08-06-2007, 09:04 PM
I don't actually know what to do. This has actually been a somewhat hot topic on Terenas. Many of us take advantage of the honor fest that is AV weekend and we do understand that a fast loss is better honor per time, but well most of us like to PvP and get frustrated after a while from knowing that you are one of the few that are trying.
Oh and the AFK issue is worse. It's now generally 10-20 folks that don't even leave the cave. Though to their credit with all those valiant cave defenders I've yet to see alliance capture it. :)
We played about 6 games yesterday with 3-12 of us in the same AV. We won 2 in a row (the 2 where we had 10 plus) and got onto Vann in 2 more of them we got more honor than the alliance in one of the losses because of the objectives we took and the others we kept. But the losses were A LOT more fun with other Lurkers in there that you knew were trying even if we didn't win.
Some things that might help.
I would fix the map. While I admit that horde actually has some better choke points, if they use them, the horde side requires you coordinate. The terrain on the alliance side will naturally push you towards some of the objectives. If horde rezzes in the cave they have to decided to go to Frostwolf or head to the northern front. If alliance rezzes in the cave, they will run right by SP no matter where they are going as they head south so it's very easy for them to check if they can help keep that or if it's a lost cause and they should just get somewhere else. This is not a factor at all for coordinated groups, but even if you use mods and try hard you will have some PuGs and the PuG factor as you say matters folks who can't or won't coordinate and communicate.
The tower designs have issues. While all the alliance bunkers now have spots where can get at the flag without getting hit by archers (it wasn't always this way). Defending a bunker vs a tower is a very different story. I can live with the towers because at some point in time both alliance and horde will be looking to assault or defend. However when you factor in the NPC's alliance can simply run by them and not have to deal with them at all as part of the defense, in general. But it would be nice to make things a bit more even.
You could punish the horde AFK folks. I actually admit that pre TBC when I was pushing my warlock to rank 10, that I actually played two AV's where I was pretty much AFK. I was doing dishes and I would just come back and hit a key every now and then. But guilt made me stop. Yeah it was good for me, but people do still try to play this for fun (and yes I can still have fun in AV even with all PuGs even knowing that I'm going to lose) and it was simply abusing those folks who were actually getting a few of the other honor objectives or actually trying to play for a win. I've heard rumors from Blizzcon that there will be debuffs applied to folks that don't do any damage or heal or work on an objective for some amount of time. This won't fix it, but I would be happier if there were 10 folks AFK in SH bunker waiting for it to cap than in the cave. At least in SH bunker they might buy me enough time to kill the alliance that is trying to flip it back because the alliance person attacked them. At least they would act as a tiny HP buffer and time sink for me as opposed to being leachers.
And yeah I don't mind the fast losses, I like my epic candy, but if we are going to lose at least pick up the bunkers and Balinda. I was in a game with 20+ cave dwellers where we managed to get 2 of the LTs by SH bunker killed as far as bonus honor goes and that's it. Sure it was a 14 minute loss, but a 20 minute loss getting the bunkers, Balinda, the other LTs and SH GY would have been more honor per time. So even from an honor per time standpoint the horde that do NOTHING still can hurt themselves and it is annoying.
You could try a handicap system but I'm not sure that would work either.
And even if you manage to somehow make queue times on both sides the same it won't fix it. If both sides had instant queues and horde started to win a few you would start to see alliance cave dancers. But I really would like to see them get some AV monitors and just ban the cave dwellers for some time. They did that a couple of AV weekends back and horde started to actually win AV and try because you had only people that try. But you need to punish the AFK folks and/or get alliance into the BG's faster.
I'd actually be happy if they had a fair monitoring system that could track how much you actually participated in AV horde side (how long you were at an objective that was contested, how much damage or healing you did, but I couldn't design a fair system to do this and it wouldn't be worth the resources anyway). But if you get a good track and the folks who tried get pushed up in the queue. Make all the AFK folks sit in AV queue for an hour.
But again the idea of fast honor works against the horde in other BG's. Since they can get into any BG instantly many of them, even in EotS where I have like a 90% winning percentage I've seen many horde players just give up the few times things start to go bad. I see it in WSG a lot as well (it's part of the reason that I don't like WSG, that and I get annoyed at the game when the flags are both hidden for 10 minutes and people won't work together to go and get it), but I got used to horde just giving up a lot in WSG if the alliance got any caps at all they would just try and farm HK and not try to win.
They even tried making the honor from winning be a larger part of the total honor people got (they lowered the amount of honor you got per kill however long ago). That still doesn't really help. It just makes it an even better idea to bail on a BG if you see a premade in there because you won't get any honor for the loss at all. So you just screw PuGs even more.
I've debated if you can tie rewards more into stuff you get from getting objectives or loot. If you kill Balinda all the horde get some token. If you don't the horde doesn't. If you take down SH bunker you get the token. If someone loots a corpse everyone gets another token (that can stack to like 5000). And you make all the purchases tie into that stuff. That will still give you a you will get the rewards if you put in enough time, but like arenas you will get the rewards a lot faster if you win. But that system isn't really different enough for making stuff cost honor and tokens and you only get the tokens for winning. And if you tie it into a range thing (if you aren't close enough to Balinda when she dies you don't get that token) then you screw up the game even more.
But since my concern is having fun, and having fun is playing a good game while trying to win, the best solution is to punish the horde AFK folks. This won't change the fact that it will still be better for horde to play fast games (and FYI a 10 minute win is going to be better honor than a 10 minute loss and I've been involved in a 10 minute win though that was pre TBC and yeah even north and south bunkers flipped) the problem is that as mentioned generally if 40 horde are actually playing and trying to win, since the 40 alliance are playing and trying to win the game ends up getting into the 20-30 minute range.
But yeah I wouldn't mind if they just dumped AV either. It has pretty much always felt like PvE with a bit of PvP thrown in. It can be fun at times, but it's generally just a grind. AB and EotS you are pretty much assured the game will be done in 30 minutes at the longest (flags spending a lot of time in contention). But you figure they will be done in less than 20 most of the time. With the other changes to the reward system, with BG specific rewards being gone so you don't have to play a BG you don't like, I would be fine with them fixing AV so that it does last 2 hours or more on average again. Before when the games would go that long but there were rewards for AV that you couldn't get anywhere else you were "forced" to play it if one of the rewards was just better than what you could get anywhere else. Now you aren't since the rewards are more generic. That works for me. I have no problem with them making it a different style and some days I would still want to do that. Others I wouldn't, so if I didn't I would just play EotS or AB or WSG. It's what I do now. Since I don't have long queues I just grab the toon I want and play the style of game I want to play. This may mean that I'm not optimizing my honor per time but I am having the fun that I want (and even though I ragged on WSG earlier, sometimes that is really the BG I want to play) and I'm not going to lose ground getting my rewards. I might not get them faster but I won't fall back like the old rank system (which sucked) would make me do.
Oh and the AFK issue is worse. It's now generally 10-20 folks that don't even leave the cave. Though to their credit with all those valiant cave defenders I've yet to see alliance capture it. :)
We played about 6 games yesterday with 3-12 of us in the same AV. We won 2 in a row (the 2 where we had 10 plus) and got onto Vann in 2 more of them we got more honor than the alliance in one of the losses because of the objectives we took and the others we kept. But the losses were A LOT more fun with other Lurkers in there that you knew were trying even if we didn't win.
Some things that might help.
I would fix the map. While I admit that horde actually has some better choke points, if they use them, the horde side requires you coordinate. The terrain on the alliance side will naturally push you towards some of the objectives. If horde rezzes in the cave they have to decided to go to Frostwolf or head to the northern front. If alliance rezzes in the cave, they will run right by SP no matter where they are going as they head south so it's very easy for them to check if they can help keep that or if it's a lost cause and they should just get somewhere else. This is not a factor at all for coordinated groups, but even if you use mods and try hard you will have some PuGs and the PuG factor as you say matters folks who can't or won't coordinate and communicate.
The tower designs have issues. While all the alliance bunkers now have spots where can get at the flag without getting hit by archers (it wasn't always this way). Defending a bunker vs a tower is a very different story. I can live with the towers because at some point in time both alliance and horde will be looking to assault or defend. However when you factor in the NPC's alliance can simply run by them and not have to deal with them at all as part of the defense, in general. But it would be nice to make things a bit more even.
You could punish the horde AFK folks. I actually admit that pre TBC when I was pushing my warlock to rank 10, that I actually played two AV's where I was pretty much AFK. I was doing dishes and I would just come back and hit a key every now and then. But guilt made me stop. Yeah it was good for me, but people do still try to play this for fun (and yes I can still have fun in AV even with all PuGs even knowing that I'm going to lose) and it was simply abusing those folks who were actually getting a few of the other honor objectives or actually trying to play for a win. I've heard rumors from Blizzcon that there will be debuffs applied to folks that don't do any damage or heal or work on an objective for some amount of time. This won't fix it, but I would be happier if there were 10 folks AFK in SH bunker waiting for it to cap than in the cave. At least in SH bunker they might buy me enough time to kill the alliance that is trying to flip it back because the alliance person attacked them. At least they would act as a tiny HP buffer and time sink for me as opposed to being leachers.
And yeah I don't mind the fast losses, I like my epic candy, but if we are going to lose at least pick up the bunkers and Balinda. I was in a game with 20+ cave dwellers where we managed to get 2 of the LTs by SH bunker killed as far as bonus honor goes and that's it. Sure it was a 14 minute loss, but a 20 minute loss getting the bunkers, Balinda, the other LTs and SH GY would have been more honor per time. So even from an honor per time standpoint the horde that do NOTHING still can hurt themselves and it is annoying.
You could try a handicap system but I'm not sure that would work either.
And even if you manage to somehow make queue times on both sides the same it won't fix it. If both sides had instant queues and horde started to win a few you would start to see alliance cave dancers. But I really would like to see them get some AV monitors and just ban the cave dwellers for some time. They did that a couple of AV weekends back and horde started to actually win AV and try because you had only people that try. But you need to punish the AFK folks and/or get alliance into the BG's faster.
I'd actually be happy if they had a fair monitoring system that could track how much you actually participated in AV horde side (how long you were at an objective that was contested, how much damage or healing you did, but I couldn't design a fair system to do this and it wouldn't be worth the resources anyway). But if you get a good track and the folks who tried get pushed up in the queue. Make all the AFK folks sit in AV queue for an hour.
But again the idea of fast honor works against the horde in other BG's. Since they can get into any BG instantly many of them, even in EotS where I have like a 90% winning percentage I've seen many horde players just give up the few times things start to go bad. I see it in WSG a lot as well (it's part of the reason that I don't like WSG, that and I get annoyed at the game when the flags are both hidden for 10 minutes and people won't work together to go and get it), but I got used to horde just giving up a lot in WSG if the alliance got any caps at all they would just try and farm HK and not try to win.
They even tried making the honor from winning be a larger part of the total honor people got (they lowered the amount of honor you got per kill however long ago). That still doesn't really help. It just makes it an even better idea to bail on a BG if you see a premade in there because you won't get any honor for the loss at all. So you just screw PuGs even more.
I've debated if you can tie rewards more into stuff you get from getting objectives or loot. If you kill Balinda all the horde get some token. If you don't the horde doesn't. If you take down SH bunker you get the token. If someone loots a corpse everyone gets another token (that can stack to like 5000). And you make all the purchases tie into that stuff. That will still give you a you will get the rewards if you put in enough time, but like arenas you will get the rewards a lot faster if you win. But that system isn't really different enough for making stuff cost honor and tokens and you only get the tokens for winning. And if you tie it into a range thing (if you aren't close enough to Balinda when she dies you don't get that token) then you screw up the game even more.
But since my concern is having fun, and having fun is playing a good game while trying to win, the best solution is to punish the horde AFK folks. This won't change the fact that it will still be better for horde to play fast games (and FYI a 10 minute win is going to be better honor than a 10 minute loss and I've been involved in a 10 minute win though that was pre TBC and yeah even north and south bunkers flipped) the problem is that as mentioned generally if 40 horde are actually playing and trying to win, since the 40 alliance are playing and trying to win the game ends up getting into the 20-30 minute range.
But yeah I wouldn't mind if they just dumped AV either. It has pretty much always felt like PvE with a bit of PvP thrown in. It can be fun at times, but it's generally just a grind. AB and EotS you are pretty much assured the game will be done in 30 minutes at the longest (flags spending a lot of time in contention). But you figure they will be done in less than 20 most of the time. With the other changes to the reward system, with BG specific rewards being gone so you don't have to play a BG you don't like, I would be fine with them fixing AV so that it does last 2 hours or more on average again. Before when the games would go that long but there were rewards for AV that you couldn't get anywhere else you were "forced" to play it if one of the rewards was just better than what you could get anywhere else. Now you aren't since the rewards are more generic. That works for me. I have no problem with them making it a different style and some days I would still want to do that. Others I wouldn't, so if I didn't I would just play EotS or AB or WSG. It's what I do now. Since I don't have long queues I just grab the toon I want and play the style of game I want to play. This may mean that I'm not optimizing my honor per time but I am having the fun that I want (and even though I ragged on WSG earlier, sometimes that is really the BG I want to play) and I'm not going to lose ground getting my rewards. I might not get them faster but I won't fall back like the old rank system (which sucked) would make me do.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.