It's actually mine vs mill that's closer to one side or the other. Going to the mill from the alliance side takes an extra 5-10 seconds, you'll usually arrive at the base of the hill as the horde have started capping. Same deal on the mine side - the horde usually arrives at the top of the hill as the alliance caps. The BS is reasonably close, although the pivot point for BS/LM/Farm is centered better with direct lines to each flag than the pivot point for BS/Stables/Mine.
In any event, the number of quality AB games is a trivial small percentage of the total, so I'd say it's pretty irrelevant in the long term.
As for the AV map imbalances - you don't have to take the bridge to Dun Baldar, and trust me, the avg alliance isn't smart enough to take a bunker back if you take it with 5 people in DB. If you leave the alliance SP and just take DB in force, the alliance is the group fighting through the bridge nonsense to try and retake their town (or recalling and getting butchered).
The biggest problem with AV is that removing the join as group entirely (instead of capping it at 5-10) prevents any guarantee that it'll be organized.
The team that wins AV is the one that's lucky enough to have 30 people follow directions. While the alliance pattern of play tends to make them lucky more often (people get stuck in stormpike graveyard spawn zerg until they start listening) it's not by any means insurmountable.
First star to the right, and straight on till morning. in BSG 15
I have an epic mount, and all three possible speed boosts (carrot, glove enchant and spurs). I have never beat the horde to the BS flag. They are always ahead by at least 2-3 secs, so I suspect the distance from Horde start to BS flag is shorter. But that isn't much of an issue in the grand scheme. Basic factors I see (none of which are too huge imb)
This is rather odd, since i used to play an ally rogue, epic mount, spurs, enchanted gloves, and carrot, and i would consistantly beat the horde to the BS flag, if only by a split second.
i wonder if it's a graphic/client side lag on the part of the gate opening though, because on my screen, i'm always the first one out the gate, literally.
i can't attest to this on the horde side yet, since i haven't bought an epic mount on the horde side, but i'm still the first one out the gate, and only slowly get overtaken as riders ride by me at the farm.
Which of those would you advocate taking first, and how would your offense proceed?
AB field reversal is to AV field reversal as Difficult is to Absofuckinglutely Impossible.
The distance involved from the Horde starting area to the Blacksmith flag is shorter than the Alliance starting area to the Blacksmith flag. I've ran it on both sides and there is a slight advantage in that the Horde can get to the flag first. It's not enough of an advantage to be able to capture it against a good team even with people running interference for you unless you really overload your blacksmith assault; a hunter can simply plug you from 40 yards away before you'll be able to get done capturing it and the melee ensues with neither side having any real advantage. The counterpoint is that if the Alliance has the BS, defending the Stables because very easy since the BS graveyard is closer to the Stables than it is to the Farm, and you have easy access to the mines as well. Trying to hold the mines from the Farm is very difficult without the Blacksmith, and once you have the Blacksmith you can pretty easily roll a defense from LM<->BS-<->Farm because of the farm-side bridge's proximity to all three flags as long as you don't wipe. When you don't have the Blacksmith, you're assaulting across the farm and the distance from the farm graveyard to the BS flag is approximately equidistant from the stables flag to the BS flag. I believe that this is the point at which it was balanced around, not the time that it takes to get from the BS flag to the Farm flag, which is much shorter than any other flag run. If both sides wipe each other out with no capture of the flag at the BS (unlikely but possible) the run back for both sides is practically equal. AB is very, very well balanced and it really comes down to attack/defend strategy much more than it does to a terrain advantage.
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
Thanks Thrillhouse. The complaint about AB "map imbalance" is a derail and holds no validity. It's *entirely* a matter of perception that the mill, the strategically most useful point on the map, is "easier" for Horde to capture. This is due to the perception that the Horde is on the "south" side and Alliance on the "north" side, which just isn't true. The mine, mill, and blacksmith are evenly spaced from each starting point. Our Arathi Basin team loses the mill to other Alliance teams just as often because they know of its strategic value and send appropriate numbers to win the battle for it. Once we played against another premade and after 60 seconds into the game no one had claimed the mine -- because neither of our teams had sent someone to it. <_< We've also defended suboptimal 3-sets like mine/farm/mill against other AB raid groups, so I will anecdotally claim that the tactical value of the blacksmith and crossroad-defense present between blacksmith and mill/farm or mine/stables isn't quite all it's cracked up to be. Useful, yes, but game-breaking? Certainly not.
'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.
Many people seem to be claiming that the Horde can get to the mill so much faster than the alliance that they can cap it before alliance even arrive.
That's simply not true. And just because I can get to the flag faster does not make it any easier or harder to attain if I can't actually cap it before the other team arrives.
If Me and 5 of my friends get to the flag 2-3 seconds earlier than you and 5 of your friends it's still a 6 on 6 fighting over who takes it.
3. Reinforcing from Mill->BS or BS->Mill is easier on the horde side than on the alliance side since the bridge is on that side.
If the alliance has both the Mill and the BS they can arrive at the BS to defend it the same way horde can, these routes aren't Horde or Alliance only. Both teams can make use of it. And since the horde would have to travel the same way as the alliance to get there the Alliance can effectively cut off the horde at the bridge and fight them right there at the choke point nowhere near the flag. If anything Alliance has an advantage in this regard.
On my battleground (Stormstrike) Horde win 80% or more of pug vs pug AB and WSG matches, and out of every 10 pug AB matches I'm in I'd say Horde 5 caps alliance in probably 4 of them. Maybe I'm lucky in that regard but usually Horde at least 4 caps Alliance. So that shoots the 3 vs 2 cap advantage theory down right away.
If I had to blame something for the imbalance in pug vs pug win ratios between the 2 factions I'd have to chalk it up to superior PvP racials.
Are the racials so good they can sway it in one sides favor so heavily? Maybe not by themselves, but almost every serious PvPer rolls horde because of them and almost everyone who's main focus is PvE rolls alliance because of Paladins. There's the major difference in my eyes.
Let's face it a Tauren Druid is far and away superior to a Night Elf druid in PvP based off of just racials. War stomp and +5%HP are awesome. Shadowmeld doesn't accomplish much for a druid.
Let's try to keep this on topic. I didn't make this thread to talk about Arathi Basin, factional class balance, superior racial abilities, or the honor system being unfavorable to casuals. Try to keep the thread educational or at least interesting to read please. :eng101:
What's wrong with Alterac Valley? (We've covered this extensively.) What could be done from a developer's chair to fix it.? (We're still drumming up ideas for this.)
'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.
1. Modify the honor values of objectives, devaluing those closer to your starting point and increasing the value of those farther afield. For example, make Stonehearth Graveyard/Bunker, Icewing Bunker, Balinda and the associated lieutenants worth less than they are now, leave Stormpike the same and increase the value of the objectives in Dun Baldur. Total bonus honor for all objectives should remain the same.
2. Award bonus honor for holding things and keeping lieutenants alive in all cases, not just in longer battles.
The theory underpinning everything: people want to maximize their honor. #1 would encourage offense to gain more honor, #2 would encourage defense to gain the same. My fear: attitudes stay the same as now and the Horde accepts the greatly reduced honor they'd be getting.
Of course, IANAGD, so please poke holes in my rationale. I also play Horde so that likely colors things.
P.S. The map can stay exactly as it is, except perhaps a few small changes to prevent the Alliance being able to circumvent most of the NPCs in Frostwolf Keep.
There is no huge map imbalance, the side that win's the battle is the side that wants it more.
If that were to be the case, horde would also lose 90% (and i'm being optimist, ever since they changed the honor system, out of 58 AV's, i've won 1) of Warsongs and AB's, something that doesn't happen in pug vs pug.
Since those maps actually are pretty much mirrors, it's clear that, indeed, AV is, as it stands, is imbalanced.
When you have <1 minute queues for AV, which I believe is the case horde-side, you have much less attachment to that particular game. As was the case on Arathor when we had 7-8 hour queues for AV, you put everything into the objectives because there were no other AVs for you to join that day. This imbalance is still present, but with 30 minute queues instead of 7 hour ones.
As hard as Dun Baldar itself is to take, Iceblood GY is just as hard. Now compare the difficulty of defending Stormpike (surrounded by high terrain, with multiple access points and a graveyard->flag route that is easily surrounded by 'snipers') to the ease of defending Frostwolf GY.
Well, I actually won an AV last night and I have to say that the difference between a Horde win and an Alliance win is about 90 minutes of time. We basically went back to the good old days of AV... staged a 10-15 man defense, ninja'd our Relief Hut and pushed the Alliance to Snowfall by strategic use of blood turn-ins, killed a few annoying gryphons while our offense slowly (and I mean slowly) ground their way through Dun Baldar. We must have killed every NPC is that goddamn base more than 20 times over.... every time there was a surprise... oh look, ninja recap of the towers, regenerated guards, druids. Point being that the key to Horde wins in AV is making the battle into a long drawn out slog, while the key to Alliance winning is the absence of that slog because, well, their base does quite a job of bogging things down on its own.
Since you mentioned AB as a 'mirror', I'll stop you there for a moment. Horde have a huge advantage in AB, as their 3 easily taken bases (Farm, Blacksmith, Lumber Mill) both includes the Lumber Mill (huge strategic advantage compared to the Gold Mine), and has easy, fast routes between the three bases.
Huge, my ass. I like to bitch about incompetents in /gu when I'm losing in AB, but really, the better team always wins there. Little tactical errors like not getting someone to rush the blacksmith cost dearly. A Tier gap will usually guarantee a victory in pre-made vs. pre-made. Defending a sub-optimal three is always possible, with losses coming either from people getting greedy ("We have 4, try and cap STABLES!") or stupid ("8 inc mine, lawlz. atk bs, pls").
About AB (rawr! derail!), Horde do actually get to the Blacksmith flag faster than the Alliance. I'm always able to ninja the buff if it's speed or zerk when I try. Mine and Mill are pretty equal but the buff at Mine is on the Horde side. None of these significantly alter the outcome though. The only feature in the BG that actually gives one side an advantage is that when defended by any significant presence, Stables are basically uncappable. The GY is like 15 yards from the flag if you stand on the edge. Farm offers no such relief - the GY is about 50 yards away. I've done a lot of 4-1 premade vs pug games where the alliance just stayed at Stables with 12+ and it went on like that. It's a viable strategy, however defeatist it is. Pug vs Pug I can also expect to win almost every time as Horde, but tbh there's just not that many Pug vs Pug games out there.
i wonder if it's a graphic/client side lag on the part of the gate opening though, because on my screen, i'm always the first one out the gate, literally.
When you have <1 minute queues for AV, which I believe is the case horde-side, you have much less attachment to that particular game. As was the case on Arathor when we had 7-8 hour queues for AV, you put everything into the objectives because there were no other AVs for you to join that day. This imbalance is still present, but with 30 minute queues instead of 7 hour ones.
As hard as Dun Baldar itself is to take, Iceblood GY is just as hard. Now compare the difficulty of defending Stormpike (surrounded by high terrain, with multiple access points and a graveyard->flag route that is easily surrounded by 'snipers') to the ease of defending Frostwolf GY.
I'm sorry, did you just say Frostwolf GY was easier to defend than SP? A wide open plain vs a cul de sac with handy funnels to force & split attackers down into, with plenty of good sniper spots for defenders? I've gotten to exalted on 2 horde toons and 1 alliance (and played a lot of AV subsequent to getting exalted on alliance because it's such good honor) and I have to say you're sadly mistaken.
On alliance while defending SP I'll often stand on the perch directly above the flag, where I can safely attack anyone trying to cap it or heal the defenders below. If a ranged class tries to fight back, the NPC guards or the other alliance below tip the fight in my favor. If someone comes up behind me, I root them in place, drop down, and can shoot at them through the terrain. It's also possible to stand behind that perch and target those around the flag, also through the terrain.
The only way to defend FW is with sheer numbers. There's nothing there to stop the attackers from reaching your ranged defenders, no chokepoints to funnel them into AEs, etc. A small force at SP can hold off twice its number in attackers. The same at FW is a speed bump at best.
The two halves of the map are not equal; everything south of IB is a joke, defensively.* You can't defend wide open areas without something approaching equal numbers, which means you would have no offense to speak of. That's why for horde to win, it either has to rush the aid station right away (before alliance has a chance to defend it), or to hold IB until the offense has SP GY and then try to slow the alliance as much as possible while Dun Baldar is being dismantled (which is the slow method). Once IB is gone, horde defense is nothing more than a delaying action, because Tower Point, FW GY, and the wonderfully inept horde base cannot be held except with a turtle.
* Compare this with the choke points at Icewing Bunker, SP GY, the bridge of doom, and the hordes of NPCs you have to deal with in the alliance base.
Personally I would love to see a special month where both sides got thier home bases switched in all the BGs. Well, I'd love for it to be random every time but I think Bliz would be more likely to go for a gimmick month than have people always starting in "lore-inappropriate" bases. Alliance pugs might have an easier time of it in AB starting from the other side, although honestly the problem with alliance pugs in AB and WSG has nothing to do with the map.
I'm sorry, did you just say Frostwolf GY was easier to defend than SP? A wide open plain vs a cul de sac with handy funnels to force & split attackers down into, with plenty of good sniper spots for defenders?
Indeed I did. Terrible visibility on three sides, multiple entrances obscured from view from each other, surrounded by higher ground. Handy funnels are no good when they are easily bypassed, and they are on all sides, also surrounded by higher ground.
All a defender at FW needs to do is rez, look around 360 degrees, run to the flag, interrupt. Compare this to rezzing at SP. Run along a corridor surrounded by high walls, easily accessed by Horde. Check the entrance to the south. Check under the bridge. Check up on the hills, on three different sides.
Anyway, back on topic... I'd like to see more NPCs, but with different aggro mechanics to the PvE game, with no healing aggro, possibly just attacking the closest enemy to them, or to the objective they guard. This would help prevent cheesy flag caps, and get rid of the problem of trying to heal when noone wants to tank.
On an unexpected note it looks like they at least did AV weekends better then I expected. You still get 14 honor per NPC kill but you get a big honor bonus when the game ends (112 on my AV win this morning). Takes some of the bite out of joining an AV game and seeing everyone else with 150 or bonus honor and 20 people defending IB.
I think the problems with the map revolve around the choke point imbalances. All of the horde choke points are located in the middle of the map, wheras the alliance choke points are near the top of the map. Meaning the alliance can meet the resistance at the middle of the field, overcome it much more quickly than the horde (because it's simply reached faster) and then split forces by sending some d back to sp and pushing forward with the rest relatively easily. This isn't possible on the horde since once the ib chokepoint is gone there is literally nothing stopping the alliance short of a full 40 man cockblock at the horde base.
Typically the only time this is backfires is when the alliance get so cocky that they push thier 30 man offense forward before ib caps and leave 1-2 defending ib while it caps. The horde who now have to rez at the cave take back fw and the alliance are pushed back to sf.. but this is a very very rare case and it still doesn't help if the alliance has already managed to get fw turned, which usually has happened by that time.
Honestly, I'd like to see them remove the hut at the bend at FW base and replace it with a bridge like the Dun bridge, suspended 40 yards in the air. That or put a cover on the Dun bridge and make it twice as wide. I'm sorry but the bridge compared to a little covered shelter that allows you to gather a force to charge in with (in that 10 yard hill/gap to the base mind you), is in no way comparable to a 5 yard wide bridge that is 50 yards long in the middle of the open with absolutely no cover (with archers popping you once you're half way across the bridge).
I think alot of the problems with the map could be fixed with some layout changes, but I'm sure Blizzard is not going to waste time on bg's, they never have.
*another note: Much of the current problem with cross realm bg's is that the horde players are absolutely terrible strategists and have no clue how to manipulate the map in thier favor. I'm sure this is true on both factions, however, 10 broken waffle irons can defend sp against the horde "offense" in 99% of the cases.
I'm sorry, did you just say Frostwolf GY was easier to defend than SP? A wide open plain vs a cul de sac with handy funnels to force & split attackers down into, with plenty of good sniper spots for defenders?
Indeed I did. Terrible visibility on three sides, multiple entrances obscured from view from each other, surrounded by higher ground. Handy funnels are no good when they are easily bypassed, and they are on all sides, also surrounded by higher ground.
The ledge with the two trees right over the flag watches the under-bridge and mine-side approaches (that's the perch I usually sit on). You're ignoring that attackers coming up from the south, which is the bulk of them, have to go along a walled-in pass that defenders can (and do) sit on top of and rain death down as the horde approach. You never get more than a few non-stealthers from the other directions (speaking as someone who spends the entirety of almost every match watching the SP GY flag) because no matter what, they have to pass through the fighting at the Icewing chokepoint. Most get picked off trying to get off the road to go up (mine-side) or down (bridge-side). The mine-side path has the added problem of being the path out of the alliance starting cave.
All a defender at FW needs to do is rez, look around 360 degrees, run to the flag, interrupt. Compare this to rezzing at SP. Run along a corridor surrounded by high walls, easily accessed by Horde. Check the entrance to the south. Check under the bridge. Check up on the hills, on three different sides.
What you just said doesn't make sense. You do the same thing at either GY. The SP flag isn't in 3 different places; in order to cap it horde has to be on the flag, which is directly in front of the rez spot. Same as FW. Yes, people will be trying to stop you from reaching the flag after you rez. That happens at all GYs (including FW) during any mass assault.
Not to mention that rezing at sp, the flag is literally within inches of casting range upon rezzing, the aid station is in casting range upon rezzing. Wheras ib flag (the only comparable horde choke point) is obstructed from view by a huge hill from the gy, and the relief hut is also well out of casting range and obstructed by two hills and a structure upon rezzing. Seeing a theme here?
If you actually sit down and pick apart av or any of the other bliz pvp fiascos you will quickly figure out how much better they could be with simple tweaks.
One thing I dont understand is why theres only 1 ab map and 1 wsg map. Why put capture the flag in wow but only let people play 1 map forever? Its not very hard to make a new map and the added replay value is pretty significant. The same thing goes for the arena which im not looking forward to at all. 2 maps 1 being a box with 4 pillars and a tornado. Pretty sure I could of drawn that on a napkin during lunch and with proper software made it in 2hrs.
All in all wow pvp is gimmicky crap. When the devs doing pvp cant even think that the arena games should be best 2/3 because there's pretty much no reason for them not to be and would actually add to the game play, I don't expect much.
What you just said doesn't make sense. You do the same thing at either GY. The SP flag isn't in 3 different places; in order to cap it horde has to be on the flag, which is directly in front of the rez spot. Same as FW. Yes, people will be trying to stop you from reaching the flag after you rez. That happens at all GYs (including FW) during any mass assault.
Melee tends to have a tough time dealing with all the ranged attackers along the SP GY "wall". If Horde parks enough ranged DPS up there, that can seriously whittle down rezzers at little risk to themselves.
Still, it's a pretty small disadvantage compared to the Horde ones. (Getting to SP in the first place, then getting across the bridge, and then getting through the base . . . )
I've never understood why they couldn't make multiple maps for each gametype. I don't think it would take an amazing amount of resources to have more than one capture the flag map at the very least.
I've never understood why they couldn't make multiple maps for each gametype. I don't think it would take an amazing amount of resources to have more than one capture the flag map at the very least.
Only argument I've ever seen against multiple maps is that it would add another level of scouting to the honor grind. Also, multiple maps would ruin the intense RP experience of playing capture-the-flag to determine logging rights. :P
12/21/06, 2:18 PM
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