Never give too much control to the players. Allowing two healers to queue together while limiting teams to two healers opens the door to easier match manipulation.
The scheme is to have two “throwaway” healers queue together while q-syncing with another healer, who will be guaranteed to be on the opposite side if they get into the same match. The two throwaway healers can then throw the match to assist the “booster/boostee” healer and whoever they are queued with.
It will be difficult for a team to win when their two healers are throwing the match and healers can throw matches in very subtle ways. The healers would not be in the same guild or server so it would be very hard to notice an intentional throw.
This was our first and only attempt to q-sync and we were able to get into the same match in perhaps 5 minutes or so via dropping queue prompts manually. We were able to do this at primetime on reset night (Tuesday). Maybe we got lucky, but I’m not going to put my account at risk trying to test Blizzard’s system to see how reliably this can be done. It’s enough to know that it can be done.
I recorded this so I could offer it as PROOF OF CONCEPT.
Notice how we were able to know we had the same map before getting in it by looking at the number of people accepting the queue. We did this manually, but this could probably be automated as well to detect if you get the queue prompt at the same time and have the same number of people accepting at the same time.
Suggestions:
Do not allow two healers to queue together. This makes it easier to q-sync matches and guarantee placement on the teams for a boosting scheme.
Add some kind of time gate punishment for people who repeatedly drop and re-enter queues and perhaps a random time element to the queue process. Anything to make it more difficult to do this.
If you are wondering about MMR. Healers seem to be operating under a pretty forgiving MMR range and boosters just use a fleet of alts at different MMR ranges in order to boost. Playing at off-times also helps to fix the matches in.
When BG blitz is rated and MMR is stricter, this might work for one or two matches before the MMR difference between the winning/losing group is too big. Obviously losing on purpose is still against the rules, but I’m not worried about it being a common thing. At very high ratings there might be the occasional wintrade/RMT for rewards, but hopefully blizz can detect that somehow and issue bans like they do for arena.
For casual players, yes. But, for people that make a living doing this they have an entire fleet of alts at different MMR ranges that they just match up with whoever they are trying to do the match manipulation for.
This is similar to the prot paladin method of boosting in RSS. Ever see someone on check-pvp with 1400, 1600, 1800, 2000, 2200 rating on the same exact class? I have.
Even if it didn’t help people do q sync BS, I don’t think two healers duo queued into a match on the same team was the intent/spirit of Blizzard’s rules for BG Blitz.
So, a sample size of one. That’s good. Very reliable.
That said, watching the video, I noticed a few things that could help to hamper syncing in Blitz - wo fiddling around w a feature that is a draw for Healers:
Stagger the pop. I don’t mean stagger the Q, but stagger the initial pop w an RNG delay. This will throw syncers off, seeing as they can’t just ask in voice, “Did your Q pop?”
Stop showing the player count. That’s not necessary, and just makes it easier to sync when you can double check if the numbers are the same.
Little changes like this, along w an actual working MMR would make syncing Blitz a nightmare.
Healer/Healer - or Healer/Anything, mind you - isn’t the problem. I think this just goes back to ppl not liking the fact that Healers can +1 a Blitz. It just burns their rump. Nobody has even tried to understand why the devs have implemented this feature. If they did, they wouldn’t be so inclined to tamper w it.
Healer/Healer basically makes an instant team, what w all the DPS in Q. Getting rid of that is basically asking for Q times to go up, seeing as Healer/DPS and Healer/Tank aren’t filling the two required Healer slots (4 in total). It’s not even Rated yet, and ppl are already making terrible suggestions.
In summary: I think ppl are blowing this way out of proportion. It’s not going to be as prevalent as you’re pretending. Honestly, it looks like a complete pain.
Secondly, who the heck is going to pay for a Blitz boost?! Why not just go w “Ol’ reliable,” and buy an Arena boost? It’d take you way less time to achieve your rating goals in 2s than trying to sync Q Blitz for 2-3 weeks.
This is up there w shape-shifting lizard people, IMO.
Yeah. They’re called, “Alts” - and you’re being overly suspicious. Some PVP players make multiples of the same class/spec so they can play w different ppl and their alts. This is not surprising. It doesn’t automatically make them a “Booster.”
Authentic engagement on social media is at an all time low. The opposite has actually surpassed it due to professionals, at it. See what I said there.
Oozo you have kept it real out here for years.
FF to our current game it does seem like the new powas that be are trying to filter out things in this game which undermine the integrity of it.
Lets be frank about it, Blizzard has made billions from Net Bookings.
Which coincide with how most PVE/PVP carries are marketed to its players.
Solo Battlegrounds sounded great until there was mention of Duo queues inside of them. Its pretty clear how financially this will benefit the business side of things, heck it’s pretty much what this game has been about since its birth.
If we are trying to shift PVP in this game to an authentic mode, DUOs under the guise of “we need more healers in queue” seems truthful but also leans into the aforementioned.
If we search “Gurubashi Catacombs” for the wiki page, take a look at the old school photo of what they learned from this never released game mode. Post the photo for the interesting bullet points would be cool too. It seems that this is somewhat what plagues Healers/Matches even now, many years later.
First time hearing about that. Interesting. So, this was the precursor to arena. It was 5v5 based and if anyone remembers 5v5 was actually considered the “main” arena format when it was released originally.
Early into beta testing, the Gurubashi Catacombs battleground was canceled because it was too big, preventing players from finding each other easily, and it didn’t appeal to them. Class balance was also a problem, with spell casters dying quickly. At the time, the developers felt it would have required fundamental class revisions to bring the battleground into balance.[1]
Blizzard stated they learned six things from the Gurubashi Catacombs:
Objectives are key to the core gameplay of battlegrounds.
Arena idea was cool, but battlegrounds play differently.
Arena maps need to be small which Gurubashi was not.
WoW isn’t a First Person Shooter.
Deathmatch doesn’t work as well in WoW PvP.
It’s not fun being the healer in Single Elimination DM
The last point came to mind while solo queue development was announced/underway, should have shared it long ago. What I found awesome was how the boardroom screen pic looks to be pre camera phone era, like corner store disposable camera levels hehe. Super cool though, its like ancient hieroglyphics. Which years later are still valuable lessons.
Thank you sir.
Yeah. As I said, I’m not going to test reliability from doing this repeatedly when it could put my account at risk even though this is the “test phase” for BG Blitz.
That said, having success on a first attempt at doing this in around 5 minutes is a bad sign.
I already made the suggestion of RNG stagger on the process. Also, put an increasing time gate on people who repeatedly drop queues within a given period of time.
Oh, dropped queue? 1 minute time gate until you queue again.
Oh, dropped queue again? 5 minute time gate until you queue again.
Repeat. Just make it as painful as possible to even try to sync queues.
Healer/healer queue puts way too much control into the hands of the players, IMO. They could decide to throw just to grief and it would have more impact than it just being a healer and DPS doing it.
However, I think time gates and RNG time added to the process could be enough to squash queue sync attempts.
A simple solution for this is to make it so once a queue pops to enter, if you drop it you lose personal rating. You have plenty of time to decide not to enter the match by cancelling while waiting in queue. But once it pops, you either enter or cancel and lose rating.
Not that hard. And not really that punishing for honest players.
But if that is too much, then make it so if the “average” wait time is 6 minutes, then make it safe to cancel the queue if it pops up to enter within those 6 minutes. But if it pops after those 6 minutes and you cancel, then you lose rating. This seems more fair because people see the average wait time and assume it will take that long. So they do other things while waiting and might cancel the pop up to enter because they were expecting 6 min. But after the 6 min, there is no excuse. You lose rating for the pop up to enter.
The 6 min was just an arbitrary number. Obviously the average queue time can be longer or shorter. But you should NOT be able to cancel the pop up to enter after the average wait time passed.
And again, you can cancel anytime you want, just not once the pop tells you to enter… especially after the average wait time has been met.
That is too harsh. There are legitimate reasons to miss a queue. They collect data. They should be able to sniff out patterns of behavior fairly easily. Or just punish that type of repeated behavior with an automated system, up front.
Not once it pops… after the average wait time has been met. You have tons of time to cancel the queue. That’s the key. Once the average wait time has passed you can’t cancel the pop up to enter. You can still cancel waiting in queue though. Just not the pop up to enter. That would solve this type of cheating.
And the amount of times that happens compared to the amount of times you’ll end up losing to queue sync cheats… which do you think will happen more often at higher rating with fewer people available to fill the queues?
My bet is on the queue sync cheats.
If whatever comes up is that important, the least of your worries will be losing a few rating points in a meaningless game.
