** Snipped first part ** Another fix: Balance the honor gain more toward front-loading again
Make towers and objectives not all-or-nothing, but gradient-wise. Give the towers some sort of HP total, rather than just make them timed. For example, each tower has a 'power core' that has N health and no armor. It does not regenerate normally (or if it does, it does so slowly). Destroying the power core will destroy the tower. The power core can be healed through normal spells and such. This takes away the 'ninja' sort of gameplay, and instead makes the towers really concentrated. You can force a tower down if you kill it fast enough, and you can actually make progress towards destroying it even if your offense wipes and comes back.
Part of what makes EoTS a horrible battleground is the fact that the only way you can completely capture something for your team is by zerging them down which basically makes any form of defense useless when you can run around as a large group and capture everything, then go defend one of your nodes as soon as you see it turn neutral.
I'd much rather see AV mirrored for both factions in terms of map design and NPCs, but given that would require redoing all of the tower/bunker graphics, the general and captains rooms and so on I doubt will ever see that happen.
Maybe they could go for some cheesy kind of reason to explain away why the horde had taken over the alliance bases and vice versa, it wouldn't be the first time blizzard went down this route to shoehorn something into the game.
Part of what makes EoTS a horrible battleground is the fact that the only way you can completely capture something for your team is by zerging them down which basically makes any form of defense useless when you can run around as a large group and capture everything, then go defend one of your nodes as soon as you see it turn neutral.
I'd much rather see AV mirrored for both factions in terms of map design and NPCs, but given that would require redoing all of the tower/bunker graphics, the general and captains rooms and so on I doubt will ever see that happen.
Mirroring the map would require an entire map recreation, which would lead to geometry problems, and such.
Zerging sort of works, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The change I suggested actually doesn't involve just standing there; it involves the decisions you have to make between killing the power core, or killing the defenders. The defenders can actually either kill the attackers, or heal the power core.
It makes it more of a combined effort as well - the more people you have, the faster you can accomplish the objectives. Remember, the stated goal is to try to balance the honor distribution so that it happens sooner, rather than later. If an offensive force can demolish a tower quickly, so much the better. I'm not sure why you'd think it's a bad thing.
Part of what makes EoTS a horrible battleground is the fact that the only way you can completely capture something for your team is by zerging them down which basically makes any form of defense useless when you can run around as a large group and capture everything, then go defend one of your nodes as soon as you see it turn neutral.
I'd much rather see AV mirrored for both factions in terms of map design and NPCs, but given that would require redoing all of the tower/bunker graphics, the general and captains rooms and so on I doubt will ever see that happen.
The zerging strategy doesn't really work that reliably, at least not when I play against it. The way to beat the zerg is to defend with a token force at every point to slow them down. Then when they hit a new point you DON'T send more defenders and instead go grab back the point they just left.
Mirroring the map would require an entire map recreation, which would lead to geometry problems, and such.
Zerging sort of works, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The change I suggested actually doesn't involve just standing there; it involves the decisions you have to make between killing the power core, or killing the defenders. The defenders can actually either kill the attackers, or heal the power core.
It makes it more of a combined effort as well - the more people you have, the faster you can accomplish the objectives. Remember, the stated goal is to try to balance the honor distribution so that it happens sooner, rather than later. If an offensive force can demolish a tower quickly, so much the better. I'm not sure why you'd think it's a bad thing.
It's a fine line between giving them too much HP so it's easy to defend, or too little so a zerg instantly takes them out. You have to give some form of alert when they start getting attacked which means you can no longer ninja cap with one person, or even with 2-3 people because all it would take is one or two healers to counter the damage done by those people. At least in a turtle a few people can turn the game around by capturing a bunker to take that last 75 reinforcements and turn it from a loss to a win, but with requiring a tower to actually be "killed" it becomes far harder rather then making it so you capture it and then stall for the next 4 minutes.
Same goes for AB and WSG, both of those can be turned around by one or two people if you're not careful with guarding.
Originally Posted by Calantus
The zerging strategy doesn't really work that reliably, at least not when I play against it. The way to beat the zerg is to defend with a token force at every point to slow them down. Then when they hit a new point you DON'T send more defenders and instead go grab back the point they just left.
You still can't take something solo, or really even with 2 people. It takes way to long for it to actually be captured by your faction so unless the other team is paying zero attention, you can easily kill them before it goes too far neutral.
You still can't take something solo, or really even with 2 people. It takes way to long for it to actually be captured by your faction so unless the other team is paying no attention you can easily kill them before it goes too far neutral.
Yeah I know, I get a group to come with me. The trick is to move out as soon as the zerg moves out. Say you're at MT and the zerg is at DR, well when they move south towards BT that's when you move off to DR to take it back. I may have just never come across a good zerg but in my experience the only midgame strategy that genuinely works and only fails if you're outmatched is to take and hold 2 nodes and constantly try for a third. Once you have the third put token pressure on the fourth while still leaving a couple defenders at each node.
As far as AV towers, I'd like to see them become like EoTS nodes but they burn once you've fully capped them. Personally I hate how all the owners of the tower need to do is get 10 seconds on the flag within the 4-5 minutes it's been contested in order to undo everything. You can hardly ever reinforce a tower currently because either the defenders are enough to hold or the tower falls before you get there.
The Alliance boycott of AV has another side effect. Now we lose players in other Battlegrounds because as soon as AV pops (90 minute wait) people leave and Alliance win because 1/3 of the battleground just left for AV.
All that boycotting has done is that now in AV people will never surrender or let the alliance win because if anyone queues for 90 minutes there's no way you are queuing that long to lose.
As far as AV towers, I'd like to see them become like EoTS nodes but they burn once you've fully capped them. Personally I hate how all the owners of the tower need to do is get 10 seconds on the flag within the 4-5 minutes it's been contested in order to undo everything. You can hardly ever reinforce a tower currently because either the defenders are enough to hold or the tower falls before you get there.
Not sure if it’s technically possible, but having an EoTS style cap with no/reduced ability to regenerate as defence seems like a good idea. Organized defence should be encouraged, but the current AV seems to struggle with teams being "locked out" by the defence, particularly at spgy or ibgy. If the defence has 2-1 numbers they should have little issue defending, but if they are 1-3 defending, but can fight 3 times as fast/often (due to offense having to travel to the location) the current system, and even a "fully defend-able EoTS flag" allow for total lockout.
Another possible solution that could be worked into things is tying graveyard respawning into the local towers. The map is not symmetrical, but if after tower point is captured, why not makes alliance respawn at a slower rate at spgy? Another choice would be to set a maximum reinforcement amount for each defensive gy, after which point it goes "neutral", but un-cappable for the defence.
Another possible solution that could be worked into things is tying graveyard respawning into the local towers. The map is not symmetrical, but if after tower point is captured, why not makes alliance respawn at a slower rate at spgy? Another choice would be to set a maximum reinforcement amount for each defensive gy, after which point it goes "neutral", but un-cappable for the defence.
While I don't know how much this would contribute to making AV better, I absolutely love your idea of GY spawnrates linked to tower progress. Expanding this further: SP/FW gy spawnrate is slowed as soon as Icewing/TP is destroyed, Similarly, destroying IB tower/sh bunker cause ib gy/sh gy to rez every ~10 seconds instead of 30. I disagree with the second suggestion, making things "uncappable" for the defense serves only to frustrate and removes actual strategy (5-man ninja recap squad!) from the game.
Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.
All that boycotting has done is that now in AV people will never surrender or let the alliance win because if anyone queues for 90 minutes there's no way you are queuing that long to lose.
When talking of boycotting its important to remember that its not really a organised movement or people having discussions. Its simply people deciding after a few back to back AV no/low honor losses that AV is no longer either fun or a good place to earn honor and simply not queueing. If you look back in this thead you wil see that even when the queue was 20 mins Horde had allready adopted that attitude.
I suspect we are approaching the end point where the majority of the alliance playing are simply playing for tokens and its in their best interest to lose as fast as possible.
Slightly less quick and dirty fix: Move Stonehearth Bunker, replace Balinda with her goth cousin Malinda the Warlock.
Galvanger is tough because he fears, drops threat on the tank and hits like a truck. Balinda's cousin Malinda could easily make herself tougher, with fear, death coil, aoe corruption, etc. Move Stonehearth bunker so that it's easier for the alliance to reach it before the Horde, and you've got something. Perhaps swap the bunker's position with some of those dwarf houses in the side of the mountain that are only there for show.
I think it'd be funnier if they just did something even simplier. Replace Balinda and Galvanger with... Balindo and Galvangera, and just swap their skillsets. Alliance could probably get at least the captain kill, and it'd be funny to see Horde wiping to Balindo.
Or just replace her with the Shade of Aran.
Well, that wouldn't actually solve any of the problems at this point. Are the queues really 90 minutes for horde now? Like Ngita said, I don't actually know of any active boycott. It's just we queue into a game, join, play for 20-40 minutes, get like 30 honor from kills, and 0 bonus honor. And then you see 20 names flagged in the cave and wonder why even bother. At least you can be guaranteed that there'll be a free 600 honor staring you in the face whenever the queue eventually pops though, at least until those cave jumpers and wowgliders figure out that botting AV isn't getting them honor anymore.
I don't know what will do it, but it's going to take a pretty drastic change for AV to ever return to any semblance of normality at this point. There's just no way anyone's going to queue up for a 0 honor 40 minute game with 20 botters unless they significantly change the game again.
I don't know what will do it, but it's going to take a pretty drastic change for AV to ever return to any semblance of normality at this point. There's just no way anyone's going to queue up for a 0 honor 40 minute game with 20 botters unless they significantly change the game again.
Before, the problem was that there was too much honor being spread around, to the point that winning and losing didn't matter as much as the number of games played.
Now the game is skewed the other way; winning is too lucrative, and losing isn't lucrative enough. There's no way to affect human nature; players will go where the honor is.
What they need to do is skew it back toward being more spread around, but probably less than 2.2's state. If there was some easier method for the losing team to earn bonus honor (at least as much honor per hour as other BGs), then it would heavily encourage more traffic to Alterac Valley. Thus, for example, instead of needing to spread the offense out to hold towers and graveyards, maybe only require them to hold graveyards, while towers can be destroyed faster.
Blizzard doesn't care about balance in AV, IMO is all about win ratio.
If Horde win ratio > 60% do changes to nerf Horde gameplay
If Alliance win ratio > 60% do changes to nerf Alliance gameplay
If tomorrow all skilled people joins horde and left the alliance, the next week/month the nerf bat will pwn horde until they got the 50-60% ratio again.
Letting the skilled people own the unskilled people is the fastest way to loose customers in online games.
Plain and simple, Blizzard way of life. In the other battlegrounds alliance usually get pwned hard, but the low player cap and the join as group option favours the premades, wich happens much more often in alliance side than in horde side.
Now the game is skewed the other way; winning is too lucrative, and losing isn't lucrative enough. There's no way to affect human nature; players will go where the honor is.
I have yet to see screenies of alliance winning 600-0.
I have seen alliance wins, but those tend to be 350-250 in honour gains.
Clearly there's something wrong if there's that great an imbalance between gains from the same outcome (ie. winning a game of AV).
I suspect that having this remedied will likely fix the AV problem at the same time.
Now the game is skewed the other way; winning is too lucrative, and losing isn't lucrative enough. There's no way to affect human nature; players will go where the honor is.
From what I've seen, when Horde win, it's 600(H)-0(A) honor. When Alliance win, it's 350(A)-250(H) honor.
So it's more like for Horde, winning is way too lucrative, and losing is about the same as pre 2.3.
For Alliance, winning is like losing pre 2.3, and losing gives you nothing.
So for Alliance, even winning is not lucrative enough.
I really did enjoy AV before. A mix of PVE and PVP, capping and defending towers, NPCs, and so on... it was fun for me. Now sacrificing yourself to delay a tower capture or stall a small group of enemies only hurts your team. On top of this, to win now, I don't get to cap any towers, I don't get to fight any NPCs(none are left!), it's just a zerg rush to Drek and hope we beat him down before Vann dies. There's just no life left in AV now.
Now add on the fact that winning gives pre 2.3 losing honor, losing gives 0 honor, and alliance loses far too much now. It's not only a problem with honor, it's a problem with the fundamental system of AV now. Maybe I'm alone in these thoughts, maybe I'm not, but it will take more than just evening out the honor for me to go back into that BG. I don't even bother with it if it pops up as the BG daily at this point.
What they need to do is skew it back toward being more spread around, but probably less than 2.2's state. If there was some easier method for the losing team to earn bonus honor (at least as much honor per hour as other BGs), then it would heavily encourage more traffic to Alterac Valley. Thus, for example, instead of needing to spread the offense out to hold towers and graveyards, maybe only require them to hold graveyards, while towers can be destroyed faster.
Brilliant ! It all makes sense. Give the team with the most 0 damage/0 healing players bonus honor ! Then no-one would want to fight at all and 3 on each side could have a little race to capture all the towers and two shot a newly nerfed end boss. The advantage swings back to the alliance due to our l33t botting skills.
One personal observation is that due to the imbalances I have seen the Horde is building thier honor at a much greater rate than the Alliance and gearing up a lot quicker. When the Horde team can pick up 600 or more honor and I get 50 it doesnt take more than third grade math to see it is going to take me a lot longer time to gear up. This of course means that when ever I face up to a Horde in face to face combat I am likely to be drastically out geared.
What? No. Queues are literally 2 hours. You can play 5 or 6 games in that time and end up with the same amount of honor for losing all of them that horde do for winning one.
Brilliant ! It all makes sense. Give the team with the most 0 damage/0 healing players bonus honor ! Then no-one would want to fight at all and 3 on each side could have a little race to capture all the towers and two shot a newly nerfed end boss. The advantage swings back to the alliance due to our l33t botting skills.
Sarcasm aside, if bonus honor was awarded at the end of the match based on team damage and healing totals (i.e. 1 point per X points of team total damage, 1 point per Y points of team total healing), it would help alleviate the problem with long games being worth a lot less than short ones.
It would take some playing around with the numbers to make the damage/heal honor not dwarf the bonus honor to the point where people just want to destroy each other in the fields of strife for 40 minutes though.
Does the scoreboard count overhealing? You wouldn't want it to be possible for people to stand around healing themselves all game to drive up the score.
Sarcasm aside, if bonus honor was awarded at the end of the match based on team damage and healing totals (i.e. 1 point per X points of team total damage, 1 point per Y points of team total healing), it would help alleviate the problem with long games being worth a lot less than short ones.
It would take some playing around with the numbers to make the damage/heal honor not dwarf the bonus honor to the point where people just want to destroy each other in the fields of strife for 40 minutes though.
Does the scoreboard count overhealing? You wouldn't want it to be possible for people to stand around healing themselves all game to drive up the score.
Find high place, jump off, heal self, repeat or find a Warlock and spam Hellfire and heal him. Or go into the mines with an AE class and kill everything there. Over healing doesn't show up on the score board, but as I pointed out it doesn't really make a difference.
The only way you can really have fair awarding of honor for longer games is giving it at every X minutes passed since an AV can't really last beyond 40-60 minutes anyway, but that still requires balancing so you don't have people turtling for the entire match.
One major problem though is if they change Balinda and move that tower, then the map goes to Alliance favored again real quickly. Maybe if they moved Stonehearth to right where the alliance past Balinda and then move Icewing north a little could help alleviate some of the issues. They would also need to remove some of the glaring problems with the Horde Base such as being able to jump the wall, make it so you cannot cap frostwolf relief hut from below.
Archers should be able to shoot inwards on the horde towers and either remove or drastically reduce the health on some of those alliance base NPCs. Its kinda ridiculous that a non-elite mob has 3 times the hit points as an elite one 1 level higher 30 yards away. That and either widen or shorten that damned bridge and I can see the map being balanced.
But I am not seeing just moving the towers and buffing Balinda as fixing a map imbalance.
From what I've seen, when Horde win, it's 600(H)-0(A) honor. When Alliance win, it's 350(A)-250(H) honor.
So it's more like for Horde, winning is way too lucrative, and losing is about the same as pre 2.3.
For Alliance, winning is like losing pre 2.3, and losing gives you nothing.
So for Alliance, even winning is not lucrative enough.
I really did enjoy AV before. A mix of PVE and PVP, capping and defending towers, NPCs, and so on... it was fun for me. Now sacrificing yourself to delay a tower capture or stall a small group of enemies only hurts your team. On top of this, to win now, I don't get to cap any towers, I don't get to fight any NPCs(none are left!), it's just a zerg rush to Drek and hope we beat him down before Vann dies. There's just no life left in AV now.
Now add on the fact that winning gives pre 2.3 losing honor, losing gives 0 honor, and alliance loses far too much now. It's not only a problem with honor, it's a problem with the fundamental system of AV now. Maybe I'm alone in these thoughts, maybe I'm not, but it will take more than just evening out the honor for me to go back into that BG. I don't even bother with it if it pops up as the BG daily at this point.
I seriously believe that happens one out of less than a thousand. I've done quite some av's lately, and the win/loss ratio is more or less 50/50, and the allies tend to loose with the same amount as we do.
It's a long thread I know so I'm not going to tell you to go read it and instead I'll tell you that the person you're replying to is talking specifically about stormstrike and bloodlust where the above happens every game.
Please reread the thread Morghorf. You apparently have missed some points. On battlegroups 5 and 9 (stormstrike and bloodlust, probably the two most competitive PVP BGs around) horde both win 95%+ of the time and now have over 1 hour queues. The reason? Because horde have seized on map imbalances in the middle that favor their side massively. They stack 20 defenders at IB GY and the Galv area and they crush the alliance offence before it ever gets off the ground. Alliance either is pushed back to SHGY and loses the bunker and Balinda or they are pushed back further and lose a slow reinforcement battle between SP and SH where they get none of their objectives ever captured. They get no bonus honor and alliance have now stopped queuing there.
If you are playing on a different BG (which you and I both are) than horde likely plays the rush strategy just like alliance do. We both rush, we both take some objectives and we both get honor. Which is good for us, because alliance is still queuing and we can both get honor. But on Stormstrike and Bloodlust this is not the case at all. Over an hour long queues with horde winning well over 90% of the games, and virtually all their wins coming with alliance getting 0 bonus honor. For alliance on those BGs AV is dead.
Sarcasm aside, if bonus honor was awarded at the end of the match based on team damage and healing totals (i.e. 1 point per X points of team total damage, 1 point per Y points of team total healing), it would help alleviate the problem with long games being worth a lot less than short ones.
It would take some playing around with the numbers to make the damage/heal honor not dwarf the bonus honor to the point where people just want to destroy each other in the fields of strife for 40 minutes though.
Does the scoreboard count overhealing? You wouldn't want it to be possible for people to stand around healing themselves all game to drive up the score.
What is wrong with mass pvp for hours? I would relish a miniature war on the field of strife. Adding in the mechanic of gathering summon mats and the fear of playing retardedly via Reinforcements, I really like this idea.
Also, you could make certain mobs damage done by/to them not count. Like all the harpies, wolves, goats, and kobolds just wouldn't give honor. Seeing as you already get a reward for those things it wouldn't be too much of an issue.
What is wrong with mass pvp for hours? I would relish a miniature war on the field of strife. Adding in the mechanic of gathering summon mats and the fear of playing retardedly via Reinforcements, I really like this idea.
Also, you could make certain mobs damage done by/to them not count. Like all the harpies, wolves, goats, and kobolds just wouldn't give honor. Seeing as you already get a reward for those things it wouldn't be too much of an issue.
Mass PvP would be interesting if it was actual groups, but spending 2-3 hours killing people in a PuG really isn't that fun. If you orientated it towards more of an arena type of system but with battlegrounds it could possibly be interesting.
12/17/07, 8:42 PM
