Most of issues here are correct, but the most glaring one is missing - severe lack of communication.
As an example we can take latest set of tuning changes - it entirely seems that they were holding them off till AWC would end, but there was not even a hint about that, they just waited and then announced them at the end of post-AWC week. Even though if they would announce that directly there would still be people complaining about that, that is still much better than radio silence that made many people feel neglected (and they were) and just drop the game. Even though now there are some steps in right direction, many of these people won’t come back simply because they know that similar can happen again.
As such, Blizzard should finally learn that if they have some changes planned that can preserve playerbase or fix current issues, they should announce them early or explain their reasoning, not just stay silent till these are about to be implemented. They would face some negativity posted in replies to these announcements, but prevent much bigger negativity in the end.
Their second big issue is some reverse attitude to balancing. When there are specs that just need some adjustments or tuning of separate abilities, they slam them with a nerf hammer (like 25% nerf to all damage of Enhancement Shamans that happened not that long ago). When there are severe outliers like current Demon Hunter and shuffle lobbies with 2-3 DHs are quite common, they tune them with small “wrist slaps” with also several weeks / months passing between these tunings. The idea of tuning multiple times with low value changes till the specs get in decent state is actually a correct approach, but only if 1) tuning is frequent and consistent (and it is not lately) and 2) if the spec is not a major outlier, as in such case bigger measures should be taken and quickly enough, as otherwise by the time the spec is brought in line season is already kinda ruined and many players drop the game (pretty much what happened in Season 3). Such approach should be reversed instead - major outliers should be addressed quickly and efficiently and other classes should be tuned consistently and incrementally.
Only thing I disagree with is limiting premade casual unranked BGs.
It’s a tough sell when we’re talking about unranked casual BGs not allowing you to group with friends.
Not really sure how you could “fix” it. Even if you limited it to solo que, the same process of queuing at the same time would still be possible.
The vote to end idea is tough. So many players have moved to a few big servers that it’s easily possible to see a team mostly from the same server without actually being a premade.
Nothing we can say when they won’t even fix fundamentally broken systems like the sync queue problem. They won’t even say whether it’s a bug or feature, which to me implies they know it’s wrong but don’t intend to fix it. Reduced investment and demand for the continuance of profitability, I don’t imagine it will get better anytime soon.
Really interesting to see which topics it focused in on. Not 100% accurate but also pretty darn close, I personally find chat GPT terrifying. Thanks for sharing that.
You’re totally right, I wanted to focus more on the mechanics of the issues but now that you mention it, I think the real reason I didn’t even consider adding this is because I consider that to be such a huge ask for them and so alien to their current philosophy that it simply would never happen. With that said I am going to edit that into the post. Thank you for your contribution.
I totally agree that it is a tough sell since so many players including myself actually enjoy queing Premade casual BGs and Epics. I’m not huge on the vote to end idea either, on its own it really does almost nothing to combat the issues and I only threw it up there as more of a (if you guys won’t do anything at the very least do this, kind of deal)
I’d like to point out that as awesome and fun as these premades are, RBGs do exist for queing with friends. That said the comment below yours, and many of the other comments throughout this post and several other Forum posts reflect that the damage being done to the pvp community as a whole is causing an already struggling system further strain and quite literally causing lots of pvp players to not que bgs anymore. More players would fix lots of the problems we have in pvp currently.
They did tackle the premade issue in WoW Classic and most of the Communities seem fine.
The suggestions that I really feel would help, and I’d love for your feed back on them, I mentioned here in the Possible Solutions tab, at the very bottom of the Eliminate Premade BGs tab.
A solution such as this would preserve almost entirely the spirit of what these premades are fulfill the community desire to participate in better coordinated groups on a non-rated level. This solution isn’t perfect but I think it would be a great start.
Remove horde/alliance restriction completely and fill each side randomly with players from each faction.
If 2 horde groups of 5 people each Que at the same time in hopes of creating a 10 man premade, they can end up fighting each other instead of always being on the same side.
This would also help immensely with Que times. Taking the first x amount of people instead of needing people from horde and ally to Que.
This would destroy premades almost instantly. You may get 40 people with the same Que pop but you have no way to see if you are on the same side before entering the BG
This would still allow for 5 man groups to Que but the odds of getting multiple 5 man groups to get the same Que pop AND be on the same side would be drastically low
That would absolutely work, and I actually love the idea of that as a fix from a functional stand point.
Personally, I love the Horde v Alliance dynamic and it would pain me to see it go. I know lots of other people feel different and don’t really care. The sad thing is, that Blizz let it get to a point now where functionally one of the best things for PvP might be to do away with the MMO aspect of it that made it what it is (Factions) and if routine maintenance had been kept up with and exploits had been monitored and struck down on sight it would never even be on the table.
At the end of the day I want what’s best for the game so if they decided not to put in the extra work of finding some other way I’d accept it. But I would want them to include an option to abandon my faction.
What you recommended would work for sure, I just don’t want it to have to come to that, and I hope there’s some other way they can fix the Premade situation without having to destroy them completely, because the players have spoken they not only -don’t want to be stomped by premades constantly but they also want to be able to que with full unrated groups of their friends in 40v40.
oh no I’ve seen this movie, it starts with Cyberdine slowly taking over and ends with Terminators, then next thing you know we’re in pods, plugged into some matrix and realizing why everything tastes like chicken…
Yeah and we’ve already had mercenary mode for years so the days of muh faction pride are over.
Reducing premades would definitely be a big plus.
But the effect on Que times would also be drastic. Would likely be nearly instant.
It would also make balancing healers on each side easier.
Having 10+ min Que times is a bigger killer of PvP for me personally. If Que times went back down to 1-2 min I think more people would PvP.
I think people would initially be against the change simply bcuz horde and alliances. But the results would speak for themselves having 30 sec Que times and better balanced teams.
I know balance in pvp is laughable, and even more so at low levels, but i want to bring attention to the level 10-20 and 20-30 brackets.
Scaling at these brackets is broken due to warlords warforging gear. Since blizz allowed new player accounts to queue with everyone, xp off level 20s are dominating bgs with what seems to be an oversight in scaling gear. Even in other level brackets, people are using party exploits to queue in a psuedo xp off state bypassing the restriction that xp off can only queue into xp off.
I know twinking has existed since the beginning, but the way scaling interacts with warforging and the xp off exploits just make it unfair.
The results would definitely speak for themselves and I’m not totally against it. I really do wish Blizz would have taken action on these issues sooner since losing so many players impacted the scene substantially. Or that they would would do a complete 180 right away so that removing faction oriented teams would never become necessary but we are edging ever closer to it and if it has to be that way then so be it.
Thank you so much for pointing this out, I will be making an additional tab on the post to draw attention to this, I had heard about this issue but forgot about it since I nearly never que in those brackets.
You’re most welcome! And thank you and everyone here for contributing to this thread, please stop by now and again to keep it alive, because it was linked in a Community Council Forum post perhaps on day Blizzard will actually drop in and check it out!
We’ve discussed similar solutions but the concern is that some of the groups sync for easy victories and to farm HKs so they would sync in the solo queue. I’d like it available to help the communities to transition to not being able to queue against randos but I don’t think it’s a fix to the fundamental concern of premade vs pug.
A lot of people feel that eliminating factions would solve it since you can alternate 5 man groups so premades would fight themselves but the concern there is win-trading which might be worse since if you’re on the wrong side you would have even less chance to contribute enough for a win.
I think the solution is something similar to how BG blitz works but with hidden MMR and a fundamental change in rewards’ structure away from highlander style. With strict premade matching people can still queue to only have their faction on their team but their queues might take a little longer.
Bumping as well. PVP has been a pain, especially this expansion. It’s a terrible experience and if I didnt have a guild/friends to play with, I would of dropped this game already. Even PVE is better in other MMOs than here (in my opinion, I know its not true for everyone.)
Hidden MMR would result in more coordinated groups which would satiate that need but they still wouldn’t be able to que with their friends in the communities they’ve built.
I’m curious to learn more about how they got rid of the premades in WoW Classic. I wonder if Communities are still syncing que times as individuals, I’ll ask around and do some research. If they are, I don’t think it would ever be effective enough to make a note worthy difference, no more than 5 man teams which really aren’t a problem.
If split faction ques dissolved I don’t think any level of coordination with que syncing could result in consistent enough results to warrant the effort needed to win trade, but I could be wrong, the spaghetti coding in WoW is complex.
I think increasing the number of players allowed to que into an epic from 5 to 8 or 10 would be fine if they do whatever they did in Classic to stop que sync. But also in conjunction creating a system where groups with 20 players or more are automatically linked to a separate que where they go against another premade. Pair that with a hidden MMR like you mentioned and we might be cooking, but it’s still hard to say. I’d like to get the opinion of a Blizzard Dev who understands more about the spaghetti code to chime in so we can get a clearer picture of how to fix this. Thanks for contributing to the post!
I’ve always said, in what game can you be an Orc, or a Troll and kill Dwarves and Elves in open battle in an MMO? As a Paladin, or Mage or Druid, there’s no other game that corners fantasy roleplay pvp like WoW does and comes close to having it balanced. WoW has never really been balanced and nothing needs to be perfect but It’s obvious they aren’t trying. I’d like to see them try because I think if they did they could make this 1 of a kind product truly legendary. Thanks for contributing to the post!
