don't want to participate in it. Flying does not, nor can it prevent people from choosing to participate in WPvP. What it does do is allow people to choose not to. And therein lies the problem: Most players, given the choice, choose to avoid WPvP. So if you remove flying from the equation, that won't get them to suddenly choose to engage in WPvP. They'll still continue to choose to avoid WPvP using whatever other means are at their disposal, whether it be running away, switching WM off, or just straight up not logging on. Sure, by removing flying you'll probably succeed in getting a few unwitting players forced into WPvP situations even though they'd rather not, but I seriously question the value of such a proposition, and would suggest that it's likely to do far more harm than good.

[Jamie081]

Warmode is fine. Flying didn't kill Wpvp, BGs and lack of incentives did.

[pfbe]

This will not fix wPvP.

wPvP shriveled up and died the moment a better alternative came around.

It wasnt flying that killed it.. it died the moment there were BGs.

Its not flying.

its not carebears.

Its not anything other than wPvP being a shit-filled raging trash-barge fire.

It always was, from the very first day it was enabled in the OG beta.

Thats why it died the MOMENT there was something better.

So, we should give the open world battleground characteristics? 30 second auto-rezzes, auto forming groups, allowing raid groups to complete objectives, etc? Could be interesting...

[Kagthul]

So, we should give the open world battleground characteristics? 30 second auto-rezzes, auto forming groups, allowing raid groups to complete objectives, etc? Could be interesting...

No, you should accept the fact that wPvP will not ever be good.

Ever.

because it isn't a controlled setting.

its shit, it was always shit, and it will always be shit.

[Raelbo]

No, you should accept the fact that wPvP will not ever be good.

Ever.

because it isn't a controlled setting.

its shit, it was always shit, and it will always be shit.

Pretty much this. The problem is that what would make WPvP good is exactly what players will avoid, namely any kind of balanced fight. When it comes to WPvP people only want to engage if it's clear that they're at a strong advantage. As soon as an encounter looks like it will be a fair fight with a decent chance of losing, then players will choose not engage.

What this means is that pretty much every WPvP encounter is heavily one sided, which is fun neither for the people getting crushed (because they stand zero chance of winning) nor the people doing the crushing (because they stand no chance of losing).