I think bgb is going to be a bad mode plagued by terribly long dps ques and people crying about how random comps make them auto lose. People will still play arena that like it. I already get 35 min ques when I play a dps now and it started around 10 min when the mode first went live. It’s only going to get worse as healers opt to play something else just like shuffle. It’ll prob pop off for like a season though cuz mmr will be janky and people will get elite really easily or something.
For one there are major balance issues with BGs that heavily favor certain classes(mw gaurdian rogues). If you think these balance changes will be addressed u are coping
Ontop of unbalanced team compositions that could auto decide who wins a match, you have less agency on the outcome of the match when you are 1/8 players instead of 1/3. Chances of getting trolled/griefed are now doubled.
Ontop of that 15 man base maps are compeltely garbage for 8v8 and incentivize people to avoid fights.
Everything Bubblebuddy listed and specifically this. The most repetitious complaint (aside from mmr) from healers about shuffle is their lack of agency over the outcome of a match. Whether you agree that they have a lack of agency or not, that feeling of a lack of agency is only going to be exponentially worse in the bgb game mode. So you will just have healers gradually fall off the same way they have in shuffle while dps continue to que cuz “might as well sit in bgb que while I’m in que for other stuff I’m doing”. So the dps ques will grow and grow while there are no healers. Throw in the occasional rigged booster que (saw a YouTube video where they already demonstrated how easy it is to sync up ques with another healer/dps duo), and you’ve got a recipe for another source of non stop forum complaint threads and a dead game mode.
If you think shuffle hasn’t shaken up how they approach pvp tuning wait til the most popular form of PvP does.
Arena, imo, showcases more finesse and mastery of your character but is far more obscure and abrasive a mode for the masses that have even an iota of interest in PvP.
Not sure if I agree with the lack of agency. Objective based mode and rotating is prob going to be easier to understand.
A single player can “sap and cap” since flags can be captured so quickly and small teams on maps made for 15 means you cant have everyone everywhere at once.
I’m just guessing but if Low mmr has ppl still fighting on roads, a player playing to objectives can carry, if its backcapping, spinning, or stealing a base.
Instead of low mmr shuffle where if someone doesn’t presses- you lose, your warrior leaps behind a pillar and stays there- you lose etc.
Of course i could be wrong, but saying it dies in 3 months is fried. Shuffle is terrible and is still the most Q’d thing just because of access.
BGB is going to be on a whole different scale of popularity
ALSO…
Losing a bg wont have nearly as much a mental toll as being held hostage is a scuffed shuffle lobby
I feel like the biggest issue it’s going to face is just being introduced with subpar maps / modes that don’t really encourage satisfying gameplay.
It’s closer to what I think a lot of newer and more casual players want, but if it launches as a bunch of recycled, poorly rebalanced maps, or if who wins a match is largely determined by who has the guardian druid FC or more rogues to steal flags, it might just die off fast and get scrapped.
Like solo shuffle, it might not actually end up being a good game mode. But it will be an accessible game mode with rewards, and we’ll just end up stuck with that instead of ever actually getting something objectively better.
BGB and Shuffle will both be popular and will murder premade game modes. Most PvPers just want rated rewards without the social navigation of premade teams.
Regardless of game balance (which isn’t balanced in arena either,) Solo Q modes are more accessible than premade modes. (And with BGB, shuffle might have better queue times because BGB will have a better healer:dps ratio, removing DPS from the shuffle q.)
I also think BGB will be easiest way to get 1800 rewards, because Blizzard wants to inflate the bracket so average people can get 1800 by end of season. And your average random BG pvper is worse than your average 3v3 player.
I think it might severely reduce shuffle because people who dislike competition tend to favor bgs for their casual playing. But it won’t do anything to 3s as most people who are already playing 3s think battlegrounds are awful in my experience. It’s why rbgs never took off.
