Why can't we balance teams according to gear?

PVP Battlegrounds
1

A character with 180 ilvl should not be facing a 220 ilvl.

I don’t know how many battlegrounds I’ve joined where my team has several players under 30k hp and the enemy has several players over 40k hp. 10 players times 10k hp is an extra 100k hp to burn through using worse gear having less damage/healing/defense.

At first, I thought it was just me with my crappy gear since I started about halfway through the season. However, once I got decent gear (~195 ilvl with 20% vers) I would still get put with random people who have way less gear than me… why? I should not be grouped with anyone below 190 ilvl or above 200 ilvl.

Sometimes it’s the other way around where my team is the one that has better gear and wow you literarily don’t even have to try in those cases. Regardless, I’m sure players on the under geared team aren’t happy about it.

Why can’t teams be more balanced?

The way it should be is everyone’s ilvl gets added together.

10 players with 220 ilvl = 2200 total ilvl

10 players with 180 ilvl = 1800 total ilvl

Teams should not be facing each other when the ilvl difference is greater than 10 ilvl per person or 100 total ilvl per team

Would the queues be longer? I’m sure, but I’d rather wait 20 minutes for 1 good match where both teams have balanced gear instead of waiting 5 minutes for a match where my team just dies for 15 minutes and gets honor farmed.

5 Likes
2

I was just in the warsong flag room and two rogues came out at me.

One was a little fox and I’m like omg thats so cute!

And they attacked me and attacked me and attacked me and attacked me!

Then they died and I ran down the tunnel!

Love the undergeared guys!

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3

Your proposal to fixing a bad gearing system is to make PVP unplayable in general? Do you people actually put any thought into these posts or what? Lol

Fix the gear issue, don’t make the game suck more.

6 Likes
4

How is having two teams fight each other with equivalent values in gear ilvl unplayable?

Oh wait, you’re one of those players with +220 ilvl. That explains it…

I bet it’s easier to stomp on under geared players than to fight a fair fight with people who have gear around your ilvl

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5

I don’t care about gear, I care about the game, and 20+ minute queues isn’t healthy for the game. I.e. my saying getting rid of gear gap instead of implementing 20 minute queues would be the logical decision.

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6

Yes I agree 20 minute queues aren’t healthy but the current state of the game is worse than that. Most games I’m in if I see I have undergeared teammates I have a better chance of just quitting right then and waiting out the deserter buff rather than stick around and get honor farmed.

I don’t even know how they can fix the gear gap, wouldn’t it be easier to have 2 separate queues, one for +200 ilvl and one for under?

7

If more people are able to casually play the game without getting frustrated, do you really think that will make the queue times longer or shorter? If wow keeps pushing casual players away from its game, what do you think that will do to queue times?

3 Likes
8

Okay, we’ll make this easy. Let’s say there’s X-160, 161-170, 171-180, 181-190, 191-200, 201-210, 211-220, and 221-X brackets (because 10 ilvl is what? 10% stats? So you would have to have that absurd amount of brackets to actually promote fair gameplay). That’s the entire player base broken into 8 groups. Everyone suffers.

Or,… get rid of gear gap, and everyone’s problem is solved with no downside.

I just don’t see the point in asking for change, if you aren’t asking for the best solution.

2 Likes
9

bracketing allows twinking. scaling everyone to the same ilvl has the same benefit of eliminating the gear gap without creating twinks or increasing queue times.

6 Likes
10

I wasn’t suggesting bracketed play, I was suggesting that every team should be properly balanced according to gear.

For example (shortened to just 5 players instead of 10-15 bg numbers for simplicity but same logic can be applied to larger number of players):

Team A
Tank 205
Heal 190
DPS 200
DPS 185
DPS 190

Cumulative ilvl: 970
Average ilvl: 194

Team B
Tank 210 (+5 ilvl difference from other tank)
Heal 185 (-5 ilvl difference from other heal)
DPS 195 (-5 ilvl difference from 3rd dps)
DPS 180 (-5 ilvl difference from 4th dps)
DPS 200 (+10 ilvl difference from 5th dps)

Cumulative ilvl : 970
Average ilvl: 194

Both of these teams are balanced, with each player being within 10 ilvls of the opposing enemy’s ilvl and the cumulative team ilvl match each other.

If we had bracketed play, I think just 2 brackets would work, one where its people under 200 ilvl and one where people are over 200 ilvl. I actually would prefer this method more as it would be easier to implement IMO

I agree that having too many brackets would make it harder to get groups going, but whatever matchmaking formula is currently implemented is really bad and deters new players from playing matches.

1 Like
11

Thing is your system punishes people who are outliers and the system has trouble balancing around. If my friends join a group and we are all 226 ilvl in a 5 man group. How is your system going to realistically going to find a team to match with the same q times?

It would be better to leave the q system the same but change the way gear works in instanced pvp. Downscaling of rated gear is a much better option to try and equalize the gear gaps.

12

You say this… But
A) que times would actually probably go well past 20 minutes. Especially at non peak times. Check out blacklisting as an example of added time due to extra match making parameters.
B) you wouldn’t be happy waiting 30 minutes I assure you. That is an extremely long time. People complain about taking 10 minutes to find some people in lfg and therefore don’t bother. 30 minutes would make even more people quit.

Much simpler solution. Make gearing not suck. Magical solution that’s much easier to do and doesn’t make que times suck.

2 Likes
13

queue times are longer than legion when we had templates ensuring skill not gear won fights

14

this times 100000000

instead of all this crap like matching ilvl and fuarking up the Qs… just fix the ROOT ISSUE

FIX GEAR

it really is that simple.

no need for all this extra stuff to bandaid the garbage gear system… just fix it.

some1 else said it best… u wouldnt change ur shirt if u sh*t ur pants

3 Likes
15

Can’t gear gaps correct themselves simply by people getting more gear?

Maybe people should actually do some rated content instead of opting to be weak. :thinking:

16

Thank you for all the replies, I will try to address them all in one post.

A lot of people don’t like the thought of longer queues and I don’t either. The problem is when I’m facing teams that are overly geared I feel as if I’m just wasting time, which I much rather have spent doing something else in game. In the long run, you would spend more time enjoying the game rather than losing 1/3 matches due to improper balancing.

@Inemia
Don’t know why but I didn’t see your post earlier. I agree with you, when people queue for a random bg they should all be scaled to the same ilvl.

@Kekw
I see your point, the game would change from under geared players getting frustrated to fully geared players who can’t find a match. However, this would give a chance for under geared players to actually get gear, which would lead to a lot more players having 226ilvl, which would make it easy for the game to matchmake your group with another equally geared group.

I like the idea of downscaling gear. Playing random bg’s pre lvl 60 was a lot more fun IMO because everyone had scaled stats and there was never a point I felt I was out geared.

@Nawat
People can queue and do other things in game or tab out of the game and browse the internet etc… I’d prefer playing 1-2 bg’s an hour where I can enjoy the game rather than 4 bg’s in an hour with a high chance of me spending most of my time at the graveyard.

Quality > Quantity

However, I would prefer to play 4 bg’s in an hour instead of just 1 or 2 and certainly agree that gearing should not suck.

@Rdord
I haven’t played legion and I feel I missed a good expansion that actually had balanced pvp.

@Motarro
How do you fix gear? IMO there’s nothing wrong with the gear, it’s the matchmaking that’s broken, putting ranked players against fresh 60’s.

@Spice
Yes that’s true, spend more time get more gear, but regardless of the gear I have there’s always someone on my team that has less gear than me and will drag my whole team down. What should I do in that case? Ask them to leave? Or get everyone to mark them afk so they get booted? How is that fair for that person?

17

Can’t wait until you also complain about 20 minute queue times, lol.

1 Like
18

I think it took me about a month to get a set of pvp gear to 209. Thats a mix of some PVE stuff with versatility on it. Gets me to 20%, which I think is about where you get at 209.

Is a month too long? Is that the problem?

19

Legion templates started off bad, healers were basically unkillable and most people had horribly low haste.

By the end of the expansion nearly every problem with templates had been ironed out and it was remarkably balanced.

Ion said publicly at the time that they were really impressed with just how high random BG participation was. This is significant because for pretty much the entire expansion random BGs were one of the slowest ways to progress your character. Spending all day doing randoms felt like you were falling behind from people doing PVE. Queues were thick and fast and it was rare to see many of the same people from BG to BG.

This includes the existence of blacklists which the delusional blizzard shills here say drastically increase queue times.

In other words, the average player loved templates so much they did BGs purely for the fun of it.

In SL participation has by all accounts fallen off a cliff and queue times have blown out. This is after removing blacklists and making PVP one of the better ways to gear up.

1 Like
20

I dunno if this is what it is. You are presumably queuing at horde. You have twice, sometimes three times the queue wait times as alliance does.

Thats not an indication of people playing, its an indication of one side not queuing for BGs are much as the other side.

Vanilla WOW pvp was basically ppl coordinating CC enough to kill a player or the healer had to go OOM. They added things to help with that, but the formula remains pretty much the same: CC the priority target long enough to kill a player.

Its just a concept not alot of people understand and theres not really an IN GAME guide to help people understand that.