Battleground Player Experience Improvements

PVP Battlegrounds
1

For context, I played WoW mostly between patches 1.04 and 3.0. I’ve come back every now and then for a month per expansion. Most of my thoughts are geared improving player experience in BGs as that’s the content that I played consistently and just about the only reason I play today. The suggestions listed below aim to improve the battleground experience at all level brackets.

Dynamic match making:
Sometimes there are too few alliance in the queue, sometimes too few horde, sometimes too few total players. The battleground queue system should aim to reduce queue times as much as possible to reduce down time between matches. Simply put, if you have to wait to have fun longer than you get to have fun- it’s a bad system. A simple decision tree could dramatically reduce queue times and having AI players as a backstop to the decision tree could prevent queue times from exceeding 10 minutes under any condition.

For example:

  • IF Alliance player count < 10 AND Horde player count > 20 = create a horde vs horde match
  • IF Alliance player count > 20 AND Horde player count < 10 = create an Alliance vs Alliance match
  • IF total players count = 20 AND Alliance OR Horde player count < 6 = create a Mixed vs Mixed match
  • IF total player count < 20 for more than 10 minutes = create a Mixed vs Bot match

EDIT:
When players abandon their team and a new player has not filled their slots in over a minute, a bot player backfills the deserter. If a player becomes available, the bot zones out and is replaced by a player. Bots are not as good as players, but they are better than being outnumbered.

Larger level brackets:
The historical level brackets, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc, correlated with large, single level power increases across classes. Mostly, this had to do with reaching a new talent tier that granted a powerful ability, like Cold Blood, or passives, like warriors receiving plate at level 40. Today, large power increases occur when you receive talents. This happens every 15 levels as opposed to 10. Brackets should begin with a talent level and end before the next talent. This would also mean that normal mounts should be granted at level 15 and epic mounts at level 30. This would increase the potential players queued for each bracket, probably by around 50 percent.

For example:

  • Bracket 1 - 15 to 29
  • Bracket 2 - 30 to 44
  • Bracket 3 - 45 - 59
  • etc

XP on/off merger with templates for lower level brackets
XP off players are the potential backbone of the level bracket queue. Currently, templates have been disabled for lower levels and they have been segregated into their own BG queue system. This has destroyed queue times for both XP on and off players. Both being one shot by a twink and not being able to enter a BG are terrible player experiences. Blizzard found the solution in templates during legion, but max level players did not enjoy not having gear progression. For NON-CURRENT CONTENT brackets, templating is the best compromise for the XP on/XP off players.

For example:

  • Templates would be active for levels 15 to 110. XP on and XP off would share a queue.
  • Templates would not be active for levels 111 to 120. XP on and XP off would share a queue.

Mercenary mode integration into the PvP UI:
Mercenary mode is intended to allevate faction imbalance, but it isn’t widely known about or accessible before level 110. First, allow for Mercenary mode to be activated below level 110. Then, incorporate Mercenary mode into the PvP interface. Highlight it when you could receive the enlistment bonus, similar to the dungeon bonus for tanks/healers that is sometimes up. Make activating Mercenary as easy as clicking it on or off, like selecting “expert” on the dungeon queue.

Dueler’s guild
Dueler’s guild was added in BFA as a way of offering achievements for dueling in the new capital cities. I suspect that this was intended to facilitate the vanilla-era dueling culture where players would spend hours dueling outside of Orgrimmar and Ironforge. However, the feature, like Mercenary mode, is not widely know about or accessible before reaching BFA (it may also require you to be level 120). Instead of limiting this feature to warmode and BFA, add it to the Quick Match PvP tab. Re-use arena maps. This would give people a way of queuing for templated duels. These should give about 10 to 15 percent the exp gain of a battleground.

2 Likes
2

Was with you until the last sentence. Dueling should not be a means of leveling even slowly. Some classes have inherent advantages when it comes to 1v1 situations. We don’t need to see a run on these classes.

3

Blizzard doesn’t care about leveling. As long as you’re actively doing something and using sub time they’re happy. Why would they care about some flavor of the months hogging a 1v1 arena bracket?

4

Blizzard wouldn’t, The rest of us might get tired of seeing a lot of certain classes. Well, more than we already see which is a bit too much imo.

5

Even if I hated all of these thoughts, I’d still appreciate how constructive they are. I can get on board with most of them though, with some exceptions.

AI is not a suitable alternative to a player where it can be helped. I’d rather wait much longer than 10 minutes than play a half PvE battleground. I am okay with AI filling in for deserters until a player can zone in but that’s really the only circumstance.

I’m also not with mixed faction teams. I can be okay with horde versus horde where horde versus alliance matches would take too long to arrange but I think dwarves with orcs would be too jarring and defy the core of the game too much.

A+ for the rest though. Good effort. :+1:

1 Like
6

I disagree. They’ve given low level items some attention and they did just re-separate twinks so the pre-cap experience is being looked at to some degree

7

They should keep the dueler’s guild the way it is but move it to Goldshire.

8

Those are obviously bonuses to levelers, but the leveling experience itself is still totally shallow.

1 Like
9

That’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. I only mean that they’re not ignoring it as there have been recent changes to it. Bringing twinks back with a template-like system and/or adding experience to dueler’s guild isn’t necessarily beneath them.

10

If Blizzard wanted to improve the battleground player experience, they would have separate queues not for xp on and xp off, but for premades and solo queues.

Solo pugs should never come up against premades. They always get wrecked.

11

Your second and third sentence contradict one another.

If class X has an advantage in 1v1, it would be a problem if that class griefed classes that have a disadvantage in 1v1.
If everyone rolls class X, then no one would have an advantage in 1v1.

Currently, pet battling is an efficient way to level, so I don’t see why a player activity that has existed for far longer shouldn’t be, at the very least, an inefficient way of leveling.

A duel takes about a little less than 1/10th the time of a battleground. Losing should award nothing, winning should award 10 - 15 percent a battleground, so that it’s technically less efficient than bging.

Besides, if it does turn out that fury warriors just 1 shot everyone in duels at level, say, 15 to 29 - Blizzard could adjust the fury warrior template for that level bracket.

12

some of the ideas are really good, like any 10 v 10 game of available players.
it is tough to leave wow for another game where you get in matches non-stop without a minute of downtime.

then you get an itch to wow, resub, and you remember half the time spent in game is waiting.

13

I really like the bracket change idea. :thinking:

14

ESO has three brackets and it seemed to work pretty well. Leveling 10-49, max level scaled, max level unscaled and anything goes.

I really hope they do a level squish and revisit leveling as a whole. I haven’t been able to make a new character for quite sometime.

15

Um, no they don’t. If you mean 3rd and forth then again not really. If one class has an advantage over another then yes we might see a run on that class. Sure the “disadvantage” is gone if the other class goes unrepresented but therein lies the problem, that class goes unrepresented. Classes that may be sorely needed at max level.

Pet battling, which I dislike btw, is available to anyone and everyone. Dueling as a means of leveling is not. You give certain classes an advantage in something that many might find enjoyable like dueling (and let’s not even begin with healers in 1v1) then those classes will end up over-represented. I don’t want to see that.

I’m glad dueling is available, there should be something, anything to encourage people to hone their skills or just do something they enjoy. It should be available at all levels over 5 or so. I’m fine with rewards like a currency that can buy new mounts, pets, toys or tranmog sets. Just not experience for leveling.

16

Simply making Blizzard AI bots act as backfillers would solve a lot of player problems/complaints to be honest :thinking:

I’m tired of getting backfilled into “in progress” Wintergrasp games, it gets old :expressionless:

The fact that getting backfilled into WG games happens so often is really quite telling. A few times I’ve even been backfilled into the “same” WG match 2-3 times back to back (after switching to alts) :joy:

Seriously, implementing Blizzard AI bot backfillers would make us all happier, as it would put an end to annoying/pesky “in progress” games for good :thinking:

1 Like
17

I’ll add this to the OP.

18

I’m sure that the players who don’t leave like cowards will be thrilled that players on their team are being replaced with bots instead of real people.

This will really only be agreed upon if the bots fill in only until an actual player can zone in. You seem to want bots to replace deserters for the entirety of the match.

1 Like
19

Doubt we’ll see templates in any bracket. The idea behind templates was for them to be able to tweak the templates instead of a lot of per-class tweaks.

Having templates active and non-template PVP means there’d be more for them to have to balance.

And I’ll vote “no” on mixed matches. There will be no collusion! No witch hunts! No collusion!

If they want to do anything, remove all racials from instanced PVP (and PVE). And allow BG maps to start in a “faction swapped state”. Like Alliance being North and Horde south in WSG for example. Story can be spun to say “they’re occupying our castle, we need our banner back” or something.

Factions would somewhat balance then over time, since nobody will be “better”. People will be more likely to play what they think looks cool, what they identify with, etc.

20

They could add a time walking bg where all sets scale and you can bring any set you want. All lvls welcome.