There’s been a lot of swirl lately about premades within the PvP community - whether that be AV or in the smaller battlegrounds. The crux of the issue appears to be that playing against premades as a pug is, simply put, not fun. It’s not engaging to play as a premade against a pug (STOP THE LEAKERS FARM THEM ON THE PAD 8 MINUTE WINS OR KICK), and it is especially not fun to be on the receiving end of that situation either.
I know the honor grind is hard. It’s long, and it’s tempting to abuse the ability to always win by premading. Nobody enjoys getting bodied while your character is still gearing up.
I think that correct fix is to only allow premades to play against other premades. This would ensure that battlegrounds remain competitive (both sides should have roughly = chances of winning) and allow premade vs premades (which are INCREDIBLY fun) to occur.
Guys, I know we all want our honor. I’ve seen other games suffer tremendously from this sort of mechanic, though. You can’t get new players interested in pvp if 50% of the time, they get absolutely stomped against a coordinated team. It leads to the decline of PvP and scares a lot of people away from trying it.
This game has a large enough population that premades should nearly always have another premade to play against. I do not see why blizzard should allow full teams to relentlessly stomp the unfortunate pugs on the other team. I also don’t think Blizzard should realistically stop 15 people from queuing up against teams of 15 other people to really test their mettle.
I think you severely overestimate how many premades are hoping to face other premades for the challenge.
Much like how introducing XP to BGs and making locked XP toons into their own bracket decimated twinking, a lot of players are just in it to stomp pugs. Take that away, and plenty of premade teams just die out, and then premade queues are always going to be obscenely long. Unless they full on introduce RBGs, most of the current premades won’t find the “challenge” worth it.
If people are playing premades with the express purpose to stomp pugs… I really don’t know what to say. That’s pretty lame.
I will say that when I have premaded, it seems like the game expressly avoids placing premades against one another. But as soon as you join that pug queue…
premade
premade
premade
Maybe don’t disallow it then, but make the game favor putting premades against premades. There’s no reason the game should say “lets put johnny green gear and his 12 scrubs with no healer vs. a stacked team with the perfect composition”, while simultaneously putting a full healer team against a different premade. the BG would be more enjoyable for everyone if the two pug teams fought each other and the two premade teams fought each other. This is literally a solved problem in other blizzard games. Overwatch, StarCraft both favor putting premade teams against other premade teams rather than pugs vs premades.
Bad luck can always happen, and individuals may experience short-term bursts of unfortunate results. But if there was any form of basic matchmaking, everyone would be having more fun.
If the same group of players continuosly signs up and gets above a 95% winrate (I’ve seen premades advertising with 36-2 winrates), they need to be given tougher challenges.
There is definitely some form of matchmaking. I doubt if it is “basic,” but it exists, at least according to blue posts, where they refer to the algorithm as
This is good. I’m all for premades still being allowed to play with other premades. I think ultimately is should be done exactly like horde vs horde BGs however. Any premade can face any other premade. The problem is however that this also ultimately locks the queue into 5 or less or a full bg amount. You can’t play as 12 because there are no 3 other people to fill the rest of the game out.
I think what would likely happen is that full premade games would die out anyways. Most people join those not for the competition but because it’s the best honor per hour. Thus the whole “not in it for the competition” vibe. I saw so many premade teams just give up in classic vanilla when they thought they couldn’t win just so they could get out faster and farm honor that I doubt anything has changed for tbcc.
What if instead of premade vs premade, the matchmaker when matching a group vs a premade would prioritize:
a premade
an optimal group composition of individuals and/or parties who have won their past n BGs
an optimal group composition of individuals and/or parties
etc…
in that order…
I feel like I’ve had at least as many wins against premades as I have had ROFL Stomp losses, while pugging BGs. And a fair amount of everywhere in between.
Of course, I always play classes that can have a large individual impact on the outcome of a BG, like mage, warrior or healer.
I think that would be great in theory but something that blizzard would horrifically screw up in practice. I can see something like that making for horrible wait times trying to find the right people. Also it’s just very hard to make it even for even the right team comp team Vs. a premade. Fast, easy communication is just a huge benefit.
At that point you would make it so that the only premade teams who would form would be the ultra sweaty and perfect or near perfect team comps. Which would still make it horrible for the pugs.
Honestly, out of the many BGs I’ve played, I can honestly say I’ve never seen a full premade lose to a pug. Maybe I’m unlucky or not skilled enough to carry, but the fact is that having a premade group levies an incredible advantage that a pick up group should not be forced to overcome.
Imagine the LA Lakers going to Albuquerque and stomping the elementary intramural team.
If the lakers want to play, they should play other teams of their caliber, not stomp kids just trying to have fun.
I’ve seen premades lose to pugs. But those premades were honestly very bad, had terrible gear, didn’t use consumables and even then it was few and far between.
As for this statement then I would say that you either have played very few games or selective memory is playing a large part. I played an elemental shaman in classic vanilla and I play a resto druid now. I have/had fantastic gear on both of them and I often shotcall. While being semi modest I can tell you that I understand the game very well. Most games are not decided by the single or the best five players but by the worst or the worst five players. There is no amount of shot calling that will make those people stop fighting on roads or go back to defend a flag in ab they ghosted.
A Teammate: “Oh, it’s a premade. Don’t res everyone. Let them cap.”
Me: “C’mon guys. We can do this! Let’s go!”
A Teammate: “Did you see that insane mage run the flag to mid, then get 2 shot! That let me pick it up and cap. We got this!”
I just want to reiterate that this is a solved problem. Blizzard has implemented this sort of matchmaking system before, and heck, even a hidden ELO rating for battlegrounds would be an awesome way to help balance these games out.
There is in-game voice chat in WoW Classic and TBC Classic. I’m not sure when it first launched. It may have been the Wrath pre-patch. It may have been earlier, but it’s been in the game for a very long time.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. There is not an in game voice available now. Nor would people want to listen to some random person breathe into their mic or some adolescent squeak. There is a fundamental difference in random people speaking to each other and a team from the same server.