I was thinking how Blizzard might be able to provide a way to support twinking low level BG’s as a properly supported in-game system. Currently, they allow you to turn off your XP and leave the rest up to the players to try to make it work. From what I hear, twinking is fun but there just are not enough people.
My thinking is that there needs to be a way for more people to be able to experience this form of gameplay while at the same time make it easier to find games when there are fewer players available to play.
Here is my idea (finally): Have it so all characters (at the level of the bracket or higher) can participate in low level BG’s in an XPoff queue.
The goal is to:
make twinking more accessible for more people
allow people to que for multiple brackets
and allow for freedom to choose the gear you want to use for each bracket
keep the levelling players and twinks in separate queues (these would not offer XP, but would still award honor, cosmetic rewards, titles, etc.)
How would this work?
Imagine you enter a 30-39 BG and your 120 toon is reverted to a level 39 in terms of talents and abilities and all the gear you have is also limited to gear that is level 39.
Talents and abilities is easy (it would just remove the ones you have above that level) and you could either adjust your talents at the start of the BG, or save a set of talents to be used in each bracket so it saves between BG’s
Gear would not be templated, but actual gear from that level is all that would be allowed. So, you would need a separate gear set for each bracket you wanted to play in. I would imagine this could be handled the same way we used to deal with transmog, where sets could be stored in SW/Org and you could swap them out there between games. So you would have sets for each spec and each bracket. A lot, but they could be saved just like transmog sets are saved now. This might have to be limited to X number of sets etc.
Queues Characters queue for multiple brackets at once. For example: I should be able to select 20-29, 40-49 and 50-59, and let match-making find a game for me.
I would love to hear what twinks would think of something like this, as I (someone who has not been a twink) think I would enjoy playing my 120 this way.
When I started reading this I was like “There’s no way this is going to work,” but as I read on I actually think this is a fair idea. The issue is that they would have to implement and entire system just for twinks and implementing a system even for a mainstream group of people is asking too much. Also, knowing Blizzard they’d scrap it an expansion later and implement a worse version like they do with everything.
Edit: One issue that I can see coming up is engineering enchants. Those dont require a level and only require engineering skill, which means that a higher level could get higher level enchants on lower level gear. I’m sure Blizzard could easily find a fix to this, but then again its Blizzard we’re talking about.
It is true this is asking for a lot, but I think the least we can do is talk about it. Which to be honest is all we can do haha. I am a software dev irl and I can’t even imagine the amount of work something like this would be, but I am not a Blizzard dev, so I don’t have to
This might negatively affect max level PvP. If the lower level twink rewards are similar to max level rewards, it can decrease the number of players in the max level bg queue and exacerbate any faction imbalance, thus increasing queue times.
Also, what happens when a 120 toon doesn’t have any level 39 gear? Do they just show up in the lower level bg naked?
It might, but the rewards could be similar to what they are now which is much less than at max level. Also, if people are enjoying playing low level or at max level, that is a win all around. If this takes off and becomes so much more popular than 120 BG’s, then that tells Blizzard something about their max level PvP too.
That is one solution. Heirlooms would always be available I’d imagine. Or, It could not allow you to even queue until you have gear slots filled for that bracket. Another idea would be that you get crappy merc rental gear.
I imagine Blizzard would worry about exacerbating queue times and faction imbalance. For example, the Horde take over max level bgs and the Alliance take over lower level bgs. Queue times would be bad for everyone.
It would probably be easier to just downscale whatever gear they’re currently wearing.
They need to make leveling somehow interesting and challenging again, so that everyone is more or less twinking. Make lower level professions worth investing in. One can do outside content naked nowadays, and so there is a huge gap between that and max power you can acquire in the bracket.
What incentive would 120 players have to scale themselves down to a lower bracket? Are we sure we want lower brackets to be poaching away endgame players?
I’m finding it hard to see the appeal and I think such an overhaul for such a niche community is asking too much of a company whose solution to twinking was to effectively remove it.
OP is my alt, I have three different computers and a phone and they all seem to choose a different too. Without my noticing.
Incentive would be the fun of it. I have been serial levelling shamans for fun in low level BG’s. I already have 2 at 120, what is my incentive to roll yet another? Because it is fun for me. I think it would be even more fun twinkling out a 120 at a particular bracket to play BG’s.
Also there are quite a few players that don’t play at 120 right now. No need to poach them.
Totally! Was thinking that would be a neat way to introduce it, like a time walking brawl for 20-29 bracket or something.
Well honestly with a setting like a wargame with honor added just no eng supplies or gadgets i can see this working. At this point im on my twinks dueling or wpvping in much higher lvl zones only to kill a few horde and be camped by a 120 shortly after. Lvl 70 twinks are easily able to compete against 100-110s I wonder if twinks could be matched against a certain higher lvl bracket like 70 twinks vs lvl 100 levelers. Id say that would be balanced and Id love a bg que with a challenge. (I say that because as of now twink ques just dont happen without coordination with both horde and alliance)
Scaling players down from 120 seems to me like a more convoluted way to simply introduce better scaling to low level BGs.
I appreciate a little creativity on the subject but it doesn’t sound like something that would be very popular. People grinding to 120 then watching all of their abilities turn into red question marks in these instances; talents being greyed out and macros breaking. I’d find that a little jarring and I don’t see that as being more fun that just playing in the bracket that corresponds to my character’s actual level.
One of the most interesting thing will be lvl 20 vs lvl 29 combat again and almost all your attacks on the 29 are misses and dodges.
You could stand there swinging at him for minutes and likely not threaten a kill (unless you got behind them) while almost all the lvl 29’s melee hits connect.
The thing I look forward to least (besides super long CC) is mana draining abilities. Especially lvl 36 viper sting hunters. Once you get viper sting it’s their best pvp ability. OOM the healers. GG. Pvp combat was fast paced and running out of mana was a constant threat. Priest and mages are very vulnerable to being drained.
Actually, that is not really what I was suggesting. The only ‘scaling’ that was suggested is the character being set to the max level for that bracket (ex. 39 in 30-39 BG). No scaling of gear. The gear is an important factor in this and min/maxing with legacy gear from old dungeons/raids and quests I think is part of the draw to twinking in the first place.
Also, I really don’t think XPon/XPoff works for both parties when they are combined (at least not the ways that have been tried over the years).
As for the ‘wise investment of time’, my hope is that this is always focused on making the game more fun for more people. I think right now there are quite a few people that feel like a special part of the game has been removed. It was a cool ‘game within a game’ that was created by players and I think it could be great if Blizzard put effort into it.
