The middle tower was possibly the worst piece of design in the whole AV game. A couple mages with some support could hold that area vs 10+ other people and further up in between the two towers, which actually fire at you before you can even get through the first tower itself. Would basically give the horde a natural choke point with archers that did some nice damage before the Alliance could extinguish the towers by force.
Nowadays though, it's never defended unlike the bridge, but it's an equally easy place to defend but the horde never seem to do it these days but go for the quick GY caps then lose because Alliance leave 1/4 their force behind to hold them up at the bridge.
It is not that simple. One of the benefits of the bridge is that it is an open air area with heavy defense backing it up. You get past a group of alliance? Ok, even if you are at high health, you now have two towers hitting you the whole way to the flag. Don't forget the mobs as well, as there are at least about 5-6 minimum that can aggro on you before you get to the 4 guarding the flag. The easiest way to get minimal aggro requires Feign Death or stealthing.
You don't get that horde side. As soon as someone makes it through, the horde defenders have to handle that person. Once that individual gets halfway through the top part of the base, they can get out of combat and med up. Ignoring that, they've got more room to work with in taking the flag with minimal aggro (4 guards and an elite), which also must be taken into account.
This isn't to say that intelligent players cannot overcome the base issues, but even with only 10 defenders you need people playing smart to manage a solid choke point.
My final point would be this: Letting 1-2 people get through the Alliance base is much less worrisome than letting them get past the towers in the Horde base.
My experience of AV honor weekend:
Start riding over strife, occasionally doing a /moo at the alliance players that are riding at the opposite direction. No fighting the alliance here.
Killing Balinda, healing the tank.
Moving up, sometimes meeting a couple of alliance here that is mowed down by the raid.
Helping taking the tower while people reminds everyone not to take stonehearth graveyard
Someone grabs stonehearth graveyard.
People whine in /battleground about taking SH and then some whining about the 10 afkers.
Now the raid grabs SP graveyard, if there are not too many alliance there. But usually horde gets it.
Now we move over the bridge and I get hit by arrows like hell, a few alliance defenders starts fearing and doing hit and runs. Mobs start to aggro. Every healer gets healing aggro and dies from the tons of mobs and the sporadic alliance hunters.
Repeat, repeat until eventually you start working on marshals (lost bunkers and towers all the time so you have a lot to fight)
At this point the alliance is done with drek and wins.
That was 8 out of 10 games. Sometimes we won, but the strategy was pretty much always the same.
Alliance/Horde both rush captains/LTs. Alliance go through the towers and GYs in turn, Horde skip SH GY (usually have a small team to kill sh tower/lts).
With any alliance killed from npcs/defenders spawning at SH GY it gives us a free run at SP, which is often undefended.
Pretty much the only time horde loses is when someone takes SH GY early and all the alliance start rezzing at SP and delay us a lot, or Alliance bypass IB/TP and just go straight for FW GY and our base.
Mirror map to get rid of the terrain advantages and disadvantages. Give enough variation for flavor but ultimately make the two sides approaches to the enemy general 95% the same.
Streamline the PVE content in what is supposed to be a PVP zone. I don't mind guards for towers, flags, and the enemy general. Patrolling guards? Pointless. Vendor/Quest NPCs that no one uses, but still aggro? Pointless because of placement. If you want there to be more guards in the general's end area, add more guards in a formal fashion, not this slip-shod "oh the NPC looks cool over here by that tent" thing.
Institute a minimum participation level. Don't base it on KBs but DO base it on either HKs or towers/flags assaulted/defended. Make it generous enough that Joebob the newbie in all greens standing around trying his best and scoring 1 HK every 5m can stay, but that AFKHonorFarmer will at least need to move with the zerg and get caught in the crossfire. No system will be perfect but this will at least help reduce AFKers.
Make summonings happen for capturing strategic objectives not through quest turn ins. People don't want to stop fighting to go back to base to turn in, they want to fight. If I want air support have me capture an air support tower. If the enemy takes it back, have the air support despawn. Don't put these objectives along the main advancement path, but don't make them so far out of the way that people won't ever do them.
But at this point I'd rather Blizzard just abandons AV for what it is, their flawed first attempt at a battleground. Nerf the honor gain so that it isn't the most played battleground and try again with something new having learned lessons from their mistakes.
Mirror map to get rid of the terrain advantages and disadvantages. Give enough variation for flavor but ultimately make the two sides approaches to the enemy general 95% the same.
Streamline the PVE content in what is supposed to be a PVP zone. I don't mind guards for towers, flags, and the enemy general. Patrolling guards? Pointless. Vendor/Quest NPCs that no one uses, but still aggro? Pointless because of placement. If you want there to be more guards in the general's end area, add more guards in a formal fashion, not this slip-shod "oh the NPC looks cool over here by that tent" thing.
Institute a minimum participation level. Don't base it on KBs but DO base it on either HKs or towers/flags assaulted/defended. Make it generous enough that Joebob the newbie in all greens standing around trying his best and scoring 1 HK every 5m can stay, but that AFKHonorFarmer will at least need to move with the zerg and get caught in the crossfire. No system will be perfect but this will at least help reduce AFKers.
Make summonings happen for capturing strategic objectives not through quest turn ins. People don't want to stop fighting to go back to base to turn in, they want to fight. If I want air support have me capture an air support tower. If the enemy takes it back, have the air support despawn. Don't put these objectives along the main advancement path, but don't make them so far out of the way that people won't ever do them.
But at this point I'd rather Blizzard just abandons AV for what it is, their flawed first attempt at a battleground. Nerf the honor gain so that it isn't the most played battleground and try again with something new having learned lessons from their mistakes.
I actually collected coldtooth supplies (commandoes) a couple of weeks back. I assumed you needed 2-3 batches ever since they nerfed the amounts and decided it could be fun, but it's still 6-7 bacthes which takes longer to collect by 5 people than the games last now. Same with rams - 25 skins and 25 rams is quite a bit nobody is ever going to bother. Sure I don't know how it would have an immediate positive effect on gameplay, just figured "this could be fun." After all after getting all the crystals together for ivus and seeing the druids aoe moonfire horde at SP is one of the most awesomely hilarious sights in AV.
But at this point I'd rather Blizzard just abandons AV for what it is, their flawed first attempt at a battleground. Nerf the honor gain so that it isn't the most played battleground and try again with something new having learned lessons from their mistakes.
Sadly, this is probably the best suggestion in this thread. Blizz should throw AV in the backlight and put in a new and improved "epic" battleground.
Sadly, this is probably the best suggestion in this thread. Blizz should throw AV in the backlight and put in a new and improved "epic" battleground.
Well I was also partially hoping if they left AV the same that at least they could possibly take some of these ideas for the next epic BG. As for the guy who mentioned that he can tell I'm horde, I've only recently been horde since BC came out, VC was an alliance guild beforehand and I played AV 10x more back then then I do now.
One of the solutions I also mentioned would help w/ the AFK botters, making the honor gain Dependant on your dmg done/Healing done/Tower and GYs cap'd and defended. It would let the honor gain go up for how long the game is and force players to actually participate to earn honor, that probably should have been listed as the main idea, the rest are mainly to make AV have a more epic feel to it along with providing more entertainment then the current snore fest of a BG.
Another thing that might be nice is if they designed new BGs w/ the same goals as the current ones and when you Queued you got one of those different maps instead of always the same(maybe move EoTS to be grped w/ AB to open up a 4th BG slot for weekends) I know BGs wouldn't be as boring if I had different maps to play even if they had the same goals(like the Arenas). Maybe even extend the "Holiday Weekends" to "BG weeks" to encourage more BG play throughout the week instead of just on the weekends.
Making honor gain dependant on X yards from objective, healing or damage would be the worse possible thing you could do, you'd just turn it into one large zergfest since nobody would want to risk dying or go ninja or defend a tower since it has gain, also you're forgetting that only one person can capture or defend a tower per an assault.
You can come up with solutions like you can't gain honor while inside the cave, but then people who die and ressurect in the cave are out of luck.
Afking will never be solved without taking a look at the honor system and overhauling it which isn't likely to happen anytime soon, any change that would come about would make it worse.
Making honor gain dependant on X yards from objective, healing or damage would be the worse possible thing you could do, you'd just turn it into one large zergfest since nobody would want to risk dying or go ninja or defend a tower since it has gain, also you're forgetting that only one person can capture or defend a tower per an assault.
You can come up with solutions like you can't gain honor while inside the cave, but then people who die and ressurect in the cave are out of luck.
Afking will never be solved without taking a look at the honor system and overhauling it which isn't likely to happen anytime soon, any change that would come about would make it worse.
The objective honor would be given to everyone within a radius around that area, like the quest objectives you get the first time you play AV. You're also forgetting one of the other changes I suggested which made you cap the points in order to go on, as for not wanting to defend you could add in an aura around a point you control that increases honor gains, so defenders would get less dmg/healing but would gain more pts for what they do.
And how could it possibly make AV worse then it already is? Even if people don't want to risk as much at least they aren't afk in the cave all game, the only possible time it could ever make it worse is games where everyone is participating already... which I doubt happens more then once every month if even that.
You're turning into a black and white issue and not considering what happens when you change how the honor is given.
Honor gain increase? Then you have people who don't want to leave GY's or farm Alliance who are running past due to increased gain, still doesn't solve anything because you can just go AFK at a captured GY that never usually gets assaulted (eg SH), or again move up everytime something is assaulted which means once every 10-15 minutes most likey.
...thats is a horrible argument, "As long as they aren't AFK I don't care"
You're turning into a black and white issue and not considering what happens when you change how the honor is given.
Honor gain increase? Then you have people who don't want to leave GY's or farm Alliance who are running past due to increased gain, still doesn't solve anything because you can just go AFK at a captured GY that never usually gets assaulted (eg SH), or again move up everytime something is assaulted which means once every 10-15 minutes most likey.
...thats is a horrible argument, "As long as they aren't AFK I don't care"
From just sitting there afk the only honor they would get is the base kill CP, which is a pathetic amount.
One of the problems with the pvp system in general is the lack of points for actually engaging in PVP by killing the opposing faction. In AV for instance, as a healer moving with the zerg, I get 1-2 points per HK in the battleground. I maybe see 10-30 HK's per battleground. The difference between me sitting in the cave, reading a book or whatever and actually participating is about 20 points. Seems pretty pointless to actually participate under the current scheme.
That's only for the offence though. On defence I earn 200-300 HK honor over the course of the AV depending on how it's going. Most times I don't bother though and just semi-afk guarding towers and GYs while they cap, at least that way I don't have to pay attention 99% of the time (when not guarding tower point, geez horde love that tower) but I'm still not leaching off the team.
I see the suggestion to introduce Queue as Group pop up a lot. But would that really save AV?
I know that I (as well as many others I know) like AV because there are no premades. When I join I may get put into a completely random and unbalanced group, but I know that that big Tauren Warrior in full Arena epics over there is in the same boat. Everyone has a chance of winning if you can get your group working together. But if I enter a 40-man PuG and end up facing a 40-man premade I already know there's no chance in hell I'll ever win.
Putting in Group as Queue may sooner destroy AV than rescue it.
5- or 10-man queues would let some people handle things, for instance taking the GYs. Plus,it would remove some of the puginess that AV gets and maybe eliminate some honor leeches, afkers.
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I see the suggestion to introduce Queue as Group pop up a lot. But would that really save AV?
I know that I (as well as many others I know) like AV because there are no premades. When I join I may get put into a completely random and unbalanced group, but I know that that big Tauren Warrior in full Arena epics over there is in the same boat. Everyone has a chance of winning if you can get your group working together. But if I enter a 40-man PuG and end up facing a 40-man premade I already know there's no chance in hell I'll ever win.
Putting in Group as Queue may sooner destroy AV than rescue it.
It's doesn't mean you won't get to play, people would advertize in LFG for people to join as long as they get on vent and listen.
My experience with AV has been that it is the PUGger's battleground. It is explicitly because there is no group queue, and while this may make it suffering to the elite few, that it is a safe haven / somewhere to go when one's organized group isn't on is exactly the point.
Beyond making the map perfectly symmetrical (separate yet equal works lots of places, right?), I tried to think of cunning things to encourage diversified gameplay; for example, having a 50 yard line (midfield marker, for those not familiar with American football), and players would be sorted into offense and defense teams, with perk honor split for offense being offensive, and defense being defensive (and the line marker would prevent the wrong team crossing). The more I thought about that, though, the number of scenarios where it would be gamed, or suck, just blew my mind.
Incentives are where it's at, and the idea I'm kicking around is something along the lines of removing the NPC defenders for everything. Replace all the "banner for 5 minutes"s with EotS/Hellfire "Convert this with more people" style objectives. When an objective comes under assault, any player on its team who isn't in combat gets a dialogue, "So-and-so tower requires defense! Answer the call?" First X people to click "Yes" get ported to it, at random spots (so people can't icetrap/eccet the spawn point). When they die, they respawn at the graveyard closest to where they ported from. If they prevent the conversion, everyone who ported get (some) bonus honor. Assaulting players who perform the conversion to the last tick also get bonus honor.
Give the towers 1 minute from someone moving in range to assault them to sending people to port in, and make the X scale with number of assailants (and use a larger radius then the initial triggering "someone is assaulting the objective" radius). Throw in a free return-port on successful defense, and the game becomes dynamic, maybe?
I dunno, it's just a thought.
Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.
First off, I don't think that AV is a lost cause, and I don't think it should be taken out of the game. For me, stuck on a PvE server, AV is was my only window into unrestricted world PvP, and I enjoyed it is as such. Much more so than AB and WSG, I used AV to practice my 1 v 1 and 1 v n skills because you had some time and space to escape/abuse terrain.
There are a shitload of things wrong with AV though:
- The Map is shitty, too large, and imbalanced.
- You get more honor for winning and zerging than you do from actually PvPing.
- If played "correctly" the game can last a long time.
- a) because small sides can defend flags from onrushers.
- b) because it takes a long period of time and effort to manufacture reavers and frostwolves to
break FoS stalemates.
- c) because there is no constant move towards defeat or victory (ala AB scores)
Map:
- I'd agree with earlier points, make it symmetrical, and maybe scale it back a little bit to promote contact between the sides.
- maybe pinch in FoS so that the "two zergs passing in the night" scenario isn't possible right at the start.
Puggies will stop and fight each other if they come face to face, but on the initial push in AV, you don't have to see the other side at all as you push your offense. This needs to be changed.
Honor:
- I don't have any earthshattering ideas on this one. Maybe, like mentioned before, take away diminishing returns on honor. Overall though, I think the honor problem is partly a symptom as well as a cause. Once they took away the incentive to kill, people realized how much easier it was to just zerg. Honestly, Honor is secondary and will fall into place if the Gameplay of the BG is fun again.
Gameplay:
- First off, I think that one of the biggest things with AV is that it isn't on a timetable. I would want to implement an AB style points counter to the proceedings so that games are limited on how long they can take. This would have to be balanced, obviously, but I think something along the lines of:
- Each team starts off with say... 0/10,000 or something.
- 50 points per kill of level 70 player.
- 48 for 69, etc, dropping off exponentially the lower level the player went.
- 200 points for an initial tower cap, 20 points every minute that the tower is still in possession of
the capturing team.
- 200 points for killing Named NPCs (lieutenants, etc.)
- 5,000 points for the death of a faction leader. Would obviously be intended to end the game, like
it always has, but would leave open interesting scenarios for teams winning going away.
- Point accumulation would also lead to NPC waves becoming available at various milestones:
- Veterans available at 2,000
- Riders available at 4,000
- Reavers available at 6,000
- God at available 8,000
All of this could help to push the match timetable forward, and would play into the hands of the teams that better used their NPCs, which was one of the hallmarks of "classic" AV. I would also like to /sign the proposal to make windriders into a bombing run clone. That sounds fucking fun as hell, one of the best ideas in this thread IMO.
Feedback? Anything major I missed? I haven't played AV at 70 yet, but I played a TON TON TON (2x rep grind, when it was hard :/) at lvl 60.
There are quite a few changes coming, all of which we hope will culminate into making players want to participate, and ultimately win the battleground.
Obviously as most people know we have the anti-afk reporting measure, by which you can right click on someone in the battleground and mark them as AFK. With enough reports they receive a debuff that keeps them from earning honor in that battleground, and only by entering combat can they remove that debuff. It's going to help, but it's certainly not enough on its own.
Other things we're doing are changing or pulling out NPCs in key locations to help even out the balance of time and effort each side has to take to push through. As well as some minor changes to locations that people find are easily exploited to advance faster.
We're shifting some of the honor from the earlier NPCs, that help make AFKing so lucrative, to the end of the battleground and more for actually winning.
The graveyard spawning is being changed so that players aren't sent back to the cave unless there is nowhere else to spawn, which should help encourage horde to play a bit more defense if they're being beaten back.
And we're also correcting the ... I think Jeff referred to them as "creative pulling mechanics" with the general's.
Everything together, we feel, should help encourage players to participate, while also improving overall balance.
What I worry about is pugging on alliance side. Alliance is awful at Pugs for some reason. We lose 2/3 of AB and EotS and more like 3/4 of WSG. If AV gets drastically changed I fear the only way for non pre made alliance pvp'ers to work on their honor will be shot in the foot. It would be horrible to gain the tens of thousands of honor I need to get BG pieces going 250 at a time in AB.
Before AV weekend I had 203 AV games played on my attempt to grind honor gear. The win ration was roughly 51%-49% in favor of the alliance, this is in the Stormstrike battlegroup. The only things allowing the Horde to win some games are: 1) Tons of AFKers on both sides and 2) The Vanndar single pull. Pre-TBC when the average amount of AFKers per game was ~5, the single pull had absolutely no effect on wins. While grinding HWL gear, I literally went on a 280-35 streak before I had to delete my addon folder and reset.
I'm really concerned about the fix to the single pull since I don't think they'll be able to completely balance the massive advantages the Alliance has. So far, I'd say the absurd amount of AFKers on both sides work to the advantage of the Horde because that's a lot less people we have to fight on our way to Stormpike.
Been a long time since I read this entire thread so forgive if it's been mentioned before, but if AV was dropped to 25 people, I wonder how much of a difference it might make. Especially with anti-AV measures in place.
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Before AV weekend I had 203 AV games played on my attempt to grind honor gear. The win ration was roughly 51%-49% in favor of the alliance, this is in the Stormstrike battlegroup. The only things allowing the Horde to win some games are: 1) Tons of AFKers on both sides and 2) The Vanndar single pull. Pre-TBC when the average amount of AFKers per game was ~5, the single pull had absolutely no effect on wins. While grinding HWL gear, I literally went on a 280-35 streak before I had to delete my addon folder and reset.
I'm really concerned about the fix to the single pull since I don't think they'll be able to completely balance the massive advantages the Alliance has. So far, I'd say the absurd amount of AFKers on both sides work to the advantage of the Horde because that's a lot less people we have to fight on our way to Stormpike.
I wont post it, you can PM me for it if you really want to test, but you can evade bug the WMs with Drek, i've done up to 3, never while the others went and killed Drek, but it made a 4 pull doable.
I'll be interested to see what happens when they 'fix' the AFKing, because my main problem with the alliance 'chokepoint' as an alliance player is that being the bridge, when you lose SP and die defending it, you spawn in the cave and now have to ride through the horde to defend said choke point. However ther're saying that they're making you spawn in the base before you spawn in the cave, and i personally think this will actually make the bridge choke point stronger for alliance.
05/16/07, 4:06 PM
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