Wednesday, April 30, 2014

PvP Battleground Rotation

There are a lot of battlegrounds these days. Eleven in total. And Warlords may bring more.

In Vanilla, there were only three. While that may have been slightly monotonous, it was very good for learning the battlegrounds. People learned the strategies and even counter-strategies. With so many battlegrounds now, it's a lot harder to learn the nuances of every single battleground.

Perhaps part of the reason for faction dominance of specific battlegrounds is that there isn't enough time for strategies to evolve. Instead each side sticks to using the very basic initial strategy, which favors one side.

I propose the battlegrounds be organized into a rotation. Each period will be composed of one Warfare BG, one Capture the Flag BG, and two Resource Race BGs. These four will be the only battlegrounds available for that period. The period will last for about two months, then new battlegrounds will rotate in.

Obviously people would not be allowed to blacklist battlegrounds. As well, Blizzard would probably have to stop doing the weekend special battlegrounds. They also have to ensure that seasonal events with battleground achievements line up with the rotation.

I think that this focus will serve players better. They can learn and understand a smaller set of battlegrounds. However, they won't be doing the same content forever. After a while new battlegrounds will come in and mix things up. This is especially true for newer players.

This will also make it easier to add new battlegrounds. Unlike PvE instances, battlegrounds hang around forever. But simply adding new battlegrounds into the rotation keeps the cognitive overhead low. You only need to know the strategies for 4 battlegrounds.

4 comments:

  1. People could still drop group if they got a random BG they didn't like, so people could still self select and get the bonus for random BGs. Besides, there's an easy way to learn BGs even if people don't want to do it these days: level a new toon via BGs. Until you hit the AV range in the mid-40s, your only options are WSG and AB, which gives you a LOT of time to learn the strategies in each.

    That said, I'd argue that a better solution is to group people based on their iLevels when running BGs at max level. This would be similar to the Rated pairings (or at least how they were the few times I tried Rated BGs in Cata) in that you'd get supposedly a group similar in gear quality, so you have less of a chance of getting ROFLstomped by a team filled with Conquest gear.

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  2. Actually if you play Rated BGs, you will find that there are quite specific strategies for each of the BGs in WoW's rotation, and that most people who play Rateds on a regular basis have a fairly decent grasp of what the default strategies are for each map in the rotation. Teams that have played together for a long time have their own twists and game plans, but for most part regular Rated players know what the "standard" openings and game plans are.

    Random BGs are a joke, dude, they are only good for grinding honor and practising your class and spec. Sometimes you get good people who coordinate with you, but for the most part it's just an incoherent mess. People who want to dive into better Battleground team play should just download OQueue and start pugging Rateds. Queue times are really fast nowadays, and unlike randoms, people who play Rateds (discounting Yolo teams) actually want to work together to get wins. You get the occasional tool when you first PuG into Rateds, but once you find a team you can trust then Rateds becomes a real team game and a whole lot of fun. It is a better way to learn the Battleground metagame, which is what I think you are talking about. In my opinion, three hours of Rated BGs will teach players more about BGs than any number of weekends playing the same four random BGs simply because you will be using voice comms, you will be exposed to the meta, and you will be playing with experienced people who play competitively who will give you instant feedback regardless of whether you like it or not. Some teams are nicer about this than others, but if increasing BG meta knowledge is the goal then I don't think you can beat playing Rated BGs.

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  3. I mostly agree with Duke. I just want to add that random bgs are "light-hearted" in a sense. You can relax and just "play" in a random and not care if you win or lose. And with that atmosphere, cycling through many is just more fun and repeating the same subset of 4.

    In rated bgs, the teeth come out and players must take it more seriously and that is what makes them fun- serious competition.

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  4. It depends of what player you are. I am a pve player and I know strategies for 20+ raids and same for dungeons..In the same way a pvp guy will perfectly know all the bg strategies.

    The problem comes when a pve guy like me decides to join some BGs for fun and he has no idea what the hell to do and where to go and he just follow the others and zerg..

    A pvp guy that will join a raid, he will have the assist of addons like DBM and so he will adapt easier.

    Your suggestion from a pve guy PoV is good, but I think is unfair for the pvp community...The current BGs after 10 years of wow are already too little compared to dungeons and raids.

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