It used to be that it was nearly impossible to fully rush Van or Derek in preBIS gear.
We’re currently rushing AV games in 3 minutes max inside the first week of P4.
What, then, is the point for all of the development that was made to the rest of the HUGE battleground map?
In terms of development waste, this is a glaring example. Every NPC, every tower, every quest and every script is entirely wasted in AV.
Return the ruleset to emphasizing these functions, and we may have a chance of having a fun version of AV.
Here are some thoughts:
Re-balance the reputation and honor values for certain events in AV.
Towers, lieutenants, and captains should be more competitive in value compared to a simple win.
Adjust the disadvantage of fighting Derek or Van with towers up. Currently, we just tank everything. Instead, that should be nearly impossible, because the NPCs are far too powerful with marshals or warmasters around.
- Previous solutions in Ashenvale involved making the final boss immune so long as the sub-bosses were alive. I think immune is a step too far, so making them impossibly powerful would be more interesting.
After the above changes, make excessively long games less painful by maintaining steady honor and rep rewards throughout the game. Clearly the changes listed here would make for some fairly long games, which would be difficult to stomach for many if they weren’t maintaining a certain honor and rep per hour.
If there is limited mitigation to long games, then reinforcement systems should be considered. Despite people speaking nostalgically about 14 hour games from the past, the truth is no one actually enjoys those.
Eliminate honor diminishing returns throughout all of SOD (and counter the negative effect by adding a time limit to WSG)
Fix the large number of exploits in AV. Both sides have methods to kite war masters, with the Alliance solution being way more effective.
Standardize towers in AV by ensuring no tower can be capped out of line of sight. Do this by adjusting the positions of the bowmen so they’re more effectively guarding their flag. Every horde tower in AV can be capped without fighting a single guard (not including lieutenants) by standing slightly out of their line of sight. Nearly every alliance tower requires you kill at least one bowman.
Let us fly on gryphons/bats and throw bombs throughout AV. Not a flying mount, just a pre-recorded flight path. Limit the number of flights that can be active.
Buff the summon bosses, and reduce the number of people required to summon them. The materials can stay the same. The AI needs to be improved, and the idle time before patrol reduced. These bosses should be dead lock breakers. Reduce their ability to be kited.
Add forward operating squads who appear five minutes into a game on the edge of the Field of Strife who allow you to turn in materials collected throughout the game. You can turn them in here, or at their original locations at your base.
Need to make them immune my man… Humans are amazingly stubborn and will take everything as a challenge (see our history on this planet) and we will surprise you some of the things we will come up with. By making the bosses “Immune” you make the task impossible and they will not even try.
But I agree with your right up, AV needs to be more about playing the objectives. No idea why these Developers do not see that.
The problem is not AV in it self. It is just we that have become insanly stronger than you are supposed to be in classic and the devs have not tuned the BGs NPCs like they done with dungeon NPCs. So now we can rush with trash gear because our gear and stats are like tier 1 billion in Vanilla.
Wrong, we did the same crap in classic if we had a tank that was geared out. We would jus rush right in with all the towers up and he would tank all and we would burn the boss down…
That was YEARS ago, before any of this SOM/SOM or anything like that.
No one (most players) wants to play 2 hour long AVs.
Developers will not nerf the only toons they’re actually enjoy playing.
There is going to be zero effort making changes into AV. The most and the very most and laziest thing the devs might do is bump up the HP pools on some or all of the elites. That’s about all you’re going to get from these devs.
I hate to tell you bro but all the “I want max honor-per-hour, but I hate playing the game” players are going to come storming in and tell you how terrible it is to play a 10+ min AVs and how that they think that capping 1 tower and rushing a boss is the ultimate pvp experience, but really, they hate wow and just want to show off their cool pvp gear on streams so they can get a donation for playing a game they hate.
Those same players screamed about frost trap launcher when 3 mages can do the same thing casting blizzard or a few shamans dropping a wall of slow totems when an entire class gets “remove trap” and “stealth” for free. I mean you could camp 1 rogue and 1 resto druid at the hunters hiding spot and farm the poop out of them but no they removed the trap because it hurts the honor-per-hour of AV because nobody wants to actually pvp those hunters.
MY solution would personally be that the FINAL xp reward AV be tied to match length.
IE 3 minute AV matches only get 30% of the honor
4 minute AV matches only get 40% of the honor
10+ minute AV matches get 100% of the honor
You could adjust these ratios until players are forced to play correctly or rush and get crap honor.
Only then will you see players actually play AV correctly because their precious honor per hour is tied to it.
Their should also be a bonus multiplier for defending the boss. If your in the room and your general enters then exits combat while your in the room, then you should get a 1.1honor multiplier, second time, a 1.2 honor multiplier, that way its WORTHY to defend.
Sure I guess it was fun when alliance stopped playing AV to the point where horde queue times spiked to an hour + and alliance were able to premade and farm horde in their cave for hours.