How to Address Premades in Classic Battlegrounds

[Thromkar-westfall]

@Zydax-kromcrush

You deserve to lose if you solo que

Why, because it would hurt you and your team’s feelings to get beat by a pug?

I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again.

@Thromkar-westfall

In a competitive game mode, fairness is mandated by circumstance.

Can you imagine a starcraft II tournament where one player’s units were just inherently stronger than the other player’s?

In some cases, a really great player would be able to overcome a handicap, which is, at least to some extent, what Vanilla PvP was all about: utilizing teamwork to overcome gear discrepancies and the strengths and weaknesses of the various classes to complete objectives.

That said, matchmaking pugs and premades together is like providing 1 player with more basic tech buildings to start the match. He’s getting marines out more quickly, because he doesn’t have to invest the time it takes the other player to construct his barracks.

@Thromkar-westfall

He wins every time, because he can rush the enemy base before the other player’s barracks has even finished construction, and the game feels broken as a result.

This is the point, in development, when we suggest that changes are absolutely necessary to the system which is causing an inequity in the number of barracks’ each player starts with, because it has a profoundly negative impact on the gameplay, resulting in a meta where most of the finer points of the match are never played out.

It’s just 1 player sending his marines to kill the other player before he can even get a single military unit out onto the playing field, and that does’t make for a very interesting game.

@Thromkar-westfall

@Thromkar-westfall

It isn’t the player’s fault, in this case.

It’s the game’s design.
[/quote]

If both players are provided a barracks at the start, then the game is still fair, and the competition isn’t invalidated; it’s just relying upon a different ruleset, where the players are inherently provided a barracks in addition to a command center at the start of the game, which ultimately changes the way the match plays out.

In WoW, there are two separate rulesets which determine how a Battleground team is selected, one allows players to hand pick their own players, the other provides random teams.

Premades facing pugs aren’t playing the game utilizing the same set of rules, which frequently results in situations very much like the Starcraft player being unable to cope with early marines when, despite every effort, all he has is SCVs.

Is it possible your randomly generated team will have a druid, a priest, a paladin/shaman, a warrior, a rogue, a hunter, a warlock and a mage or two?

Absolutely.

It’s also possible you’re going to get 8 warriors and 2 warlocks, and in the random teams rulset, the objective is to still win the game despite not having access to every single one of the class mechanics which would make completing the objective of capturing the flag easier.

When your team composition is random, you have to be more creative in terms of how you intend to complete various objectives. When your class composition has been meticulously constructed to feature every tool you could possibly need, and puts them easily at your disposal, you’re playing an entirely different game.

So yes. You won, because your team was hand picked, while the other team was randomly generated. That doesn’t make you a better or more competitive player, it just means that the premises of the match were built upon circumstances which were inherently unfair to the other team.

@Thromkar-westfall

Pugging is about learning to contend with inherent imperfection in your team makeup and winning anyway by responding appropriately to circumstance on an individual basis.

Premading is about constructing the perfect team composition and executing a coordinated strategy, frequently using inherently more efficient methods of communication.

Both exemplify merit in their own way.

They are both valuable for different reasons; neither one is inherently more valuable than the other. They are both challenging and difficult after their own fashion. The obstacles a player must overcome in order to be successful in each variant are not the same.

But they are not the same gametype.

They rely upon a different set of rules. A pure pug doesn’t belong in the same matchmaking queue as a full premade team and vice versa.

That has always been apparent; it will always be apparent, because that is the nature of the unadulterated truth. That is things as they are – despite partial-ism. Remove yourself from your position, regardless of where you are, and the truth value of that statement remains unchanged.

You might suggest that premade versus premade is an overall more “competitive” experience from the standpoint that pugging cannot, by definition, be standardized.

And that would be a nominally valid claim.

For instance – if you were to hold a formal battleground tournament, you would be hard-pressed to enforce randomized teams, unless you organized it to simply pull a lump sum of players into battleground queues, and over the course of multiple instances, grade their individual win-loss ratio as the sum of the result of every match they participated in.

That would be a pretty wonky system.

But the truth is, WoW, and MMO’s in general don’t make the greatest platforms for competitive gameplay because they are so hard to standardize.

Unlike something like Starcraft, which is inherently standardized by nature (race/unit balance patches not withstanding), MMO’s operate on the basis of individual character power that is constantly shifting in response to a player’s progression through content, and their acquisition of gear upgrades.

Your character’s, and by transience your capabilities as a player change over time; and those power imbalances, in addition to the RNG centric nature of the combat system, result in a game whose competitive premises are very difficult to regulate because of the amount of variance that’s possible.

In the end, MMO’s – WoW, specifically, feels like a game that is played for the purposes of personal enjoyment, and not as a platform for competitive gaming.

Players are attracted to the sense of accomplishment that they associate with increasing the power of their character relative to the world and the other players that populate it; and I don’t see any reason why the game has any genuine exigence to be any more competitive than that.

Winning a pre v pre game certainly has the benefit of prestige and the right to brag – top players from top guilds go head to head – the team that wins is clearly comprised of better players who have worked harder on their characters, and the match results have displayed that so long as there wasn’t any manner of terrain advantage on the map which inherently privleged one side over the other which is infrequently the case.

The point I’m trying to make here is that pugging is fun; and that games are supposed to be about having fun.

The itemized reward might be what draws players toward participation, but the true reward they should receive is having fun.

That’s a video game.

An effort based progression system that allows all players of a game to eventually reach the same plateau of player power ultimately results in a fairer game which allows the best players to shine out the brighter on an inherently level playing field, because that system doesn’t privilege some players over others by providing them with an inherent player-power handicap.

If 2 players play Starcraft, and 1 player’s units are handicapped by 10% of their maximum health, and the unhandicapped player wins, he can hardly suggest he’s legitimately a better player because he was given an inherent advantage.

His bragging rights are diminished to the same extent that the other players’ units were handicapped; but becoming more powerful is also the inherent point of playing an MMO; which is why, I argue, they make a poor choice for standardized competitive models.

Instead of trying to be something it’s not, maybe we can all just agree that playing WoW is something we all enjoy for whatever reason. While there are competitive elements to what we’re doing, ultimately we’re all just working to improve the capabilities of our own characters.

And there legitimately isn’t anything wrong with that.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

@Donkles-bloodsail-buccaneers

No, you’re using circular logic to get a reaction so he’ll stop replying, exactly as you intended.

Except I’m not, his position is that people who seem out easy matches should get no honor. While trying to defend a system that gives his premades easy matches. That the definition of hypocrisy.

[Zydax-kromcrush]

@Thromkar-westfall

Why, because it would hurt you and your team’s feelings to get beat by a pug?

I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again

It’s happened to me, becauae I’m not a ranker. And I don’t care. I pvp for fun, with friends. But you don’t know what’s like because you can’t make any. ITS LITERALLY THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO IN THIS GAME

[Thromkar-westfall]

@Zydax-kromcrush

It’s happened to me, becauae I’m not a ranker. And I don’t care. I pvp for fun, with friends. But you don’t know what’s like because you can’t make any. ITS LITERALLY THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO IN THIS GAME

Premades are not about making friends, man. They’re about stomping pugs.

At this point, everyone knows that. They had to change the freaking scoreboard.

[Corpseknife-mankrik]

Solo queue’rs are playing the game on hard mode if that’s what the rewards should be centered around.

[Donkles-bloodsail-buccaneers]

Oh, I must have imagined you doing the thing you’re clearly doing then. Carry on.

[Zakiri-stalagg]

@Thromkar-westfall

Which is comparing apples to oranges, because not having to look for groups to run dungeons would inherently change the nature of the game; where as battlegrounds feature the option to queue for the content and always have.

It’d completely change the nature of the game- Vanilla WoW was about premades stomping pugs. Premades took considerably less time to get to r14 than solo players because of it, on my server and I’m sure most servers- pretty much everyone above r11 was running premades.

You think making it so solo players and premades are competitive for ranks is not going to change anything?

There’s a reason that when Blizz changed it- bringing out arena/RBG to herd premaders away from pugs, they also made it so the best gear was solely obtained through arena/RBGs.

That’s the compromise Blizz has used for both pvp and pve- casual, pug style pvp/pve rewards signficantly worse gear.

That’s the only way a separation can work- if pug queues have greatly reduced honour gains, or limit you to r10 so you can’t get the purples.

[Thromkar-westfall]

@Zakiri-stalagg

Vanilla WoW was about premades stomping pugs.

no…

Poor child.

No it wasn’t.

[Zydax-kromcrush]

@Thromkar-westfall

Premades are not about making friends, man. They’re about stomping pugs

By that logic all solo queuers are casuals and garbage players who deserve to lose.

[Thromkar-westfall]

@Zydax-kromcrush

By that logic all solo queuers are casuals and garbage players who deserve to lose.

You seem to have systematically forgotten about the inherent advantage that premades have over pugs, which I have explained a multitudinous number of times.

I’d say I’m surprised but…

For the record, here it is again:

@Thromkar-westfall

In a competitive game mode, fairness is mandated by circumstance.

Can you imagine a starcraft II tournament where one player’s units were just inherently stronger than the other player’s?

In some cases, a really great player would be able to overcome a handicap, which is, at least to some extent, what Vanilla PvP was all about: utilizing teamwork to overcome gear discrepancies and the strengths and weaknesses of the various classes to complete objectives.

That said, matchmaking pugs and premades together is like providing 1 player with more basic tech buildings to start the match. He’s getting marines out more quickly, because he doesn’t have to invest the time it takes the other player to construct his barracks.

@Thromkar-westfall

He wins every time, because he can rush the enemy base before the other player’s barracks has even finished construction, and the game feels broken as a result.

This is the point, in development, when we suggest that changes are absolutely necessary to the system which is causing an inequity in the number of barracks’ each player starts with, because it has a profoundly negative impact on the gameplay, resulting in a meta where most of the finer points of the match are never played out.

It’s just 1 player sending his marines to kill the other player before he can even get a single military unit out onto the playing field, and that does’t make for a very interesting game.

@Thromkar-westfall

@Thromkar-westfall

It isn’t the player’s fault, in this case.

It’s the game’s design.
[/quote]

If both players are provided a barracks at the start, then the game is still fair, and the competition isn’t invalidated; it’s just relying upon a different ruleset, where the players are inherently provided a barracks in addition to a command center at the start of the game, which ultimately changes the way the match plays out.

In WoW, there are two separate rulesets which determine how a Battleground team is selected, one allows players to hand pick their own players, the other provides random teams.

Premades facing pugs aren’t playing the game utilizing the same set of rules, which frequently results in situations very much like the Starcraft player being unable to cope with early marines when, despite every effort, all he has is SCVs.

Is it possible your randomly generated team will have a druid, a priest, a paladin/shaman, a warrior, a rogue, a hunter, a warlock and a mage or two?

Absolutely.

It’s also possible you’re going to get 8 warriors and 2 warlocks, and in the random teams rulset, the objective is to still win the game despite not having access to every single one of the class mechanics which would make completing the objective of capturing the flag easier.

When your team composition is random, you have to be more creative in terms of how you intend to complete various objectives. When your class composition has been meticulously constructed to feature every tool you could possibly need, and puts them easily at your disposal, you’re playing an entirely different game.

So yes. You won, because your team was hand picked, while the other team was randomly generated. That doesn’t make you a better or more competitive player, it just means that the premises of the match were built upon circumstances which were inherently unfair to the other team.

@Thromkar-westfall

Pugging is about learning to contend with inherent imperfection in your team makeup and winning anyway by responding appropriately to circumstance on an individual basis.

Premading is about constructing the perfect team composition and executing a coordinated strategy, frequently using inherently more efficient methods of communication.

Both exemplify merit in their own way.

They are both valuable for different reasons; neither one is inherently more valuable than the other. They are both challenging and difficult after their own fashion. The obstacles a player must overcome in order to be successful in each variant are not the same.

But they are not the same gametype.

They rely upon a different set of rules. A pure pug doesn’t belong in the same matchmaking queue as a full premade team and vice versa.

That has always been apparent; it will always be apparent, because that is the nature of the unadulterated truth. That is things as they are – despite partial-ism. Remove yourself from your position, regardless of where you are, and the truth value of that statement remains unchanged.

You might suggest that premade versus premade is an overall more “competitive” experience from the standpoint that pugging cannot, by definition, be standardized.

And that would be a nominally valid claim.

For instance – if you were to hold a formal battleground tournament, you would be hard-pressed to enforce randomized teams, unless you organized it to simply pull a lump sum of players into battleground queues, and over the course of multiple instances, grade their individual win-loss ratio as the sum of the result of every match they participated in.

That would be a pretty wonky system.

But the truth is, WoW, and MMO’s in general don’t make the greatest platforms for competitive gameplay because they are so hard to standardize.

Unlike something like Starcraft, which is inherently standardized by nature (race/unit balance patches not withstanding), MMO’s operate on the basis of individual character power that is constantly shifting in response to a player’s progression through content, and their acquisition of gear upgrades.

Your character’s, and by transience your capabilities as a player change over time; and those power imbalances, in addition to the RNG centric nature of the combat system, result in a game whose competitive premises are very difficult to regulate because of the amount of variance that’s possible.

In the end, MMO’s – WoW, specifically, feels like a game that is played for the purposes of personal enjoyment, and not as a platform for competitive gaming.

Players are attracted to the sense of accomplishment that they associate with increasing the power of their character relative to the world and the other players that populate it; and I don’t see any reason why the game has any genuine exigence to be any more competitive than that.

Winning a pre v pre game certainly has the benefit of prestige and the right to brag – top players from top guilds go head to head – the team that wins is clearly comprised of better players who have worked harder on their characters, and the match results have displayed that so long as there wasn’t any manner of terrain advantage on the map which inherently privleged one side over the other which is infrequently the case.

The point I’m trying to make here is that pugging is fun; and that games are supposed to be about having fun.

The itemized reward might be what draws players toward participation, but the true reward they should receive is having fun.

That’s a video game.

An effort based progression system that allows all players of a game to eventually reach the same plateau of player power ultimately results in a fairer game which allows the best players to shine out the brighter on an inherently level playing field, because that system doesn’t privilege some players over others by providing them with an inherent player-power handicap.

If 2 players play Starcraft, and 1 player’s units are handicapped by 10% of their maximum health, and the unhandicapped player wins, he can hardly suggest he’s legitimately a better player because he was given an inherent advantage.

His bragging rights are diminished to the same extent that the other players’ units were handicapped; but becoming more powerful is also the inherent point of playing an MMO; which is why, I argue, they make a poor choice for standardized competitive models.

Instead of trying to be something it’s not, maybe we can all just agree that playing WoW is something we all enjoy for whatever reason. While there are competitive elements to what we’re doing, ultimately we’re all just working to improve the capabilities of our own characters.

And there legitimately isn’t anything wrong with that.

[Donkles-bloodsail-buccaneers]

The inherent advantage that everyone has access to? That one? The one you don’t want to use, so you think no one should?

[Zakiri-stalagg]

@Thromkar-westfall

no…

Poor child.

No it wasn’t.

Yup, delusional child, yes it was.

Perhaps you lucked out on your Vanilla server, but mine was riddled with premades- and guess what, the people in those premades were all in the r11+ area around ZG launch if they put in the effort.

The people who were solo queuing were only r11 plus if they were spending 14+ hours a day pvping, which was considerably longer than the premades had to spend to stay above them in honour.

[Zydax-kromcrush]

@Thromkar-westfall

You seem to have systematically forgotten about the inherent advantage that premades have over pugs

I haven’t forgot. It’s an advantage you choose not to take. Not everyone who forms groups does it to farm honor. If you can’t understand that then idk what to tell you

[Donkles-bloodsail-buccaneers]

Has linking your thesis statement ever worked? Like, even once?

Putting the same bad argument up every time someone disagrees doesn’t make it a good argument, you know.

[Thromkar-westfall]

@Zydax-kromcrush

I haven’t forgot. It’s an advantage you choose not to take.

It’s an advantage I don’t have access to, and furthermore would never choose to take if taking part in a premade means pugstomping for my benefit to the detriment of the players I stomp upon.

I’m not doing them a kindness, and I don’t deserve reward for participating in the game like that.

[Zydax-kromcrush]

@Thromkar-westfall

I’m not doing them a kindness, and I don’t deserve reward for participating in the game like that.

Then classic not for you.

[Thromkar-westfall]

@Zydax-kromcrush

Then classic not for you.

Perhaps not; but I find it interesting that Vanilla was.

How did that happen?

[Donkles-bloodsail-buccaneers]

Probably because you’ve grown and changed as a person over 15 years, and can recognise the aspects of bad design much better now.

(I’m referring to the ranking system here; not premade vs pugs).

[Thromkar-westfall]

Or… Perhaps… there have been changes to the game that I don’t support, and separating premades from being matchmade against pugs feels like the best solution to the problem which I perceive prevents Classic from authentically emulating Vanilla.

You’re trying to suggest that the game I love, which featured engaging objective oriented PvP, has been reduced to a holocaust simulator; the objective of which is to systematically murder the maximum amount of players in the shortest amount of time.

And that this is “the meta” and what the game was always all about.

I played the game since 2005. This is absolutely not what the game was always all about.

[Zydax-kromcrush]

@Thromkar-westfall

Perhaps not; but I find it interesting that Vanilla was.

How did that happen?

Because you’re 15 years older and don’t have as much patience as you did back then. Same way I loved world pvp in vanilla, I hate it now, so I avoid it at all costs. If my guild falls apart, I’ll transfer to a pve server. Same way people thought MC and dungeons were hard

You thought you did, but you didn’t.