Feedback: Epic Battlegrounds

PVP Battlegrounds
1278

Yea, this isn’t a new issue with SS v TM

1279

Yeah the game barfs in huge PVP battles, happens anywhere it happens. WPVP zergs, IoC Hangar, etc.

1280

I’ve done Ashran a few times now. I’m so far enjoying the changes made to it. However, I’m still yet to see an enemy commander being killed, as the players spawn way to fast to give us a chance to actually make it too far into their base.

My second thoughts is I think there should be more things to spend your fragments on. Perhaps having different troops to send out? Like a footman/grunt team for 150? Or even a buff to your army like increasing their damage and hp by 5%? Because right now when your mini boss is out, I feel like all the fragments I’m holding on to aren’t serving an actual purpose.

2 Likes
1281

Ashran would certainly need some tweaking in that way, from it’s original design. A common way we’d kill commanders is that the other team would simply be more focused on doing an event, and we would rush the commander. If people are more interested in actually winning the BG, instead of completing a quest to do 4 events + commander, then the design needs to shift.

1282

Alterac Valley

  • The return of the commanders (and their significant HP + damage boost) has done a lot to slow down zerging in the majority of games; if they are backed up they are really powerful. Good stuff!
    – Commander Duffy is currently missing (stationed at SPGY) - this means Horde has one extra commander than Alliance currently.
    – I think making these guys immune to CCs, pet taunts and giving them a Charge ability (that they prefer to use on people capping the flag ;)) would make them even better than their current implementation. Right now I’m seeing people fear or trap them or someone running them down the stairs while they are snared so someone else caps the bunker.

  • The UI changes and quests to encourage people to summon the ultimate units has really shifted mentality - it’s great to see people advocating summoning these guys! Some suggestions:
    – Can we significantly buff the health and damage of the summoners? Killing them to stop the ritual should absolutely be a viable tactic but right now even if you activate them they don’t aid in the push at all and their durability is weak (the druids and shaman have less than 1 million health). They tend to die en route, normally in the first encounter and even with support because of how squishy they are.

  • The trinkets becoming toys is SO GOOD. Can we lower the cooldown? 2 minutes is too long when there is an attempt on your general, especially if they have your graveyard, so you’re probably going to die.

Ashran

  • I’m really enjoying this version of Ashran. I’ve only seen a general killed once in several games. My current thinking is that perhaps 300 reinforcements is too few? It’s about 1.5 pushes into the enemy base before the game ends and in many of those games, another push would have likely ended with the general being killed. Maybe another 100?
2 Likes
1283

Working as intended. Horde aren’t allowed to lose BGs now.

1 Like
1284

Mr. dev person,

Please add back in the “time elapsed” tracker that used to be at the bottom of the bg scoreboard. Removing the timer was unnecessary, that’s a little too much “pruning” in my opinion.

I would like to see my “total honor gained” as well, put that back somewhere on the bg scoreboard too.

I don’t recall any players asking for such prunes to the bg scoreboard? I’m pretty sure most players were fine with the old bg scoreboard?? These are some strange changes mr. dev person :thinking:

1 Like
1285

the x0 for objectives needs to be removed as well, its extra clutter that makes it hard to see how many objectives you actually did.

1 Like
1286

@ Inemia

I’ve done a few normal epics just to see what’s changed… my god you weren’t kidding about these PVE’ers and Mythic raiders :laughing:

What I saw was just laughably bad… I could tell there was lots of bg week people too, what a clown-show :joy: :rofl:

The “regulars” play these epics MUCH better and faster, one AV took forever (almost an hour) because a lot of these guys seemed bent on just PvPing on roads with the first enemy player that ran by. Pretty comical watching 5-6 Mythic-geared dudes dismount to chase down 1 Horde.

These guys seem to think it’s all about PvPing on roads, we didn’t even cap a single tower and still somehow won (which tells me the Horde team was even worse with it’s PvE’ers and bg week people).

1 Like
1288

Fix the vehicle bugs, please. How long must they stay unaddressed?!

2 Likes
1289

The cost of the Ashran quartermaster items needs to be changed. The phantom potion and vintage free action potions should cost fragments instead of marks of honor.

These items just don’t get any use due to costing marks. Even worse is when you buy a few and don’t use them because you didn’t need to. You lose them at the end of the game and don’t get your marks refunded.

Please change the cost of the items to something like 10 fragments each. This is in line with what they used to sell for.

4 Likes
1290

That’s a good suggestion. Honestly I’d be down for the vendor/items to be removed. With the current flow of the modern Ashran compared to the “battle for hours” WoD Ashran, it seems a bit obtuse to return to base.

1291

Some additional feedback for Wintergrasp, in addition to the above:

  • Tower health should be increased, they’re way too squishy
  • Can Sunken Ring and Broken Temple start out as neutral, rather than in defense’s favor? This means that teams will need to split up to contest them, and it means that defense - upon earning enough rank - will not be able to immediately start building vehicles (and thus the snowball effect begins…)
1292

WG is a problem because it’s asymmetrical. It wasn’t designed for both sides to have equal incentive to win. Attacking is supposed to want to win more to open up the raid. So the guilds who want to raid were supposed to team up (before CRZ) and take WG for the faction who currently doesn’t hold it.

The other things are problems as well. But The fact is it wasn’t designed to be a BG. And it fails as a BG.

1293

The bosses you summon in Ashran should have some kind of cooldown on them. It’s sort of silly, when you kill them they are summoned again like 2 minutes later.

Even like forcing players to wait 5 minutes to summon their boss again can stop some of the stalemate.

1294

Any new stuff on the horizon for Epic BGs?

The changes / quality of life improvements are fantastic. The addition of a progress bar for summoning bosses is nice, but what about adding progress bars, or something like them for the other things to summon in AV? For example: Ram Riders, or Wing Commanders.

1295

I think epics need to move away from adding PVE content to a more PVP driven environment (a little is ok but if you want PVE content then PVE in my opinion). More focus addressing the “lack” of PVP in epics. Add PVP oriented objectives stimulating PVP encounters and breaking up the massive Mobs battles that develop which result in Ranged key spamming and melee getting wrecked by AOE which also causes so much lag.

Anyway, there are no bad ideas. This is just my take.

1 Like
1296

Interesting! All of these are excellent steps in the right direction and I hope to see some more progress on them soon. I have to agree with Cicey who put it pretty well in the above post. I think besides the relative shortness of Epic Battlegrounds (in relation to how much larger these battlegrounds are) the number one issue with Epic Battlegrounds right now is there is too much PvE, not enough PvP. Isle of Conquest is shooting a door then killing a boss, Alterac is taking towers then killing a boss. I think the changes that have been implemented will help provide teams with the time necessary to adjust and make a competitive back and forth possible, but there needs to be way more smaller scale but meaningful objectives on the map to incentivize not just more PvP, but proper strategic gameplay as well.

As it stands we only really only have Alterac’s mines and IoC’s Refinery and Quarry to serve as smaller/secondary objectives. What to put instead I’m not entirely certain, maybe take some inspiration from Warfronts here? I’m not sure.

1 Like
1297

im unsure blizz could do anything to the epic bgs to make me want to queue for them.

1298

Just to toss this in off subject of EPics.

But maybe some content that is 20-25 person based.
I think the middle ground could deliver the the benefits of both worlds and designing content to accommodate this could be quite creative and feasible.