The official Blizzard DOTA has a pretty simple mechanic with escort NPCs -- starts in the middle, moves towards the base of the team with the most players within X radius. Same mechanic as capping towers but with no grey area in the center. This would fit quite smoothly into the 100v100 mass combat thing. Only problem is that the losing team has to run further and further which makes the first fracas much more decisive than any others. Can be solved any number of ways, AV-style graveyard lines being one of them, teleports being another.

Survivor.

Each person in your team matches up 1 v 1, winner stays on. Have say 3 per side, a time limit on each match of say. 2-3mins. 10 seconds to drink/rebuff between games. No consumeables, only vendor bought food/water. Each player can choose their desired timing, if 2 choose the same slot it is randomed for who goes where.



Or

King of the Castle
Central keep, 2 or even 4 teams attempt to sieze it. Once you tag the flag within, your guards respawn in a minute after and you go on the defensive, others attack. guards should be weak, more as a warning system (except guards near the flag, they should be beasts.)

Basically on offence you need to scale the walls, use various tunnels etc to invade, kill the flag guards and cap/hold the flag. On Defence you will be seeing warnings in the localDef channel from specific guards:

Tunnel guard is under attack.
Tunnel guard is under attack.
Tunnel guard is under attack.
Tunnel guard is under attack.
West wall guard is under attack.

That way you know the tunnel has a larger group of people compared to the west wall.


Maybe a flat bonus for capping the central flag of 50 honor.

You could also have 4 mini guard towers on the corner of the main keep. Each one has some sort of siege weapon on it. If it is 2 teams of 15, it would be impossible to hold all 4 minitowers as well as the central keep, so the attackers could always cap one of those to rain fiery death upon the main keep defenders.

Have 2 10minute games, first game teamA attacks and TeamB defends, second game they switch places. Winner is who got the most keep attacks/tower attacks (keep attack = 10points, tower = 3. Winner of draw games = who capped the fastest.

Maybe make it very difficult to attack the central keep and a cap = an automatic win. As I said, possibilities are endless!

Howto make it tactical
Now think about what tactics we can add. How about someone takes on the job of Mine Layer. Every 20 seconds he can talk to an NPC and get a mine that he can place anywhere outside or in the courtyard of the map (not inside a building).

Thats something which's functionality is already in WoW, it would add a small tactical element that would change each game, after all who knows where the next mine will be.


How about having the first 1minute of a game where you normally stand in your holding areas, as placement time. Where you can place archer towers to defend your keep. NPC spawn points, Healing stations, Mana stations etc.. Attackers can be choosing what to construct from a list, maybe they want to use their construction points to build a siege tower, or a couple of catapults etc.

It sounds complicated, but really it could be implemented with technology already in WoW. Siege weapons can be pets, each with their own HP and special attacks. Ground targetting is already a basic function of WoW. Mana and health regen stations are simple structures with HPs that have a health/mana regen aura. Spawn points may be hard to be dynamically coded, but you can have an option of 3 and each defender can set which one he wishes to spawn at depending on what job he has, i.e. wall defence, tunnel defence or flag defence etc.

For example, you build a goblin mortar. This brings up a pet box. In the pet window you have 2 "attacks" your pet can perform. The first is called "Mortar" it brings up a ground targetting circle which you can move through walls to hit blindly behind them. However the second option can be "spot" so you can select anyone in your raid and cast this on them. This then gives that player the ability to target your pets "Mortar" for you. So you could have a rogue sneak up to one of the 4 towers, he looks down inside the enemy keep and he places the targetting circle around a group of hidden defenders covering the doorway.

Destructable doors = mobs, high health, lots of armour. As mobs have no collision but we already have gates, such as in WSG, there can be a gate inside the mob that crumbles as it dies.

Boiling oil stations on the keep walls, simple an npc you can "use" that can ground target only below itself and a few yards to the left or right, does a nasty fire dot to players caught up in the area. Battering rams, NPC pets that follow you, do extra damage aginst door mobs. etc etc etc

Ok ok, maybe the idea wouldn't be simple.. But the basic ability to really make each game unique depending on placement of defences, which offensive structures are built (i.e. build a siege tower and storm the walls? Or build a mortar and bombard them into submission?) will really make it enjoyable and give it replay factor. something the current BGs only have if you want marks or honor.

CS has done so well because it is unique every game. Each person has a different tactic and a different way of playing. Each team creates their own tactics. WoW does not offer this, there are a few standard strategies and thats it. We all know them, all it comes down to is who is the better organised team who executes their strategy the most efficiently.


Ideas on how to execute it fairly.

Basically when you spawn you have the option of what to make. Stuff like a siege tower might take 10 people to work together to create. Stuff like a mortar might take only 2. Once you select what you wish to make, you are locked to that choice, you get a debuff that stops you helping to create anything else. This way every person contributes and you don't get screwed over by some idiot commander placing all your archer towers on the wall overlooking the cliff that the enemies cannot attack you from.

Alternatively you COULD have a commander that is voted upon, he chooses how to distribute your resources etc. This person could display a title to everyone after a certain numberof wins to show his experience etc etc.

And when you win
You get a certain amount of points. Say the game goes for 10 minutes of 15minutes per team. After the time is up, the defenders go on the attack and the attackers are now on defence.

People who in a lot of games can be awarded titles, 5 win streak = Lieutenant of BGname 10 = captain etc etc. Once BGs are matched against even skilled players, it will not be easy to get these titles!

Meh, lot of text, have fun =). I just hate the repetetiveness of our BGs. Its not tactical, its Zergical. Give us the options, you have tactical players here, you have the tools... all it needs is the time comitment to implement them.

And I should get 500 honor every time someone reads this far due to the fact I have slain them irl with my 1million dps text block!

Honestly at this point I would be happy with any BG that made me feel like it took skill to execute.

Besides that though it would be impossible to balance I would really like a 1v1 arena. Honestly I hate dealing with the coordination/bs involved in an arena team due to the fact that I play at off hours. This means that getting a good one can be nearly impossible and couple that to the fact that if they decide to play late at night I will get burned on points this is really difficult for me. Maybe to help balance the classes blizzard could create gear templates for each class like they did with the ptr's a while ago. Because honestly all complaining aside to me pvp is about skill. Getting 1 shotted when on my alt by a askhandi wielding warrior pre-bc will be just as much fun as getting destroyed by someone in BT gear post BC will be.

Because I believe this will happen again and PvE to PvP is just a completely flawed paradigm. I know I got a bit off topic but honestly even many of the people who are doing the stomping do to gears can admit this. The same thing goes for all the bg's now. I want to feel like I just outplayed someone and won because of it, not that I won do to less afk's/better zerg/getting slotted with a premade etc.

I know this is hard to do but honestly they need to do something about the stomping or just put in enough players to be an equalizer (meaning 100v100 kill fests which would be next to impossible on the servers). I've been on both sides of the coin at different points and with different toons and besides the honor and item benifits neither is all its cracked up to be and both get old fast. Also PvP shouldn't be a grind...and that is what it is.

Imho pvp should be on demand fun with some side benifits. I want to be able to log on zone in and kick butt. Anyhow even though it would be the worst example of rock paper scissors on so many levels the best and easiest way I can see to adress this is just extend the arena system to 1v1. Duels or what have you.

Edit: Put in a few words I left out.

Also: Why not bring back city raids? Make a faction wide ony type buff every time someone downs a faction leader, make it give everyone in the raid honor. Make a four part set one piece (token dropped) coming from each faction leader (balancing would have to be worked on since the only way to make this fair seeing as most times people would be to give it to everyone in the raid imo), probably the best thing I can think of is make a hero of the alliance/horde (whichever applicable faction), make it have completely righteous rewards and titles and make the only way to gain rep for it to successfully raid cities and down bosses. Also give triple honor for each kill in defense of a main city (explain it lore wise do to defending the homeland) or some other incentive to make sure these raids aren't just walking over enemies.

This would probably put a ton of stress on the servers and be hell on everyone leveling so here is what I'd say about it. Make every weekend at any time you can zone in to a BG/other realm (from yours). You will be assigned to one of your factions cities randomly. You will defend that city until you are called to "go on the offensive," this would mean you and a bunch of others would be plucked off defense and would be thrown a few hundred yards outside the an oposing factions city. You then attack it and try to take it while that cities defenders defend it. Put 100 players from each faction in each city and have 60 of them attacking an oposing city and the rest defending that city at all times.

This couldn't happen every day but having it be a weekly thing (ongoing every weekend zone in when you want zone out when you want) would be cool. I think it might be better to make it a new honor weekend sort of deal so once monthly this "event" would occur but I'd really like to be able to do this often. A lot of stuff would have to be tweaked for it to work and this is really just a spouting of ideas but honestly I've been playing wow since release and the huge zergs on thrall and such near the begining were the most fun I've had (even though they did play merry hell with the servers and all the people in the city at that time).

I honestly feel really sorry for everyone who missed out on these because they really don't happen anymore and when they do aren't really the same. What people fail to consider is this is "world of warcraft (emphasis mine), and I really signed up to do large scale world pvp. Ganking is diverting and fun (I play on a pvp server as well), but I really would like to see pvp become less of a sport and more of something relevant again.

Make it feel like you are really doing something to the other faction...not just playing a sport because honestly if I really wanted to do ctf and actually have fun there is no reason in hell I'd play wow to do it. UT/halo etc. are just way more fun. So it ends up being BG's=pvp for honor points (read gear), which isn't really why I do it. And it stops being "wow that AV was hella fun," and turns into "I need to play with 20 more matches (as long as half the team doesn't afk) to get this stupid piece of gear before I can log since it is the honor weekend". Also I think people fail to consider the fact that if BG's were actually fun so many people wouldn't afk farm them (which pisses everyone off).

Sorry for making this way longer but I guess I just had a lot to say.

I like the idea of a dueling arena, but the points would have to be much lower than the other brackets because it would be so imbalanced. You'd probably see certain classes/specs poorly represented as well in the player pool.

Normalizing gear for this would be bad, since gear discrepancies would be the only chance some classes would have against their worst match up (assuming base competency of their opponent).

Some classes are also much stronger in an arena all cooldowns situation than others, such as prep rogues... people would get annoyed at stunlock > dead fast.

I'd like to see a CoT battleground that recreates the level in The Frozen Throne where Kael'thas and The Warden's forces battle it out over a caged Illidan. Have the Alliance be the Night Elves, and Horde be the Blood Elves (like Old Hillsbrad style.) Maybe set it up as a long, rectangular map, with controllable graveyards spread intermittently throughout. Respawns always happen at the friendly graveyard closes to the cage. So that way a raid would have to split up a bit and make sure it controls graveyards near the cage's current position. This could also be used tactically, like the team attacking the cage could send forces behind enemy lines to capture the next graveyard on the route, creating a pincer situation with respawns.

First team to get Illidan to their "end" wins.

Without differences in gear, it comes down to purely the class differences. Even against a much better geared warrior, a frost mage could destroy them. The warrior stands a better chance with better gear, but its just no contest with the same gear.

Changing set bonuses to counter-balance class weaknesses wouldn't be good either imo, since the fighting would be completely different in other brackets and pvp... especially if you add luck-based set bonuses.

Also, can you please space out your text more... using one huge paragraph is difficult to read, and I'm sure many people won't bother to read it at all.

A duelling arena is a horrible idea. some classes just go well when pitted against others. Mages can splatter warriors quite nicely, rogues get the squishies, warriors get the rogues, warlocks kill everyon etc.

This game is not balanced around 1v1, this has been reiterated so many times, so why on earth would anyone want a 1v1 arena? At least a 3 man team fighting 1v1 till one team is defeated would be fun and in some way a variable, but 1v1 and then its over would just be... poor. Why would a rogue queue on a night when he faces a lot of warriors/druids? There would just be no point. It would simply come down to who your opponents are far more than your own skill.

As long as a dueling arena isnt rated, I would more than love to see it. I really miss the days where I could just ride outside of Org and get into some quality duels to test my personal skill and whatnot, whereas today there is no place to find new, skilled opponents interested in 1v1. The game may not be balanced around 1v1, but it inevitably happens, and your reaction times and counters largely define the way you play in a group when you are "covering" or avoiding another class, so it is not completely irrelevant.

Besides, if Blizzard really hated 1v1, why do you think they even implemented the "duel" option?

Thats a rather silly comment.

Every feature you implement isn't going to be something that you really wanted, sometimes you add it just to keep people happy.