Feedback: Epic Battlegrounds

PVP Battlegrounds
1012

Bring back the troll mini-boss that used to guard Snowfall GY, to stop/discourage noobs from capping it :rofl:

2 Likes
1013

Mr. dev person,

I was thinking today, and one way you guys could roll out Southshore vs. Tarren Mill is as part of the upcoming Classic/Vanilla release in the summer :thinking:

Maybe adding SS vs. TM to the epic bg list would “build hype” for Vanilla servers. Maybe release SS vs. TM alongside the launch of Classic/Vanilla servers? Or it could be rolled out as part of whatever “pre-patch” events lead up to the Classic/Vanilla servers going up? Just some random ideas :thinking:

It’s not like the map needs much work, it would just need some very minor polishing. Just give the guards some steroid buffs and maybe increase the win condition to 200 kills and call it a day. Easy.

1014

we need more ebgs in the rotation, but im not sure TMvSS is the way to go, it has no objectives and really nothing to do for most melee, and when a team is unevenly matched on healers its very rare that the team with fewer healers has any counter beyond very big damage, and in general the team with the most druids and dks wins.

on the other hand, TMvSS is the only place i have seen classical military formation strategy with lining up groups, flanking, routing, etc. IMO it would be fun if it was pushed more into that direction. one thing that really hits home in ebgs, especially in WG is the feeling that you are in a battle, not just a fight or skirmish like regular bgs. the battle grounds in the ebg queue should be designed to elicit that feeling.

1015

Here’s the thing:

I can literally spam AV and SS vs. TM for hours, but I would never spam say, IOC for hours

IOC and WG simply have too much PvE/vehicles/etc for my tastes, I like the “raw PvP” that happens in bgs such as AV. PvP is what I enjoy most in bgs, when there’s too much PvE it kinda “waters down” the PvP experience.

SS vs. TM is just raw, pure non-stop PvP from start to finish… I love it :sweat_smile:

Maybe I’m a little biased since I play Horde and SS vs. TM was pretty much a free win for Horde, but I enjoyed it even on my Alliance toon. Fun times :upside_down_face:

1 Like
1016

you may not want IoC for hours, but with only 3 bgs in rotation, getting IoC for hours in not uncommon.

there’s normal BGs and arena that cover the pure pvp fighting aspect. to me ebgs are more about playing the map and objectives, its pvp, but dueling another player isn’t the point, winning the map is.

if anything, ebgs are closer to a true battleground where normal bgs are pretty much just small skirmishes. IoC gets a lot of hate, but i can’t call in for airsupport from hanger in WSG. vehicle combat may dilute the pvp aspect a bit, but in reality if you were on an actual battlefield a tank or cannonball will 1 shot you, the fact the a player can take down a tank solo through good gameplay shows there is still plenty of room for skill to make the difference.

1017

That’s not what I meant, I meant that I could “specific queue” for AV and SS vs. TM for multiple hours and not get bored. But I would never “specific queue” for IOC, for example :sweat_smile: I just don’t enjoy IOC enough to ever “specific queue” for it

I’ve had a few nights where I was bored and just “specific” queued AV for a few hours to pass the time, even without the “bonus” rewards it’s still fun. I’ve also “specific” queued for AV with premades and it was always a fresh experience.

1018

I’m not sure I’d consider Vehicles “PVE”. Lots of multiplayer deathmatch type games have vehicles. I don’t recall people being annoyed with Halo Warthogs or whatever.

Now endless guards that chunk your health in AV, that’s a bit frustrating for “PVP”.

1019

just because you enjoy it doesn’t mean it fits in this category. the other ebgs all have map play and strategy, TMvSS can have that as i said, but it would really need to be encouraged as the main gameplay. make it intersting like this:

if its just a simple deathmatch, it should stay as a brawl.

1020

Nothing wrong with that, I like the sheer simplicity actually… “team A and team B go at it, most kills wins” :sweat_smile:

Seems SS vs TM is more casual-friendly than any of the other bgs due to it’s simplicity :thinking:

For a casual it’s simple to understand something like “the team with the most kills wins” as opposed to say “guard this graveyard, while pressuring the opponent’s towers, while backcapping your towers”.

The latter is much more difficult for a random casual to understand (as evidenced by sooooo many casuals not focusing objectives in AV and Wintergrasp). On the other hand, if you tell a random casual “the team with the most kills wins” 100% of them will know what to do.

Even though it’s the year 2019, a lot of random casuals still run around like chickens with their heads cut off in bgs like AV and IOC, a surprising % of them don’t understand complex objectives very well :grimacing:

Simple is a good thing

1021

the problem though is that players will feel punished for being on the wrong class/spec and leave. the other maps provide something for everyone to do. without strategy you don’t really have tasks for players to do. often the players who take lead are fine with strategy, those who aren’t often just need a task to be given to them and they are happy to do it.

the map doesn’t need to be obvious on how to play it, there should always be a learning curve because it is not a scripted event like pve raids. if you want deathmatch, play arena, if you want a heavier focus on pvp team play, play bgs. but the 40 mans should stay more about strategy and playing the map. TMvSS as it stands is just a fight you would have in any of the other ebgs over an objective.

TMvSS would have to be changed anyway because it was never designed as a battleground, it was put together for the 10 year anniversary event iirc and was not designed with balanced gameplay in mind.

2 Likes
1022

While you’re not wrong, SS v TM should stay as a brawl. That’s the game mode for “out of the box” gameplay minigames. I’d be down for Brawls being available more frequently, though.

I still am a strong proponent of having some information on the screen during the load screen. Something like WG might be a bit complex for that but I figure people seeing it flash over and over during an expansion might shed some light on things a little more than the “LFR mentality” of “I have no idea what this is, but let’s just wing it.”

1023

Yep. SS/TM brawl is bad because of that IMO. Maybe people with the “right specs” for it who like to herp-derp damage meters and snipe from distance enjoy it, but it is NOT very enjoyable for those who aren’t those “right specs.”

What would make it fun is if teams actually employed military-like strategy/formations to counter-attack, but you’d need a premade to do that well (reminds me of good ESO times).

1024

Games with +1 tower now seem to be increasingly frequent, and seen a couple of games (rarely) go in with 2 once the timers get low enough. Need buffs :open_mouth:

1025

Yeah I can easily tank Van in bear form if there’s no tank, and I’m balance. This does not work well at all in PVE.

1 Like
1026

I had an epiphany last night after a bunch of Ally suddenly ragequit from our team during a losing Wintergrasp game… why not just replace bg leavers with AI bots? :thinking:

Seems like everybody wins

  1. in-queue players are happy because they don’t get dropped into losing bgs anymore (never a fun experience)
  2. the losing team still (technically) gets their backfillers to fill up the open slots
  3. at least the AI bots “never” go AFK or stop trying, but a lot of human players have a tendency to go AFK in a corner of the map or stop trying during a losing bg

Think about it, it seems like a creative use for this AI bot technology. As we saw with the recent brawl, the AI bots seem to do “OK” in the little bgs like Arathi Basin - which is “good enough” considering a surprising % of human players don’t play much better than the bots anyways :rofl:

I imagine with some tweaking to their behavior/programming the AI bots could possibly be viable in the epic bgs/40 mans as well.

For example, they could tweak a Boomkin AI bot to simply try stay at max range and spam Starfall on cooldown, and program it with a self-defense “kite away” routine in the event of getting focused by the enemy team. Or they could program a healer Priest AI bot to try to stay in the “back” of the group and spam heals, with a self-defense “kite away” routine of it’s own.

They could also program the AI bots in such a way such that when certain objectives are met, such as a keep wall going down in Isle of Conquest, the bots will “automatically” drop whatever they are doing and rush to the enemy base - to mimic “ALL IN” tactics used by human players.

An added bonus is that this AI bot technology could also be used to “make up for” a lack of healers on one team or the other :thinking:

If - during the pregame matchmaking process - the matchmaking system detects that team A only has 2 healers while team B has 6 healers the AI bot backfill system could “kick in” and add 4 AI bot healers to team A such that the number of healers is balanced. This would pretty much end complaints of “our team only got 1 healer!” in 40 man bgs

2 Likes
1027

because it would upset the pvp community.

as much as you program the AI and script if/then behavior algorithms, until the bot can read chat, and make a decision to change what it is doing based on what players are calling for it will not be worth replacing a player with.

if you ever played armored core formula front on psp, there is an aspect to building out the AI that controls your AC. IMO bots would be more acceptable if they were player created characters instead of generic bots. let players give them loot, tweak aspects of the AI like aggressiveness, tenacity, etc. and then let players call it as reinforcements in world PVE, but then when a bg has a player leave, one of the remaining player’s AIs will be selected at random to replace them.

1028

Really? Seems like it would be a good quality of life improvement for us (frequent) back-fillers :thinking:

I’d much rather have an AI bot backfill into a loss instead of me :sweat_smile:

1029

see my edit above, i was thinking if we had something like the legion body guards, but with a tweakable AI from armored core:FF and the ability to kit it out with loot like a follower in skyrim, that would probably make bots popular and more welcome.(it would also match the direction real world militaries are moving)

1030

Given that 40 man bg teamfights are mostly both teams just hurling/spamming AOE at each other, I imagine it would be fairly simple to re-program the ranged class AI bots (ex. Boomkin, Mage, Warlock, Hunter, etc) with a “teamfight AOE routine” or “teamfight rotation”.

I admit melee AI bots would be much harder/trickier to re-program for a 40 man bg setting. I imagine they could be re-programmed with a “routine” to stay close to the group and simply focus enemy players that get too close to the group (over-extenders). Or simply re-program them to peel for healers or kill enemy pets just to give them something to do during those large 40v40 teamfights :thinking:

1031

this is why i think they need to be player made characters instead of official bots, if we had static bots, then players would get upset at blizzard for causing their loss by backfilling with bad bots. if the bots are player tuned, then it becomes that bot in particular was bad, or that bot was good.