Well it may be, possibly is, but I think the pertinent point is to ask: how do you stop it? Can Blizzard watch every group that forms for every bg, and even if they could, how could they tell if its orchestrated? That’s my point, that saying it is bad and stopping it happening are two different things.
Blizzard doesn’t control Discord or any other offgame communication system. Figuring out who is ‘cheating’ I imagine is damnably hard.
Well, they could start with the groups that very actively and openly do it.
I put a list on another thread of ideas, and have tried to steer things that way in the past will find it and bring it over.
Again, how do you tell? It could be happening on a multitude of alts and on a variety of accounts.
If I were to guess, I’d say they don’t like it. They may even be working on ways to create some type of workaround, I’m not a software person I dunno how they’d do it. Perhaps an example might be that players would be limited to how many times they can do battlegrounds on an account in a specific timeframe. So if you are a player feeding these groups, you couldnt alt hop but would have to wait X amount of time to queue. Obviously that would disadvantage everyone and wouuldn’t be ideal.
Here is the list from another thread.
There are a number of fixes Blizzard could implement.
I think do 1 first, see if it levels out, then 2 and see if that levels it out. If it doesn’t take more extreme measures.
These people have guilds and recruit in wow. Some also live stream them doing it. Plus just look for people that have an above 90% winrate in all epic bg’s lol
Reading is fundamental. “Bud”, Do better.
I was agreeing with you and parroting what the trolls were saying to you gaslighting the real issue (the countdown exploit).
But I see you have 2000 some odd posts here, so you are prolly just like them.
It’s much more than just a countdown now. They are using addons that automates everything for them. They won’t admit it, but I watched Inemia doing it and they never once did a countdown.
It’s less about actions they should take on players and more so about actions they can take to fix the problem.
They don’t need to suspend or ban anyone. Just fix the issue, which is syncing queues to begin with. Many have put together potential ways they could fix it, including cross faction queueing.
Unless they get punished, they will continue to find ways around the system. Idk why people are excusing this behavior.
How do you watch for groups doing it?
They could watch for people repeatedly skipping queues. Put together systems that watch for multiple 5 mans that all drop queue at the same time. Things like that. Remember Blizzard has access to logs that show literally everything people are doing in game. They can make processes that watch for specific patterns and use that to flag people and groups.
Then someone watches their communication and what they are doing and possibly bans them. Same sort of stuff they do for botting.
Tht is true but I assume its something that requires research. I mean I dunno, Im not a software person but even for basic searches you have to key in certain things and that takes time. And then what, do you punish everyone who drops a queue? Or happens to accept a queue at the same moment? I really don’t think its that simple.
And how do you watch their communications if its done through a separate system beyond Blizzard’s control?
What I am saying is, I don’t believe it is as simple a thing to do as people are suggesting, because if it was, they’d be doing it by now. My feeling is that if they are doing anything, its going over choices and options of what they can do in the game to limit the impact. Sure, you can say, its against the rules, but when has that ever stopped anyone who thinks they can get away with it? And how do you stop them getting away with it?
Its interesting that this post was made on the topic back in 2012 by a Blizzard community manager:
Quote: if you break it down, what does a full oQueue premade bring to the table that is unfair?
I’ll try to break it down as clearly as I can:
Any addon that enables a full, organized Battleground group to queue against a randomly assembled group is creating a scenario where that coordinated group has a huge advantage. That is not in the spirit of the experience we want to provide in the normal Battleground queue. Playing with friends is fun and important, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of the spirit of the game nor the fun of others.
The normal Battleground queue is for players to jump in and play against other players in a similar situation. We realize that it’s not a perfect system, and we’re still looking at ways to improve normal Battleground queues further. Regardless, it’s not meant for organized groups to “pug stomp” and get quick Honor. We have built in outlets for players that want to organize–if a competitive, social experience was really the goal, then there are clear ways to achieve that.
The ultimate effect that this kind of queuing has had is to drive players away from PvP. Perhaps it’s been a long time since you’ve been in a random group, but a lot of players will see that they’re up against a premade and simply quit. At best, they suffer through it. To an extent premade groups count on this. Heck, one of the popular addons announces opposing players that appear to have rage quit.
Addons aren’t really a viable solution for botting issues, but we do take those issues seriously and we’ll continue our work on improvements to the Battleground system, including better ways to deal with botting and other exploitative gameplay.
Obviously they were talking about add ons but the response is still quite informative.
I run a computer consulting company. They have all the access and the data, they can monitor whatever they want.
In simplistic terms. Everything you do in the game is don through the equivalent of a database. You characters location is just a set of numbers that gets updated as you send commands to the server. There is a system call netcode that does some mathmatical trickery to make the lag lower but that is about it.
So if 40 people all queue up at once, within a second of each other once, and all are in 5 man groups, and they all drop queue and requeue multiple times…you could make a system to watch for that with a number of parameters. Remember all of the this is logged anyway, the system has to record who queues when they queue. The system already has the data with who they are in a group with and so forth.
So 1 time 40 people all queue together and drop…noted. 2 times…noted. 5 times noted. 50 times…flagged. It wouldn’t matter if they were alts either it could be account wide because the system has the data to cross check that.
It’s time and energy and they need to ban people to stop it. The idea that it can’t be done vs it is easy or simple is different. Yes it would take money and time to develop and it would be specific to this problem. There are a lot of easier ways to fix it by making changes to the BG before that.
The fairness thing is just complete bunk. Sorry but they have already said they don’t like it, consider it an unfair advantage, and that unfair advantages are cheating. It’s a cheat they haven’t decided to put the resources in to stop.
Plenty of ways they could mitigate it.
If it is easy well that is another question. The idea that Blizzard doesn’t think it is an issue though, is just not true. They have said so, and have said they are continuing to work on it…the thing is since they have said that they have dropped off the map on PVP support across the board. They haven’t had a PVP q and a for years.
FYI yes I know I have read those community managers and posted it multiply times here from HolyCows original posts on it and the Engadget article.
Is it easy…hard to say. Is it possible, yes. Has Blizzard been asleep at the PVP wheel for years…also yes.
Not really sure what your whole point is here. Just that it is hard so we should be nice to Blizzard? I would give them a lot more benefit of the doubt if they kept talking about the problem and told us what they are doing to fix it.
Edit: the watch the communications portion would be to corroborate by watching in channel. You wouldn’t watch for the actual countdowns but you would likely find chatter to go to Discord to get ready for the pug smashing…stuff like that.
edit2: to get it to work everyone in the group would have to click at the same time to start the queue…or as close as they could. I bet that would be a good flag to watch for as that usually doesn’t happen. Think about a normal 5 man when the leader queues you up, and you have to accept. How often does a 5 man all click accept at the same time? as in within 1 second of each other. Then you have that across 8 groups? Then they skip when they don’t get in queue, and only when they don’t get in queue? Bunch of corroboration you could do there.
I dont really have a point, I was simply voicing an opinion and providing an interesting quote I found while googling to see what was out there.
If you are knowledgeable on systems and believe it can be tracked, then that’s good and hopefully something they can work on. As you said, it would probably take money and time and it may depend on how worthwhile the expenditure would be. As in, is battleground pvp worth it. That I obviously dont know.
For the sake of argument, what DO the syncing-groups-against-pugs people think about these blizz quotes from 2012:
https://www.engadget.com/2012-12-05-blizzard-takes-a-stand-against-pre-mades-battleground-groups.html
Unfortunately the original source links seem to be gone, but hopefully the quote is accurate.
I would like changes to the matchmaking system such that organized groups always face other organized groups in random BGs. However, it just doesn’t seem like blizz cares to do anything, regardless of what a former (?) Blizzard Community Manager may have said more than 10 years ago?
I hate to be that guy… go play another game. PVP in this game is terrible. I miss huttball in SWOTR.
Hey, I loved some guilds I was in and the people but after having a s/o make one too many comments I dropped off the radar. At this point I do not think I would want to be in an active one again due to excessive chatter at times and too many cliques with a game this old. Plus if I happened to find newer people still bonding and I could with them, I don’t wanna go back to comments about talking to guildies too much or whatever from my s/o.
Anyway, with all of that said, I do enjoy being alone a lot. I do not see the problem if they add more to this game for solo play as long as it isn’t the main focus because I do think group play should be what is focused on the most.
The player base does seem to have dwindled a lot so I think this delves thing is an awesome idea and healthy for the game.
Idk why you would be against solo play for ppl who enjoy it.
Remember that Exploitation of any kind is against the Terms of Service and can and will result in a ban. The best course of action you can take is to report any players you suspect of exploiting, providing as much detail as possible in your report.
Also i feel like this is a no-brainer, but for those considering reporting others without valid reason, Please refrain from doing so. Such actions are in of themselves considered violations.
I’m not against solo play for those that enjoy it. The issue I have is when the people that play solo want bis type gear from doing world content.
I think the average solo player that claims they want hard content don’t actually realize what is hard content.
Delves for example, here is what I think is going to happen.
Delves will be released. Some solo players will be fine but others will struggle especially early on.
There will be multiple complaints stemming from
And the demands for nerfs will come in
If people enjoy solo play I say have fun. It’s when they demand the game cater to them is when I have a dislike for solo players