07/28/2018 09:21 AMPosted by
Meyka
07/28/2018 08:26 AMPosted by
Forums
Some PvPers are still playing games with the queue system to bring their 30+ man premade raids into AV/IOC.
They get more HKs from the increased reinforcements.
...
I really don't think anyone cares.
The players in my bg team cared. A lot of them left the game because it wasn't fun going against a premade raid.
07/28/2018 09:25 AMPosted by
Forums
07/28/2018 09:21 AMPosted by
Meyka
...
I really don't think anyone cares.
The players in my bg team cared. A lot of them left the game because it wasn't fun going against a premade raid.
They should really increase the player limit to 10-15 for the epic Bgs. 40 mans will get in regardless. Of course this would also mean you can’t queue for epic and random at the same time but I’m okay with that.
100 more reinforcements is not enough. I want the game to last EVEN longer. Long enough that armor scrap turn ins, and cavalry and bombing missions can actually be a thing.
Good changes!
Though you need to come up with something to reward more for longer games played.
Best AVs in a very long time! Stop crying about premades and coordinate one yourself or play the single contributor 10-15 man maps.
Alli seems to have it figured out even with a Horde-centric map advantage. Blizzard is going the right direction on this and giving everyone options for BGs big and small.
If they would allow a true raid to queue you would see guild vs. guild action and perhaps titles to go with it. The communities tab will allow anyone access to coordinated play too.
I would like to see the GY camp that serves no purpose but griefing end, it only strokes the egos of the players who weren't taught what sportsmanship means.
Thank you Blizzard for reviving and renewing the 40 mans.
Good changes!
Though you need to come up with something to reward more for longer games played.
While the reward could be looked at, I would like to advise phalanx and anyone else at Blizzard who might be looking at this to look at how much honor a player could possibly get in an average hour if they set their mind to it (anywhere in the game) and make the reward at least a little less than that. That's based on time spent, not reward per BG.
I'll explain:
-Let's say AVs now last 1 hour on average.
-Let's also say one player on average can get 3 WSGs per hour.
If this is the case, the AV reward should average x (for the sake of ease, let's say x=1k honor) while WSG should average y (or 400 honor for this example). Any RNG loot/lootboxes should be somewhat higher too but not quite as high as what you might get total after doing 3 WSGs. Basically scale the rewards based on average time spent in said game but don't make it quite as good as the regular random queue.
The reason:
There's a lot of players out there with the mentality of getting as much as they can in the time they have to play and that is their focus. That's fine but that also is what leads to the zerg mentality and that destroys the very concept of "epic". There are plenty of other ways those players can maximize their honor/hour rate. Doing epic BGs should be the least desirable path for them.
I'd like to try this out, but my 107 Horde is not getting queued to pop at ALL now. A few days ago I was running these no problem, queue popping in 10-15 minutes. Now I sit an hour in queue with nothing.
I don't know if it's due to the changes or what but it really stinks. I don't like the idea of epic BGs being available only to "max level" players.
07/27/2018 07:55 PMPosted by
Bynir
I've stayed up way too late playing AV tonight! Haven't done a 4am marathon in a while...
Phalanx, thanks so much for these changes. These changes bring in line the 'epic experience' so much more than the 'ignore other players, kill the bosses' strategies that have been prevalent for way too long. I've enjoyed seeing people turn in to the various upgrades.
I wasn't sure how much detail you'd want us to go in so apologies if too long!
Rewards
I've had a few 1 hour+ games, even one going to 1 hour 20. It was glorious, a back-and-forth battle. I loved it, even though we lost.
My concern is most players of today won't love it, unless rewards are upped. I mentioned this on beta and I think the quest will go some way to help, but in terms of the honor grind:
Why would I spend 1.5 hours in AV or IoC for winning 450 honor when in that time I could do at least 9 random battlegrounds for 300 honor per win (before multipliers)
NPC health and damage
These could do with a boost still. The non-boss NPCs are still really fragile and don't deal much damage. Druid of the Grove Thorns still hits for 200 damage, their Entangling Roots for 200 damage. They aren't much of a 'meat shield' so even if you do get them to move they get mowed over really quickly. Upgrades don't seem to do much damage. As an example:
Champion Guards who live in the mines, following 1800+ turn ins, hit for 700 melee swings. https://imgur.com/RXCfR9D
Upgrades in general feel pretty underwhelming in terms of the boost they give. In previous expansions you could really notice the damage and health increase, and if you got the shaman or the druids to march during pre-patch, they would wipe entire offensive teams. I'd like that again so even if you don't manage to get the big guns, you have made a noticeable impact on the game.
Turn ins should be a real game changer, like they were originally and how they were in pre-patches of expansions past.
Ivus and Lok should be returned to their boss status, and probably boosted some in terms of damage and health. I think their time spent in the middle should be reduced.
Mines
With reinforcements mattering again, everyone's attention is on the mines. They're too easy to flip. Challenging to capture, but once they are faction controlled, they should be challenging to take. There's a lot of rogue-druid action where they just trade ownership of the mines because the leader is too easy.
I'd suggest Aggi, Umi, Masha and Keetar being upgraded into elites with increased health and damage that are challenging. Every other miner and guardian can stay the same, but the leader should at least be somewhat challenging.
Bunkers
I get why Stormpike Bowmen were moved, and I don't disagree, but their new positions make them poor defenders. I'm not sure if it's because they are too 'in' rather than being on the edge of the bunker, but it's not unusual to see their melee damage higher than their shots, because they seem to get LoS'd by the floor? Some screengrabs of their weird "I can't shoot you" pose... https://imgur.com/a/FPoNuul
Trinket
Please can this be updated to be relevant (it will soon be 60 levels out of date) or can we add http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/18150 to the vendors for a Mark of Honor or something?
Map
Maybe it will just take time for Alliance players to adapt, but it may be worth looking at the Iceblood choke, given how powerful it is. You just can't breach it without brute force. Dun Baldar has a back door, so I think either that should be fixed or Iceblood should have another way to breach it.
Turn ins
While the quantity required for turns in won't be an issue with longer games, it would be a really nice QoL improvement to, similar to Ashran, 'take all my stuff!' rather than the 1/5/20 turn-ins we have currently.
That's it for now, will do a post for IoC tomorrow after playing some. Thanks again!
Awesome post, Bynir. All good points but IB choke definitely needs some attention. Sitting under a tower aoeing a single entry narrow path should not be so strong considering it protects all horde resources. I also agree that IB needs another entry and the backdoor to DB needs fixed.
07/28/2018 12:33 PMPosted by
Jadei
Awesome post, Bynir. All good points but IB choke definitely needs some attention. Sitting under a tower aoeing a single entry narrow path should not be so strong considering it protects all horde resources. I also agree that IB needs another entry and the backdoor to DB needs fixed.
I don't know much about coding and by that I mean I know nothing about coding so I hope I'm wrong but I do fear pathing might be one of the more difficult things for them to go in and rework. Even a simple slope up to IBGY could be a nightmare proposition for them. idk.
If it can be done, please do it Blizzard!
No map should have a one way in pathway that can be so easily defended and to such an advantage to the defending side like that. The only other possible way to fix that is to move IB gy to the wall west if Tower point and that just wouldn't make much sense to do.
I don't know much about coding and by that I mean I know nothing about coding so I hope I'm wrong but I do fear pathing might be one of the more difficult things for them to go in and rework. Even a simple slope up to IBGY could be a nightmare proposition for them. idk.
If it can be done, please do it Blizzard!
Well they did lower WSG gy but AV may be coded entirely different. Like you, I just don’t know. I do think game after game of horde sitting IB choke because it is that good will get stale fast.
07/28/2018 12:59 PMPosted by
Jadei
I don't know much about coding and by that I mean I know nothing about coding so I hope I'm wrong but I do fear pathing might be one of the more difficult things for them to go in and rework. Even a simple slope up to IBGY could be a nightmare proposition for them. idk.
If it can be done, please do it Blizzard!
Well they did lower WSG gy but AV may be coded entirely different. Like you, I just don’t know. I do think game after game of horde sitting IB choke because it is that good will get stale fast.
Again, I could very well be wrong but it is my understanding that coding has changed/grown over the years and a lot of the ones who originally worked on AV are no longer with the company. It's like reading a book in "Olde English". Sometimes a real pain to try and decipher. The WSG gy lowering happened way earlier and maybe more people who knew the coding was still around. One last time: I could be wrong and hope I am :D
07/27/2018 04:36 PMPosted by
Lileath
how about changing the maps????
perhaps not for the isle but definitely for AV.
its always been debated that is more optimal for the alliance and I think the perfect map has already been developed by the Heroes of the storm team. a Flat Mirror.
Please consider it.
It's only optimal for the Alliance when both team zerg the boss. Alliance has an excellent choke point in the bridge, you cannot bypass it.
However if Horde defends, they can easily defend Galv, take the mid GY, and push back the alliance to the top GY.
Ok, so... SOMETHING needs to be done to curtail the epidemic of "turtling" in Isle of Conquest, as I write this I am waiting on my 15 minute "deserter" debuff to fall off (decided to rage-quit I just don't have the patience for a 90+ minute Isle of Conquest battleground match with no reward or fun).
It's just not fun at all, and incredibly boring when "turtle games" happen in Isle of Conquest. Now, I don't know what the devs can do to "discourage" excessive turtling in IoC, but I imagine they could implement some kind of new "mechanic" to somehow reduce excessive turtling. Off the top of my head, they could try some sort of stacking debuff similar to the one that flag carriers get in Warsong Gulch... in that the longer the game goes, the more damage the defenders take "while inside the keep" or something (would encourage more fighting outside of the keep at the actual objective nodes, and thus faster games). I don't know, but *something* should be done to prevent IoC from dragging on for like 2 hours.
Not the first time I had to rage-quit to avoid slogging thru a 1.5 hour IoC game this week, and many players in the instance chat were also complaining about "2 hour games". All week long Isle of Conquest matches have consistently devolved into 90+ minute turtle matches that are more boring than watching paint dry, it sucks. *Especially* when the enemy team has a few Disc priests as their healers, prepare for a boring 2 hour slog - and that's no exaggeration.
Yes, turtle games and long games also happen in Alterac Valley, but here's the difference: AV is actually fun and has multiple ways to win and multiple viable "comeback" strategies. I've seen AV games where one team was at 120 resources and the other team was at 400+ resources where - through skillful use of stealthies and strategy - the losing team made a "miraculous" comeback and managed to win despite being behind all game. You don't see this in Isle of Conquest at all, in Isle of Conquest there's really only two ways to win: (1) kill enemy team all the way down to 0 reinforcements or (2) kill the other team's boss. In IoC, once one team is ahead they usually STAY ahead and the game quickly devolves into a boring, 90+ minute turtle grind... it's unbearable.
I don't know much about coding and by that I mean I know nothing about coding so I hope I'm wrong but I do fear pathing might be one of the more difficult things for them to go in and rework. Even a simple slope up to IBGY could be a nightmare proposition for them. idk.
If it can be done, please do it Blizzard!
No map should have a one way in pathway that can be so easily defended and to such an advantage to the defending side like that. The only other possible way to fix that is to move IB gy to the wall west if Tower point and that just wouldn't make much sense to do.
Well, a number of terrain fixes have been made to the map since Ghostcrawler's 'scary code' post, all to fix so-called Alliance imbalances: the snow mounds that allowed people to jump the fence into Frostwolf Village were taken away, and the gap in the fence at the twin towers was fenced.
I think a snow mound into the graveyard would be the perfect (and easiest?) solution. Still highly defensible, and more on par with Stonehearth (still much better) while allowing the end bases to be similar too. Frostwolf Village/Keep has 3 impenetrable chokes while Dun Baldar has the Bridge (and a backdoor that should be addressed)
I think that is fair. If Horde want to defend, it should take as much effort to commit as it does for Alliance at Stonehearth. They'd still have the 'peeling the onion' advantage but it'd be a little closer.
-----------'
Has anyone noticed NPC health seems to have been reduced by about 10%? Noticed GY guards dying in a couple of AoEs earlier.
The only problem I'm finding now. Is that the if players don't want to defend their bases or objectives in IoC or AV, the game still runs like how it did before being put into their own queue.
I just played an AV game, where the Horde didn't defend galv so the Alliance just rolled to the end of the map. It took about 25 minutes, since there was a bit of fighting. But it seemed there was nothing that could be done to stop the Alliance after they broke that first line of defense, since the Horde was scattered doing whatever.
I also played an IoC game where the Alliance didn't guard their base at all. Within 12 minutes the Horde had broken down the gate and killed the commander using only the hanger to do so.
However nothing can be done to stop players from not defending locations. The only thing I can think of is the honorable defender buff, but that really doesn't insight many people.
I just wish there was away to keep players focused on what needs to be done instead of finding something shiny to go chase after.
It’s funny that alliance has dominated av for near a decade and they use this opportunity to cry for nerfs so that horde can’t defend.
Seems to me they can’t adapt and want a return to a Zerg the boss strat.
Scaling the NPCs is AWESOME! The guards should be a fearful, face smashing thing and we love it!
IoC is absolutely terrible currently.
1-2 hour games "normal" and 3 hour games not abnormal
cannons in base do too much damage and you can constantly repair them with no downside
siege engine worthless
glaive throwers easily killed by 1 person
gates have too much hp still
if one side fully defends the base it is almost impossible to take.
healer balance really skews the game.
ex one side has 12 the other has 0-2. might as well /afk
DRASTIC changes are needed to make the game go quicker
latest hotfixes are a change in the wrong direction
07/28/2018 02:46 PMPosted by
Srath
1-2 hour games "normal" and 3 hour games not abnormal
If you don't want this, don't queue for Epic Battlegrounds?