I agree, but the problem is that people are allowed to leave games. I think the only way to solve this is to have an option to never fight a premade, then stop allowing people to leave battlegrounds without the deserter debuff.

I posted this on blizzard's PVP forums as well(WoW Forums -> The PVP Grind fix). I think it might be a doable fix to the PVP grind and I want to know what everyone thinks on the matter:

Good luck getting anyone to defend anything.

Good point. It would have to be reasonably balanced so that the amount of honor per kill doesn't dwarf the bonus honor.

Don't forget that the honour from kills is split between everyone nearby so most of the time you see +1 honour in the log when it's actually <1 and rounded up. Especially in AV, the majority of the honour is coming from objectives not kills.

What it really boils down to is that people should be PvPing for fun not because they necessarily have to (and hence AFKers).

Increasing kill honor makes it that much more important for everyone to be in the thick of fighting all the time to maximize their honor gains, and while that may seem to encourage people to play more and AFK less, it hurts players who go after objectives or defend. Back in the old honor system (pre 2.0), I got my druid to Warlord mostly through playing with the same team every day, and at the end of each WSG streak, I'd have significantly less honor than the rest of the team because I spent every game running flags while they killed people. People already take one for the team when they wait out a tower cap or defend a flag as it is, and making that situation worse will just turn BGs into meatgrinders, while really doing nothing to discourage AFK'ers, because all the bonus honor is still effortless and free to them regardless.

But being in the thick of things is what SHOULD be rewarded the most. That's what PvP is about. If there were less focus on objectives, people would have to PvP, and not just "stand around waiting for a flag to cap".

I'd have no issue with keeping (in AV, for example) the 3-kill bonus for capping a flag. Just give it to the people in the "kill radius". Maybe 1 kill bonus honor for the raid, but 3 for being there when it caps. Remember, you don't have to be the one defending all the time.

Agreed, no matter the solution, somebody gets screwed. But right now, almost everybody get screwed, because PvP isn't what is rewarded, so BGs are just a token/honor grind. I can also agree that not every BG is going to take the same solution to fix. But we have to start somewhere.

In my (not-so?) humble opinion, I don't care that AB & AV have map imbalances. The single reason why there is any discussion around them is because they affect how honor is gained, which is strictly via flag capping. No flags = no honor. But that is the symptom, not the problem. AFKers are a symptom, not the problem. This "rush in , cap flag, get out in 10 minutes" mentality is a symptom, not the problem. The problem is everything but that flag is worthless. So everybody is "working to the measurement", and strictly trying to cap flags (which, IMHO, is why you see 7 nubtards trying to cap the same flag at the same time, and not stopping the opposing faction from getting to the flag capper).

Put some value in something besides the flags, and watch how the games change.

Err - BGs are objective driven PVP, so honor is awarded for completing objectives. A massive meatgrinder in the field of strife is not "what PVP is all about". Honor is awarded for killing people - everything but the flag isn't worthless - it's just worth less, which is very, very different. It's significantly more rewarding to be consistently fighting and getting kill honor while other people complete objectives for you, but it's something of a prisoner's dilemma - if everyone goes and fights and no one goes after objectives, everyone is hurt. If everyone co-operates and goes after objectives, everyone gets a certain amount of honor, but the dissenters who farm kills get more, until you get to the point that you lack critical mass to accomplish the objectives. Look at WSG - people just hang out in the middle of the field and farm kills and let other people do the flag running, which will often lead to super long games because not enough people are going after the objectives.

Change the rules on how honor is earned and the habits of those who are in battlegrounds to maximize their honor will tend toward whatever is most efficient. If you give bonus "kill zone" honor, people will tend to fight in "kill zones", which will just artificially influence the strategies people play with, just like AV's optimal honor-per-hour strategies are defined by how the honor gains work there. What purpose would that serve? Again, AFKers are not deterred by the fact that their honor rate is worse, because they're putting no effort in to begin with, so any change to relative honor rates of active and inactive players isn't really going to stop them. As long as the primary goal of BGs for most people in them is to earn honor, the way they're played will be defined by those efficiencies.

Yes, people will towards whatever new win-condition goals you put in.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at -- Blizzard has implemented goals for games in an effort to not make the games a giant 10/15/40-man free-for all. Yes, sitting at a tower waiting for it to cap is pretty dull, but you could solve that by making tower defense more active (add the ability to periodically port to any tower), or by reducing the cap time from, what, four minutes? When games are often under fifteen minutes, waiting around for four ends up being a huge portion fo the entire game.

IF AV is the game that's mostly about tower/bunker capping, then that's fine, that gives people something to actually fight over, and deeper tactics than "more kills than deaths". For example: sometimes seven people trying to cap a flag is a good tactic (when you're dealing with a non-AoE class), sometimes it's dumb and one should be trying to cap while the rest hold off an attacker, and sometimes as a defender you're not actually trying to kill anyone at all, but spread damage around and hold off cappers until backup shows up. It's cool that the goals add that tactical complexity, it's a sign of good game design.

And more to your point, not everything but the flag is worthless. Depending on the game, capping mines can be important. Sometimes capping towers isn't that important, and you just need to concentrate on a good Drek pull without too many dying. Graveyard control is huge, and assaulting a graveyard requires a different tactical mindset because of guards and nearby spawns.

I just don't get what you're suggesting.

"BGs are objective driven PVP".

There is the problem. Running into an instance, right clicking on a flag (GY/Tower/Mine/Node, etc), then doing nothing for 4 minutes, then waiting for another 6 while others do the same is not PvP. Its not a battleground. Its not fun. But that is what is rewarded the most.

I want to differentiate the "end state" from the "getting there".

Take AV for example (Similarly for AB & EotS, but I exclude WSG, since I think that is so broken it should be removed from the game). A hard-fought 40-minute game where everything is owned by the opposing player, and you lose (by today's honor standard) 627 to zero. In that time, you get a max of 115 honor for player kills. On the other hand, running in, capping 3-4 flags in ten minutes 3-4 times nets ~1000 honor. (Yes, we have short queues a lot). That's a 9:1 return for never seeing a horde player, never even firing a shot or getting off a heal. That is strictly from objectives. That is what is making BGs so boring. (granted 115 isn't worthless, but it sure is a lot less that 1000).

Having small teams cap objectives should be rewarded. But Reward that team, not the whole BG. Reward them for the fight to cap it. Reward the side who capped the most objectives by a small bonus honor for winning the BG. Reward the losing side for putting up a fight. This sums is up perfectly:

But currently, that not the state of BGs. BGs are the exact opposite. Less reward for constantly fighting, more reward for doing nothing but right-clicking on a flag every 10 minutes. If you are going to lose an AV/AB/EotS/WSG game, let the opposition 12/5/4/3 cap, get your token, and get out.


Not true. We have rewarded those who fight. We have rewarded those who capped the objective. We have rewarded effort, instead of punishing it. That's what I'm getting at.

Actually, from a personal standpoint, you're rewarded the most by sitting around fighting people while your teammates complete objectives. Let's look at WSG since in my opinion this is the worst battleground for this type of thing. I've played in so many games now where me and one other person will manage to get the flag back to our base (barely) and then look at the map and notice everyone else on the team in the middle of the field. Jump ahead 2 minutes, same thing except some are at the GY because they died. Jump ahead 5 minutes, same thing. Jump ahead 10 minutes, same thing. This is ultimately why the current BGs are so frustrating and therefore unfun for people who actually want to win.

Simple solution: -50% honor for kills > 50 yds from an objective, +50% honor for kills near an objective.

Not only does this solve the problem with worthless people fighting in the middle of nowhere, this makes defending a lot less boring simply because it brings all the action to the objectives (where it should have been in the first place).

This is the exact reason why I tripple que all 3 smaller BG's, if I see a premade, the next bg I go. I don't know about your battle group, but on mine Pug V Premade isn't even close to competition. Sure you'll get one premade out of 10 that plays horrible and could likely be beaten by the pug, but the simple fact of a pre-organized raid (most on vent) simply means the PuG is going to be absolutely steam rolled.

That is not fun, at all. If you're going to change it, change it that Premade meets premade, garanteed, if you want to que premade, you don't get a game until you're matched with another premade. Thus leaving the BG for the simple reason of 'Oh it's a premade we can't steamroll 'em in 5 minutes' option is no longer available. This would also have to be implinmented for the rated matches, premades fight for a rating in WSG for the week which nets X additional honour for the week, while queing pug will just get you a game like it is currently.

There's a good possibility I was wrong...

Last weekend I ground out 31 WSG tokens, and racked up over 7K honor (estimated). The next day, I had actually only earned 6250. So I'm really starting to believe taking out DR won't help.

Is the problem that there is too much or too good gear (or too much good gear) to be purchased with honor? The honor costs seem (to me) slightly too high, but are reasonable considering how hard it is to get equivalent gear via raiding.

With the release of S2 gear into the honor system with patch 2.4, we're now forcing another honor gear upgrade cycle, which I seriously think is going to harm BGs even more. Now its even BETTER gear, for the same cost. Now more people will go to BGs because of the gear, and a lot of people with S1 gear will go thru the upgrade cycle again. Thus you create another round of grinding.

Is the solution to remove the Arena gear from the Honor system? Arenas aren't hard; it is just hard to get a high rating without the right gear and coordination. So, why not stratify the Arena gear. Make any S4 arena gear require 1700 (for example) rating. S3 1500, S2 1200, and S1 zero rating. Reduce the cost for Prior season gear. Maybe S1 chest is 1200K Arena Points, weapons 1500, etc. Put the BG Blue gear back in the honor system, that way you can get a full set by heading to BGs. (Personally, I'd reduce the cost of blue BG gear to lower the barrier to entry, and cut the honor grind).

Pros: You make people arena for their gear (it is arena gear after all). You make the lower gear accessible to people with lower ratings, if they get their rating up, they buy better gear. You cut the total honor requirement for BGs from 170K to 50K, and hack into the token requirements, which might help with the "I'm only here for the token" mentality. You change the 'time spent' requirement to a team-earned requirement for S1+ gear.

Cons: You have to form a group at 40g per team player. I don't see this as an issue, since you can earn that in a week doing the cooking quest. It also floods the Arena system with more teams. But because the rating system matches you with equivalent-rated teams, this is only a problem for new teams, which start at 1500 rating.

arena rating affecting the battle you join? this would be awesome imo, high rating often means good gear (prettymuch always) i think it would make it much better especially for the undergeared 70's who just dinged and want to gear without being farmed by some full s3 premade, because well, thats the kinda thing that makes it not fun, makes people afk out in large numbers and causes one of those terribad games where its every man for themself, waiting to either lose or for the next bg to pop.

Compared to Guild Wars the PvP in WoW is really a huge, huge grind and time sink. In Guild Wars it is even possible to create a high level PvP-only character at the character creation screen. The focus in Guild Wars is very much on PvP itself, the team play, your builds and your skill at playing your toon. It's not about grinding serveral hours to weeks to get your gear just in order to be able to start with competitive PvP. Without the right gear in WoW you will get destroyed absolutely. And it's not fun for us newcomers to get torn into pieces by full S3 DPS classes.
And I wonder whether it's already too late for undergeared newcomers? The gear gap is huge. Is it possible to close the gap? I doubt it. So where's the motivitation and the fun for newcomers to play competitive PvP? I can tell you it is not fun to get destroyed by S3 teams game after game. I mean why aren't those teams playing in high rating? Why do we, with blues and S1, have to face those gladiators in lower ranking? What's the point with rating at all?

My point exactly. i think a rating system would go very well with the 2.4 removal of DR, otherwise theres gonna be a serious farm fest from the premades. perhaps even a queing system that ques ppl via gear EG- "staff item lvl +armor item lvls etc = Xitem rating" the higher the item lvl of yourself OR your grp que median lvl, the more advanced your opponents will be. would also bring a premade skill factor / teamwork into the equation of premading because atm its prettymuch a given win in AB/WSG vs a pug because of gear alone (noone brings anyone in all greens/blues with 12(!) resil to a premade).

Well said, Est. I wish there was some kind of avarage raid gear (premade) rating. This way fresh 70ies could fight fresh 70ies and epics geared players could fight epic geared fighters. If this was too complicated it would help to only let premades play against premades. Where premade is defined as: all players from the same realm. The typicall advantages of a premade over a PuG are teamspeak, equipment and role selection (such as healers).
I remember the last WSG weekend too well. After playing 10 games in a row against premades I finally gave up ;-)

I pretty much agree on the necessity of some kind of group matching or rating system for BGs. I recently did the honour grind for my little Ret-Pladin chick which has now almost complete Vindicators/S1 and the gear difference is just huge, and running around in green/blues in the BGs is no fun at all. I usually tried to stick behind the zerg in AV and do what I can to support the healers there by stunning/BoPing and so on. The lack of some entry-level PvP gear is just huge.

Maybe in 2.4. the PvP-Items from Rep vendors will do something to make this a little better - I hope they put them on a reasonable rep level to make it easier for people to get into PvPing.

imo the rate at which pvpers get gear is Imba (i only pvp) people allways get defensive when i state this but for me i enjoy pvping to KILL ALLIANCE i could care less about the gear all i want is them to leave heart broken and embarrassed i took a 5 month break from this game and came back i had 20 resilience within 3 weeks im close to 300 and i havent even played much and imo thats just not fun it feels like you dont have to work for it at all just grind

anyway this is a quote from one of my post in the wow forums

Epiphany

Arg battlegrounds... Av in particular. At 51-60 at least as horde, its actually pretty fun. Theres no angry pvp kiddie screaming to capture X bunker or X tower because "OMG NEED MAH HONOR". Its just the old style zerg back and forth, and its fun as hell. Well, except for downtime and the amount of water or food you can go through. I am atm sick of AV and dont want to go anywhere near it because its so boring, and needs and innovative change to come along.
Whats the point in my posting if im not adding anything worthwhile? well, let me say.

Does anyone remember the notes prior to the release of AV? and about all the huge things you can do in there. How about the original idea for being able to do a quest and have the syndicate fighting with you? or being able to control a shredder and go ape-shit on the opposing team? as far as im aware none of that made it to live, or if it did a brief period of time. What about things like the ice lord and ivus? ichman or jetzor throwing bombs at people? no one ever bothers with it. Soooooo... what do we do? we add more stuff like that into AV. We add new BGs with NEW, i repeat to the dev team NEW objectives, not arathi gulch in space please. So, we need to make it easier and faster, and actually beneficial to go about getting these things.
Perhaps add gates that are impossible to bypass until certain requirements are met? for example the opportunity to increase your reinforcements via syndicate or some other means, and you need a certain number of troops in order to lay siege to a battlement that is inhibiting your progress to the general.

just my thoughts.

Shredders did exist in game for a while. I remember gathering the mats to get them made.

The way AV is done in my BG, we barely have a chance to do any of the extra's like Ice Lord and Ivus. That would require our defense to turn in items and escourt the Druids past the enemy offense. Harder still would be the wing-riders surviving to get back to base.

The hard part is that the Dev team doesn't want to lose usage of the current content. I would also hope that their better Dev members are working on the expansion and the patch. Sadly I'm fairly sure that BG issues are a 2nd tier project, instead of their 1st concern.


I liked some of the ideas put up by The Omen

I'd love to be able to get the rank titles again. Even new ranked titles. Currently the only joy I have is taking my warlock through and trying to get the Justicar title. He's also right, right now there is basically little reason to do World PvP beyond the buff for whatever boss you're on, depending on if it applies or not to that zone. I'm hoping to get a compilation of thought out solutions together and start a new thread to keep track of it one of these days.

thanks bro good to see something constructive