Concerns regarding PvP Premade Groups and Random BGs

Community WoW Community Council
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Hello,

I’m sure this will be a topic a lot of players could relate to. Especially when it comes to Epic Battlegrounds.

This Issue At Hand:

I’ve noticed there is some groups out there that will queue for Battlegrounds with the intent to farm the other team and not do any objectives. This as a result makes the match go on for hours on end, Making either players get reported as AFK as they are getting farmed too much or just leaving resulting in getting the deserter debuff.

Tonight, I actually got removed from a few Epic Battlegrounds as pretty much instant I entered I got farmed at the closest graveyard and was getting killed over and over instant I rezzed. I was completely unable to do anything. As a result of this, I was reported AFK and removed from the match.

My Concerns Regarding This:

My largest concern is player(s) including myself getting handed Account-Warnings or even Suspensions for getting reported AFK and removed from Battlegrounds for the reason(s) I stated above. I do know you can be suspended if you are reported too many times as AFK in various Battlegrounds.

So, My largest concern is if you are getting farmed and then kicked as a result of this, Is that you will face either an Account-Warning or Suspension for a situation that is completely out of your control. This wouldn’t be very fair either in my opinion of this were to happen to player(s) in this situation.

How This Can Be Resolved:

There used to be an AddOn. I’m sure many of you folks out there remember it before Blizzard broke it to make groups more fair for PvP. This AddOn was called OQueue. Since this AddOn was broken, Players have still found ways to circumvent the PvP Queues.

The only real resolution I see to resolving this issue is to suspend premade groups from doing either Random Battlegrounds or Random Epic Battlegrounds, And instead restrict premade’s to Rated PvP. This would restrict them to Rated Battlegrounds, Arena’s, or Rated Solo Shuffle, Which I heard will be a feature in the future here on the Forums.

Doing so, Would make doing Random Battlegrounds, and Random Epic Battlegrounds more fair and more enjoyable for teams on both sides. Even I would probably queue for Battlegrounds more if such a policy were to be implemented.

Perhaps even limit how many players may join from each realm when queuing for Battlegrounds in-game. This limit could be limited to 2-3 players per realm. Additionally, Perhaps have a cap on how many players you may queue with.

Personally if you are queuing with your friends, I recommend it be capped as a group of (3) when queuing maximum.

Any larger groups than (3) members would be unable to queue for Battlegrounds unless it is rated!

Any feedback regarding this greatly appreciated! I would love to see your thoughts regarding this! Lets make PvP better and more enjoyable for both the Alliance and Horde! :smiley:

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As far as I know, that specific community doesn’t use an addon for their IoC camp groups - They synchronize parties on their official Discord to all que and accept ques at the same time.

There is a simple solution to that problem that people simply refuse to do, for some reason - Waste their time by moving away from the graveyard after you die, so you don’t get automatically resurrected. They eventually give up and just win the BG once there aren’t people for them to kill.

I don’t think a specific group that has been responsible for several gamebreaking PvP activities over the years (who doesn’t remember them deliberately overfilling shards to lag them and win Battle for Nazjatars?) should be a reason to change BG queues for everyone. Especially because limiting number of players will not completely break what they currently do, as they use out of game communication tools to get their activities done.

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While I think people farming graveyards isnt gamebreaking when you can walk away from the Graveyards they should be able to at least able to run to a different one to escape being farmed. I dont think we should restrict groups from being premades from bgs as it would pretty much kill it for people who just want to play with friends. If it does become a absolute farm in the graveyard I dont think the other team should be punished for farming or the farmees be punished for getting farmed. The giant premade sharding problem I would push to being a warmode problem blizzard hasnt fixed yet with server hoppers and addon users escaping pvp

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What do people mean when they say a team in a random battleground is a “premade?” My guild, which is PVE focused, has started dabbling in PVP just a little bit. We were doing a weekly rated battleground group, and one week we decided to queue for random battlegrounds instead because there was a weekly quest for it, and found we couldn’t do it. You can’t queue with a full team–only a maximum of five.

Is that what is meant by a “premade”–a team of 5 that queues together and gets 5 more randoms to fill out the group? Or is it something else, like what was mentioned before about people queuing individually but syncing up when they queue so they end up in the same battleground?

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The 5 man premade is usually what people mean outside of rated bgs. You use to be able to time the Q with other coordinated groups to get into the same battleground havent seen that in forever tho.

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Sounds like mostly a matchmaking issue to me, combined with the inability to pick a graveyard to spawn in. While matchmaking is really difficult to do right, making it possible to spawn elsewhere should be a thing.

Organized EBGs are great fun, but there’s basically no incentive to win and the honor gain is extremely low, even if it would be doubled. Taking objectives should reward way more honor, while each of these objectives should also lead to more honor as end-reward.

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This would actually be a very nice thing to see in several Battlegrounds. I know there is a couple of Battlegrounds out there currently that only have the (1) graveyard in them.

I do believe Isle of Conquest is one of them if the other team controls all of the other graveyards and bases. As a result if that happens you can only spawn in the base you start the match in. Would be nice if there was a 2nd neutral graveyard you could pick if this occurred.

I do enjoy doing Epic and Random Battlegrounds from time-to-time as there is many mounts from PvP I would love to obtain. The only thing that turns me away from them is if you’re team is getting farmed at the one graveyard - Like what happened to me last night in Isle of Conquest.

I do agree that that Honor reward incentive should be raised for doing objectives. This may actually have both teams focusing on getting objectives done rather than camping an entire team for the duration of the match.

Perhaps double the current rewards from Battlegrounds for doing objectives. Additionally, I would really like it if Blizzard brought back the feature to blacklist specific Battlegrounds from the queue when you queue for random ones.

We used to have a system to blacklist specific Battlegrounds in the past. I’m unsure as to why it was removed from the game.

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This… shouldn’t happen though?

When you get reported afk, you get a 1 (or 2?) minute debuff telling you to enter combat or you will be flagged afk and removed.

I have seen instant-kicks happen before, but they aren’t supposed to happen to my knowledge. Even in the article I link it says if you’re a repeat offender you’re still given the minute to enter combat.

It sounds like there’s a hidden “if X people report you, it kicks you” feature - which isn’t bad, per say, but it shouldn’t count for people who queue together. People who queue together should only count as 1 vote for insta-kicking, if that is indeed the mechanic.

As someone who level 7 toons from 10-50 strictly through BGs in 9.0, I do empathize with this, as premades essentially mean you lose in a bg.

It would make more sense to limit premades to 2-3 people per party, and find a way to stop people from bypassing the “no raid group premade” rule, like, perhaps, make it so if the server notices more than 1 premade group queue at the same time, or within like 60 seconds of each other - blacklist those groups from being put into a bg together.

That said - I still don’t think stopping it altogether is the best thing. There’s many other routes they could go:

  1. Only match premades with premades. Fill in extra slots with non-premades. But always match a premade with a premade. Give the non-premades the bonus mentioned below.
  2. If you are on a team without a premade, but your opponent does, your team receives honor/conquest as though you had won, even if you lose. (Though do not let the people know this is happening so they don’t try to throw the game)
  3. If you queue in a premade, you receive reduced rewards if you win. (No change if you lose)

Or plenty of other options than just straight out banning them. There are ways to discourage abusing the matchmaking system without outright making it impossible for those who want to.

People use addons, discord, etc. to queue at the exact same time, so the system places them together.

As for the “Choose a graveyard” - the more logical thing to do would be apply the buff they have in a few areas in game, like the world PvP in Stormheim - if you res, if you stay in the designated area (in this case, the graveyard), you can’t be hurt. All abilities (death grip, etc.) will miss you. You, however, CAN hurt them. This discourages graveyard camping as it essentially means the people who you are trying to farm can farm you. But it also doesn’t take away from anything in the battleground.

  • Note, these are purely for unrated PvP scenarios. I don’t do rated bgs, so I’m not commenting on changes that should be done to those, lol.
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This would effectively kill casual/leveling groups. The group I play with has a bunch of geared regulars, but also tons of alts that use ebgs to gear up and have fun, and also not being restricted to ranked pre-made vs pre-made style fights while still being organized.

This would cause massive queues for premades, as casual premades will end up against more hardcore, and thus avoid it.

This is a good idea imo, but I think this could also be covered already by rewarding objectives more. Though one of the big issues lots of ebgs have atm is that you don’t really have the ability to avoid certain things if you’re “stuck”. I think every ebg should have multiple ways to win to prevent mindless HK farms.

This is a big no for me. It means I have to pick between less rewards in an already excruciating farm (250 honor mount/250,000 kill title), or have fun. Detecting premades is also difficult as groups that often queue solo as group will probably be flagged as premade because the game doesn’t know the parties aren’t together.

Yes, this might be even better. I will also go as far as saying that dying shouldn’t reset the CC DR you have.

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I like that graveyard idea (enemies can’t hurt you while you’re in the graveyard area, but you can hurt them). There might be some ways it can be abused if graveyards are too close to objectives, but in theory I think that’s a good solution to graveyard honor farming.

Matchmaking is never going to be perfect; there are always going to be times you come up against a team that is much better than yours, whether it’s a “premade” or not. That I accept.

But when I end up in such a match, I want the game to end as expediently as possible so I can get back into the queue and find a more evenly matched game that will actually be fun. Anything that can be done to make graveyard honor farming unrewarding and unsatisfying will help ameliorate the not-fun experience of poorly matched teams.

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I dont think people should be punished for playing with friends. Its not like it makes them impossible to beat. they should not reduce rewards either seems super backwards.
The graveyard idea is okay but lots of people will abuse it as ranged. Losing WSG? have ur tank stand just outside of the graveyard while a healer is immune to damage till the enemy fc dies. If they did add MMR to Random bgs it would have to be done right so its not like a 50 min Q for someone with lots of PvP experience.

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Wintergrasp: already the case - more or less, but it doesn’t stop the camping. The problem here is vehicles. I greatly dislike vehicle ebgs myself, but that could be because they are so imbalanced all the time.

Isle of Conquest: I’ve never really seen any spawn camping, but it would benefit from GY protection for sure. The spawn points are far away enough from the objective to not matter. In fact, the spawns inside the keep already have protection for the owning side.

Ashran: this one has protection, but also only 1 spawn point. This kind of acts as a balance as the pushing faction will take longer to recover. In this regard I think Ashran is actually the most balanced, not sure what should change here.

Alterac Valley: this one is just spawn camp fest in these kind of matches. I personally like the ebg because it’s big and has no vehicles, but the camping can be really bad here. I think ebgs of this size should get a gy choice, not spawn protection. Spawn protection is too close to the objectives for most locations.

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The highly geared pre-made groups are especially problematic now moreso than at other times because rated PvP gear can only be upgraded by farming honor.

It has never made sense to me that the most powerful PvP gear in the game only requires Conquest points to obtain initially and from that point on those players are sent into casual PvP content to upgrade their gear by farming casuals. Sure they have to win a match at a rated level to use the honor but why not require playing more rated matches to farm Conquest points to upgrade Conquest gear and disincentivise them from farming casuals in casual content?

Keep casual content casual and competative content competative. Casual PvP players are just there to have some casual but evenly matched fun. Getting farmed by a bunch of glads that execute like a special forces squad blowing up a paintball game is just a waste of everyone’s time and not at all fun.

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I think this we be solved as gear will have only 1 level in dragonflight so they obviously thought that out or solved it inadvertently

I know that farming casuals isnt the best fun for both people but at least it will get better

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Yes, but Dragonflight is MONTHS away. Personally I’m almost done with the expansion content I’m interested in. At this point in an expansion the only thing that keeps me playing is the quality of honor BGs. Right now it’s not good. I suspect that I am not alone in this sentiment and would like to see a solution to this for NOW.

There’s also nothing stopping them from implementing the Dragonflight model for season 4 to give it a test drive before 10.0.

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If they did push up the pvp gear plan for dragonflight it would be nice but they have already announced the conquest gear upgrade paths and honor gear item levels. Lets hope they change it cause stomping casuals isnt really fun after doing it over and over

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