Shadowed

It's more interesting then before at least, but I'm still not really impressed as was said earlier if they gave us group queuing back for a small group of people I could see it being a bit more interesting. Right now pugs seem to be spending 15-20 minutes turtling, followed by a mass 10 minute zerg where anything gained through the earlier defense is lost still too early to tell if they'll actually stick to this.

The fact that 2-3 people can make a difference is rather interesting, but not that useful when you can't easily get some of your friends into the game with you.

At least they didn't completely kill it's honor, will have to see next week during AV holiday but should still be a worth while battleground to farm all day to cap out.

 

Siddown

"Three, two, one, queue" in TS rarely fails to get 5 of us in an AV at the same time. Also, getting someone in guild chat who isn't joining to counting down in text also works. Yes, it's be great if you could join as a group, but people act like it's impossible to queue together for AV when it's incredibly easy.

 

Calantus

I said "people" insead of "everybody" for a reason. And I'm not talking about losing a game, I'm talking about losing constantly and for very little honor per time spent.

And this is not "I hate AV", this is specifically "I hate this new AV much more than the old AV". I specifically stopped replying in the other thread because I had already said all I could on the old AV. The new AV is a whole new beast with problems of its own that I think deserve attention. It's great that on some BGs people are having a great time, but on this BG we still get the race except musical towers is more common and we get less honor. Note how I used "more" and "less" to compare this AV with the old AV.

Honestly my honor/hour is not going to be affected because with the new dailies (still needs to be higher payout IMO) and WSG at least having a better payout I'll just move from AV to semi-org smaller BGs. I just want to point out the faults in new AV because they really should be looked at. There is a reason that horde are getting queues now and it's not because they had a population explosion. Alliance lost before this patch on BG9 and they kept queueing. They stop now because being the loser sucks now.

 

Shadowed

Well, given I've done a group queuing mod it's not like I haven't done it before. But if I want to play with a friend or two my goal isn't to sit there going "Okay did you get #?", "No?", "Okay, drop queue and will try again." I'd like to be able to just hit group queue and know we're all in the same match no hassle and not having to worry about being afk because a queue popped and people weren't sure if we got into the same one.

 

Howard Roark

Some guys came into our game, started yelling in some foregin language or something, capped SF, and then started rezzing and jumping off the bridge to their death over and over and over and over. We lost really quick.

They each had like 40 deaths. I guess they were timing it so they could rez, die, and be ready for the next rez right away within 30 seconds. I thought it was pretty funny but everyone else in the game was pissed.

I think they were protesting against America or something.

 

lazerpewpew

I think the enforcement relies on the times you died is a stupid idea. Hordes just don't have enough healers in a game to keep the warriors who charge into alliances, alive. Before the change, hordes rely on sheer force, don't really care about how-many-times-we-died way to force our way onward. Now that strategy, well, more like hordes mindset doesn't work anymore. The more times you die, the quicker you lose.

 

Siddown

It's quite obvious we will never agree, but I also think you are completely wrong on this. I played three games today, the first was over in 17 minutes and was a complete zergfest and it netted me 400 honor, was boring and I had under 5 HKs. The second was a smartly played game by Horde and we destroyed the Alliance by playing smart defense, capping the mines and towers and it was over in 23 minutes netting me about 750 honor and was a lot of fun. The third game we got destroyed because we'd cap towers and leave them, a Back Capping team about 5 or 6 strong would take back every tower and graveyard, I ended up back on D with about 6 other people who actually tried to defend, we lost in about 20 minutes and I got 120 bonus honor, but because out small team took out a large number of Alliance, my total honor was about 400 for the game...that's right, almost the same amount of honor we got for a Zerg win.

So I just don't buy it that you can't get honor if you lose. It's just that people now see the bonus honor and assume that is the total honor they've accumlated for the game when that is not the case. Getting 3 capped in WSG or 5 capped in AB is where you end up with under 100 honor, not AV.

 

terraak

I posted a link to your post on the EU boards here in hopes of this brilliant idea getting some more exposure.



Edit; How does one capture the mines now? Me and another warrior cleared out the mine at Frostwolf totally and nothing happened at all.

but you have PLATE ARMOR.
ITS PLATE. THAT YOU WEAR. PLATES OF METAL.

 

Calantus

Well at least it wasn't the US boards.

 

• Juice

I think the new AV is fantastic. Games are shorter, honor is about the same. No more turtle fest games lasting long enough to completely refresh each side due to /afk departures.

 

◊ Praetorian

Here's what AV needs. So simple, and it'd help so much. The objectives of, say, WSG, are self-explanatory. Everyone basically knows what to do in order to win. People might have wrong ideas of tactics, but the basic premise of "defend your flag, capture theirs" is self-evident. Not so in AV.

Shamelessly copy Team Fortress 2. When you join AV, the first thing you should see should be a popup laying out the ways of winning (Kill the opposing general; lower enemy reinforcements to 0) and the ways of losing (have your general die; have your reinforcements reach 0), and a list of the different point values of various actions. Just list how many reinforcements each tower/bunker is worth, how many Balinda/Galv are, how many player deaths are, the effect of mines, etc.

I think that one simple change would make PUG AV so, so much better.

 

◊ Anias

Funny - I was thinking that adding leaf/beserking/speed to the towers/captains would do something similiar by dragging people to them.

Math is very easy, explaining math is quite difficult.

 

tedv

While I feel like this would be a great addition, it's still just a band-aid on a fundamentally flawed game design. Ever since CTF was designed for Quake 1, there have been these problems. Stalemates weren't as bad in Quake N because it's much harder to heal damage and two skilled people can focus fire a target to death in under 5 seconds. There was also no incredibly buff "tank" class to hold the flag. And even then you had stalemates, often only broken when one side got too bored or stupid to play it safe.

The core problem is that the primary mechanic of the game has a state that does not guarantee game termination-- each team has the opposing flag, or occasionally each team has their own flag. The real solution is to allow teams to capture flags even if theirs is missing, but award more points if they capture while their flag is there. For example, you get 1 capture point if your flag is gone and 3 if it's there, and you play to 9 capture points.

Really if you think about it, this mechanic is the same approach taken in AV. It's simply providing some low value objectives that everyone can do (kill opposing players in AV, grab their flag in WSG), and some objectives with high enough value that are easy if the other side doesn't defend well (cap towers and will general in AV, kill their flag carrier in WSG).

 

Calantus

I would say I don't believe you but if I operate under that assumption there's no point even discussing things. So instead I'm going to say that game game is very rare for my situation. You could have done it, but that doesn't mean it should be held up as some standard honor gain when losing. I even went online right then and played 7 games to give the place another chance. I played it your way, telling alliance what to do, trying to make sure things were done as they were supposed to. I even played defence a few games to see what my honor would be like. Here's some screenshots to illustrate how it went:

Following a 35 minute game where I defended from beginning to end with the most alliance HKs and more than twice the next alliance's healing: http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/197...7024136sa0.jpg

Here's a screenshot of the end of a game where I'd spent time fighting over the IBT->IB->TP area all game, in the end it was ~120 honor: http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/2...7042828kp7.jpg

So far I've played ~25 new AVs and won one of them about an hour ago. That one I had to tell the alliance over and over and over to hold the damn towers. I had to yell at them to get back and stay the hell away from FW until the middle all capped. The next 2 games we lost because people didn't listen. The last game I played, the 2nd screenshot above, I was argued against by a few people who obviously have no clue how to play the new AV and alliance decided cap-and-run was much better. Here's a screeny of part of that argument that lasted the entire game (I'd gotten short by this stage): http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/7...7040510ts2.jpg



I will agree that the new AV has the potential to be good. The game we won was fun if frustrating, but it's not living up to its potential at all for the majority of games. It is the only game that was even close that I can recall. Everything else has been 300-400 ticket steamrolls and we won that with ~130 tickets in hand and both base towers about to burn. I like Gurg's idea, but really anything to get people to actually play it ike it's meant to be played instead of hoping they get it and getting my balls stomped on if they don't would be a godsend. Also, the honor gains for losing badly are too small. It's not my fault alliance lost. I'm giving good advice, I'm fighting where I'm needed, I'm by far the most active healer on alliance that game... why do I deserve 120 honor for my trouble? I could be superman and I couldn't win the game for those idiots.

 

Hellmount

Giving tons of bonus honor for getting stomped won't solve your problem. It will encourage people to play bad and get stomped because they will still get lots of honor. As long as people aren't getting lots of honor for playing the BG "wrong" they will either: a) learn to play it well and win or b) stop queuing. In the case of a) everyone wins. In the case of b) you'll have shorter queues and likely competent players (those who bothered to learn) still playing.

It may take a while for people across all the battle groups to learn the new rules for the game, but the rules themselves aren't the problem. The problem is people not understanding the objectinve. Giving out big bonus honor for the losers because they haven't learned to play the new game in the first 3 days would be very short sighted. Keeping some reasonable and significant difference between honor gained for winning vs. losing keeps the games competitive and discourages people who suck or afk.

I do agree with the notion of having the rules clearly stated at the start of the BG. It would speed up the process.

 

Angeron

The problem with option b is that is exactly what blizzard does NOT want to happen. They want more people to spend more time in game, enjoying pvp, so if their not queueing for av (and they're not queueing for wsg/eots/ab because those suck) they're not enjoying pvp.

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.

 

Hellmount

But if they reverse it to the situation of whether you try or not you get a good 400 honor for a 20 minutes PvE race no one has fun. At least in the current situation people are encouraged to PvP in AV. And once people start playing it the intended way they should get reasonable honor win or lose from HK's combined with objectives accomplished.

 

Siddown

As Hellmount just mentioned, the big difference between playing AV the zerg way and the "new" way (by defending) is the that in a decent game you'll get mimimum of 200 honor via HKs (likely higher), but this honor doesn't show up on the scoreboard at the end.

While I agree with Gurg that there should be a primer at the start of each game, and to that end some in my BG has taken to creating /y macros that they use at the beginning of the round. Another simpler option would be to just have "Est. Total Honor" instead of "Bonus Honor" on the scoreboard.

 

Maltyrius

This would be wonderful. I ran 9 AVs last night and in every one there were folks asking what reinforcements were. So, despite the info being available as you load the patch, the average casual does not have a clear idea what to do upon zone in - or at least what the changes and resulting impact(s) were. The typical response (disguised as advice) is 'follow the pack and kill'.

EDIT: and, BTW I love Lookit's idea for tweaking WSG as well. Bravo.

 

Yakout

This is very true to my experience. I've played maybe 8-10 AV as Alliance on Rampage since patch day, and have lost at least half of them. Badly. 3-4 Horders would defend Galv, which would be enough to cause a progressive wipe with respawns back to SP, where they'd be penned in by the Horde zerg at IW. The Horde could send small groups to kill Belinda (in the face of defense efforts, even) and track down Alliance stragglers past IW, while still having enough players at IW to prevent a breakout. Alliance would fail to kill Galv, at best cap one tower, and die a slow, painful death with no real hope of reversal after the Galv wipe 3 or 4 minutes in. 20 minutes for 0 - 60 bonus honor... hurts. Even with kills, I had one 200-honor game. That was a particularly unpleasant steamrolling, and I suppose I brought it on myself by not just giving up and trying to aggressively farm kills. But still.

Of course, as Sky pointed out above, a major aggravating factor is that the Alliance would be blessed with 5-10 AFK per match. And if you try to aggressively get people to report them (as Blizzard's countermeasure desperately relies on you doing), the response is too often indifference or of the "STFU noob / Wasting time on that is why we lose, lol!" variety.

 

Shadowed

I ended up breaking my honor mod so it's rather hard to check for an exact number but estimated honor from kills doesn't include diminishing returns so while it may say you got 20 per a kill it's actually going to be 20, 20 - 10%, 20 - 20%, 20 - 30% for everyone you kill more then once a day. Getting 200 honor from kills from a game is going to be fairly hard unless you're getting a new unique set of enemies each game, and you have no other Horde nearby taking a piece of it.

 

Crepusculu

It might be because she is a complete helpless maiden in distress.
It might be because EVERY melee dps has to blow their trinket out of galv's non-magical fear (with no limit cap, it gets everyone)
-> Which ends up making our melee VERY vulnerable to fear bombs, whereas defending Balinda requires what, 3+ fear bombs to break through the WotOP + trinket?
It might be because galv has a mortal strike and the tank is at some risk of dying solely by galv himself, whereas its not for Balinda. Maybe she does have a healing debuff, but I haven't seen it.
This new water elemental she gains sounds silly (I haven't seen her in 2.3 yet). What one single class on alliance is able to nullify galv's whirlwind?


It's really not strange at all.


The very reason Alliance do not defend Balinda is because it would require an equal sized group to defend, and even then alliance don't have any effective mass CC as the horde do to prevent Balinda from dying anyways. I've gone into Balinda with a guild-only coordinated attack and despite 'winning' in the end, Balinda still died regardless.

Addons
http://www.wowinterface.com/list.php?skinnerid=35267

 

Siddown

Yes, that is definitely going to be an issue if you play many games in a day, but there were over 20 AVs up last night, so there's a good chance I was facing new opponents in each of my three games because it's apparent that I was with different Horde in each game (by the different strats each group took). Resetting the DR each game would probably be a smart idea, I understand why it was originally implemented, but now with BGs going across so many realms, it's outlived it's usefulness.

Now this is completely based on a tiny sample size of two days, but off two or three AVs and an AB win a night (AB was my daily PvP quest the past two evenings), I pulled in approximately 4500 Honor. So for three hours worth of work, that's not too bad.

 

Shadowed

Don't think they should remove it, but maybe increase the honor to 40 per a kill, or make it 15-20 kills before you hit 0% diminish so you can't abuse it.

 

Glaurong

This seems like it would be problematic as your actual Honor points gained seem to be generated by a process once every 24 hours, rather than every time you kill someone. They would have to rework a lot of that system to implement this idea. Something like that same process running after a completed BG, so diminishing returns only apply for that particular match. Although they would have to track world PvP separately and everything together could add too much overhead.

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