Okay, so there are a lot of threads here discussing twinks. The problem is obvious, so I won’t go into much detail here for the interest of not derailing this thread before it gets started. Let me simply offer a solution to the problem we all already know exists.
There ought to be two separate brackets, or “modes” for Battlegrounds PvP.
Casual Mode: All players enter the battleground at the same character level, and with the same item level. This puts the focus more on skill rather than gear*. This will allow xp on players to have a more balanced, though likely not perfect experience in battlegrounds. There would still be no way to make poor players better, and that should obviously not be the goal, nor would there be any real way to prevent players from forming a premade and using teamwork to their advantage. All that would be fixed here is the gear level disparity between hardcore players and casual players.
*One point of clarification I’d like to make is that special gear traits would not, nor should be effected by this. So for example, if you have a weapon that has a special proc or ability, or you use a special trinket that gives your character a benefit of some sort, THAT would not be changed, because those sorts of itemizations are often times indicative of players who are intimately familiar with their class mechanics, are a metric of that player’s skill, and aren’t necessarily unavailable to casual players. But being that the general item level and thus stats that each player has would be comparable, such items would likely give a player a slight edge, it would not give those players such an great advantage that they would be unfair. Like I said, it wouldn’t be a “perfect” solution where say everybody goes in with all the same gear, but it’s better than what we have now.
Competitive Mode: Quite the opposite of casual mode, you go in with what you’ve got. Your character level and gear is just as it is out in the world. This would give a place for twink characters to use their gear to it’s absolute maximum potential without being scaled in any way shape or form. For xp on characters that go in at the beginning of their level bracket with quest gear, they’re likely going to get crushed, but 100% that’s on them.
In both cases, all players would be allowed to participate. There would be no need to segregate xp on and off players from one another. Casual players will get what they want, and twink players will still have a place where they can dominate - maybe even moreso than before. In both cases, level brackets would still be implemented. Competitive BG’s however may necessarily need to be restricted to the smaller maps since there would likely be fewer people queuing up for these. But hopefully as more people begin getting into competitive BG play, the possibility of larger maps like AV could be explored. It’d be interesting to see how a highly organized and structured team would accomplish the objectives in competition with another highly organized and structured team. Strategy, tactics, substitutions, and all those things would likely become important.
An added benefit however, will be that with this kind of set up, there’s the potential that a skill based mode will result in competitive PvP guilds scouting out players who are capable of dominating regardless of their gear level, and recruiting them to see what they’re capable of with some gear. The result from there could be the potential for a highly competitive BG system that Blizzard could potentially use to generate more revenue with through esports. This will generate revenue the same way Arena or Dungeon esports do, and (finally) make BG a main focus of the game.
ahem Blizzard do I have your attention yet?
There is potential financial gain for you by using this system.
One last suggestion I have, is that I believe the level brackets should be on a 1-0 basis instead of 0-9 so people who are at the high end of each bracket get the benefit of their respective class abilities and items available at those levels. Due to the fact that we’re looking at an “all other things being equal” situation for casual characters, and a maximum potential situation for competitive players, rather than what we had with there only being one BG system when the 0-9 structure was put in place, I think it’s fair to say that we can go back to that at this point. As it stands, even with what I’ve proposed, on the casual bracket, you’d still potentially be missing out on certain abilities if you went in at a level premature of gaining certain abilities regardless of whether it’s something available at end bracket, or early. For example, hypothetically and generally speaking: If you’re level 52 and you gain an ability at level 55, then you won’t have access to that ability, regardless of whether you’re in casual or competitive play. Obviously, what I’m proposing would already be a challenge to code into the game without trying to give players abilities they shouldn’t have access to yet.
Thoughts?
![:exploding_head:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/exploding_head.png?v=6" ":exploding_head:")