2.3 AV Changes

[Monkey]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...3035129&sid=1#0

As a continuing part of our improvements, we will be implementing the following changes in the next patch.

Strategy can be an important element of any battleground. We want to emphasize this in Alterac Valley more and give players additional meaning to both defending and attacking. To push the strategic element of the battleground to the next level we have changed how players maintain their reinforcements or deprive the other team of theirs.

Each team will have a starting reinforcement count. Reinforcements can be lost in significant amounts if a tower is destroyed or if Captain Galvangar or Belinda Stonehearth is killed. For each team member death, an additional reinforcement will be lost. On the death of General Drek’Thar or Vanndar Stormpike, all reinforcements are lost and the team is defeated. At any point in time, if a team is reduced to zero reinforcements, the opposing team will win the battle. Defending your own teammates, towers, and key NPCs will be an important aspect of maintaining team resources and achieving victory in Alterac Valley.

Warmasters can be the boon or the bane of any team. They are an important element for the defense of your general or the defeat of the opposing general. Warlords and their general will be more closely linked in the next patch. Pulling one is a guarantee the other will come as well. Each team begins with four Warmasters. Destroying a tower will eliminate the associated Warmaster. Unlike the current game play, however, destroying the enemy tower will not add a Warmaster to your own side.

We will be changing the pace of the battle slightly with a reduction in the time needed to control a tower or graveyard. Where it currently takes five minutes to gain control, the time will be reduced to four minutes. The honor for capturing a tower will also be increased.

Graveyards can be an important resource for getting your teammates back into the battle more quickly. Currently, players can sometimes be sent to their starting tunnels far from the battlefront. This can often be an inconvenient location to respawn and more out of the way from the action than we would like, to correct this, players will instead respawn at a team-controlled graveyard. Should the team not have a graveyard under their control, they will respawn in the starting tunnel.

Players will only be awarded bonus honor during the battle for destroying enemy towers and slaying the enemy Captain. Once the battle is concluded, bonus honor will be awarded for intact towers, a surviving Captain, and for victory in battle. The bonus honor awarded should be similar to previous totals, but will reward players for taking more active roles in Alterac Valley toward defending or attacking key locations and NPCs.

Lastly, we are changing NPC interactions within Alterac Valley. We have reduced the number of elite NPCs in Stormpike and Frostwolf holds as well as sent all Commanders and Lieutenants out of Alterac Valley. They are currently in search of other battle opportunities. This should reduce the amount of NPCs that players will have to fight and place more focus on PvP combat over key locations on the map.

Strategy is the name of the game in Alterac Valley, and these changes will bring out the need for more teamwork and coordination from both the Horde and the Alliance as they vie for domination of this battleground.

These sound like some very cool changes, but... who am I kidding? I'm about this || close to quitting WoW for HGL. I don't know why I keep reading all the blue posts.

[Swiss Mercenary]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...3035129&sid=1#0
These sound like some very cool changes, but... who am I kidding? I'm about this || close to quitting WoW for HGL. I don't know why I keep reading all the blue posts.

Allies have an extra bridge to sell us, yet?

I'm not a happy camper in how the ticket system will play out, considering just how much firepower Ally NPCs are packing.

[Treesh]

I'm not a happy camper in how the ticket system will play out, considering just how much firepower Ally NPCs are packing.

They're taking out a bunch of NPCs, both horde and alliance side.

[oldmandennis]

I'm not a happy camper in how the ticket system will play out, considering just how much firepower Ally NPCs are packing.

I don't understand.

The devil is in the details, as always. It's troubling that you could potentially grief your own side by repeatedly killing yourself.

I like the fact that they are rolling the dice and looking for a more fun experience. I'm definitely going to give it a shot. However I'm also going to try and play pretty hard in the last 2.2 weekend (10/27) to get much of my S3 honor, in case the new AV is less honor then the old. Also, these changes took *WAY* too long to do - EotS was finished ~November last year, so this is the first substantial change to a BG map in roughly a year.

A little birdie is telling me that HGL will be fun, but will not have the depth to sustain a WoW sized online gaming addiction.

[Bolty]

So, if I'm reading this right, the new "winning strategy" for AV would be:

1) Put 30 people on defense. Guard the standard attack point the other side uses, and take advantage of how your graveyard being closer to your troops lets you keep the opponent scattered while you are concentrated. This results in more deaths on the other side than your side, not to mention getting additional use out of defensive NPCs guarding the points.

For example, on my battlegroup (Ruin), Horde would send 30 people to defend Galvanger and the central graveyard. Alliance would send 30 people to defend Stonehearth Bunker and Stonehearth Graveyard.

2) Send 10 people on offense, attempting to take a tower/bunker/captain and hold it for 4 minutes, then moving to the next.

This way you rack up significantly more kills than the opponent and drain them of resources. If your 10-man attack squad is coordinated and solid, they will take out the enemy towers/bunkers/captain and score the team additional bonus honor. Screw the general.

Of course, this all depends on how long a match would run if your goal was to bring the enemy's "reinforcements" down to zero primarily through kills. If it takes too long, then going for the generals is the better strategy.

---------------

Meanwhile, Warsong Gulch remains a wasteland and now, in my opinion, takes over the "worst battleground" position from AV.

1) Games can literally last forever. We've all likely been in those horrendous standoff games where you've been in the battleground for 45 minutes and nobody's capped yet. If you PuG WSG much, that's guaranteed to happen eventually.

2) If you lose the battleground, especially 3-0, you get jack squat for honor. This is especially harsh when you're in a game caused by problem #1. Once the first cap occurs in a game like that, the losing side tends to just bail en masse, leading to a fast 3-0 loss. Spending an hour of your life to gain 75 honor from HKs is just plain awful.

3) Related to #1, Warsong Gulch has no time limit. Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm games have to end eventually no matter what; a team will get to 2000 points and it will end. Warsong Gulch has no such limitation. I never, ever queue for WSG without an "out" - queuing up for some other battleground so that if the WSG turns out to be a horrible cluster-you-know-what, I can escape to a more sane battleground and not be "stuck" there. Alterac Valley also has no time limit, but the honor gains there are great even if you're losing, and it's been a long time since the epic 16-hour standoff matches.

What I'd do with WSG is implement something like this:

A) What we have now - after X time (5 minutes?) of holding a flag, its position is displayed on the minimap for your enemy. No hiding!

B) After X + Y time (10 minutes?) of holding a flag, anyone carrying the flag takes a 2% health hit every second they hold the flag. "Okay, so they just have a healer stand there and keep them up," you say, and you're right. But it puts that much more pressure on the flag holder and his support when he gets attacked. If you can't get any healing in 50 seconds, you die and the flag drops. Killing the support of a flag carrier then becomes very important. You don't even need to attack the flag carrier - the flag will kill him off for you eventually. If you have 10,000 health, you lose 200 hps every second.

C) After X + Y + Z time (20 minutes?) of holding a flag, a whirlwind drops from the sky and teleports everyone in WSG to a random location on the map. The ensuing chaos would be enjoyable. :)

-Bolty

[Tuftears]

For WSG fixing, IMO the flag should always show on the minimap. No hiding, period.

I was always confused that wasn't the case.

[oldmandennis]

I don't know, playing find the flag is pretty fun I think - for a little while.

The best solution I have heard is a stacking MS - 10% per minute. If you pick up the flag, you get the full stack. Your debuff does not reset until one flag or the other is returned.

Back to AV - without seeing the details, and having people play real matches, it is impossible to tell how the death counter will work or what the new basic strategy will be. A low value will encourage conservative turtles. A high one will essentially have no effect.

Removal of LT's and commanders will have an interesting effect favoring defense. Right now, attacking SH/IB nets the horde 200 honor, but defending all of those objectives only nets the allies 60. After the patch, it sounds like both the offense and defense will get the same honor - making people more likely to defend. It is possible that the 'prisoners delimma' will settle on both sides going all out on offense again though.

[Trien]

They should put a time limit in WSG. I'm almost in favour of making it a fixed time match, and whoever has the most caps at the end of that time wins (like old CTF/TF style). Or maybe a combination.

Oh, and add more maps!:P

[Concillian]

2) If you lose the battleground, especially 3-0, you get jack squat for honor. This is especially harsh when you're in a game caused by problem #1. Once the first cap occurs in a game like that, the losing side tends to just bail en masse, leading to a fast 3-0 loss. Spending an hour of your life to gain 75 honor from HKs is just plain awful.

They have mentioned recently that they will be adding more honor for a loss in WSG, AB and EoTS. I'll try to dig up the blue post...

[LtWarhound]

Defending doesn't work, as a game type. Take a look at games like Tribes, Tribes 2. The Take and Hold maps were pretty much ignored.

One of two things will happen. Either nothing will change, and it remains a race to kill off the general. Or massive turtling will happen.

Racing, fine, AV pretty much stays the same. Turtling? That's insane. The Stormpike graveyard, the road right before it, the bridge, its a killing field with any more than a handful of alliance defense. It will be a slaughterhouse. Pretty much any alliance defense will mean horde players leaving the battleground, on the spot.

This wasn't a very well thought out set of AV changes.

[Tuftears]

Personally, I loved the Tribes Take and Hold maps.

My two cents on how to change AV for the better: instead of making the flights and the cavalry be things that players have to go out of their way to summon, have them be permanent, recurring parts of AV. These are your 'reinforcements'. New waves come out of your reinforcements pool, and when you're down to zero reinforcements, when your last troop dies, it's game over.

The objectives might appear as follows:
A 50/300 (that is, Alliance has 50 troops in the field, and 300 reinforcements remaining)
H 35/350 (that is, Horde has 35 troops in the field, and 350 reinforcements remaining)

A new wave of troops won't get sent until the old wave of troops is finished.

Without player intervention, they meet in the center and annihilate one another. With player intervention, the idea is that you rally with your troops and try to crush the enemy troops + the enemy players on their side. You can heal your troops. They pause at periodic points to patrol the area, giving rezzed people a chance to catch up.

When your cavalry comes up against a tower, or any enemy they can't path to, they dismount and take cover behind boxy shields. Without player assistance, they'll get whittled away by the tower archers.

To expedite the summoning process, instead of having players need to run all the way back to the start, once your troops are at midfield, they'll send a runner back to the summoners. The summoners come out to the midfield and station themselves there, waiting for you to bring them the appropriate tokens. If your troops die, they'll retreat. Also, if they are killed, they count against your reinforcements.

[Swiss Mercenary]

They're taking out a bunch of NPCs, both horde and alliance side.

Lastly, we are changing NPC interactions within Alterac Valley. We have reduced the number of elite NPCs in Stormpike and Frostwolf holds as well as sent all Commanders and Lieutenants out of Alterac Valley. They are currently in search of other battle opportunities. This should reduce the amount of NPCs that players will have to fight and place more focus on PvP combat over key locations on the map.

None of the NPCs they said they will take out happen to be archers shooting the bridge. With that kind of cover fire, defending it would be dirt-easy. :rolleyes:

Nobody who knows how to kite actually gets killed by the elites inside the ally base. The reason they are a problem, is because it means the Horde offense spends a minute or two killing them, while the allies ride past their Frostwolf counterparts.

I, for one, will be farming the life out of AV before 2.3. Not very interested in seeing horde return to a 20% win ratio - this time, because of real map imbalances, rather then AFK imbalances.

[Skandranon]

I, for one, will be farming the life out of AV before 2.3. Not very interested in seeing horde return to a 20% win ratio - this time, because of real map imbalances, rather then AFK imbalances.

For my part, on battlegroup Ruin, I expect that the tremendous intelligence imbalance in Horde's favour will mean that Alliance will see AV victories rarely outside of group-queued teams.

[Pantalaimon]

My two cents on how to change AV for the better: instead of making the flights and the cavalry be things that players have to go out of their way to summon, have them be permanent, recurring parts of AV. These are your 'reinforcements'. New waves come out of your reinforcements pool, and when you're down to zero reinforcements, when your last troop dies, it's game over.

The objectives might appear as follows:
A 50/300 (that is, Alliance has 50 troops in the field, and 300 reinforcements remaining)
H 35/350 (that is, Horde has 35 troops in the field, and 350 reinforcements remaining)

A new wave of troops won't get sent until the old wave of troops is finished.

Without player intervention, they meet in the center and annihilate one another. With player intervention, the idea is that you rally with your troops and try to crush the enemy troops + the enemy players on their side. You can heal your troops. They pause at periodic points to patrol the area, giving rezzed people a chance to catch up.

When your cavalry comes up against a tower, or any enemy they can't path to, they dismount and take cover behind boxy shields. Without player assistance, they'll get whittled away by the tower archers.

To expedite the summoning process, instead of having players need to run all the way back to the start, once your troops are at midfield, they'll send a runner back to the summoners. The summoners come out to the midfield and station themselves there, waiting for you to bring them the appropriate tokens. If your troops die, they'll retreat. Also, if they are killed, they count against your reinforcements.

Sounds kinda like Defense of the Ancients, and that's a cult classic... good idea!:)

[oldmandennis]

./sigh... posted while in a WSG turtle. What are you supposed to do when they sit on the flag with 7 people?

A defensive oriented BG, one that hops GY to GY does not have to end in a stalemate. Of course breaking those requires some actual skill... and I played on K'T before xserver BG's, since they changed it to a race the average IQ in the BG's I play in has probably gone down.

But in an ideal BG summons/siege engines break the natural advantages that the defenders have. The trick is to pace them and carefully balance their power against players who span 50 levels of gear.

Of course, they haven't mentioned anything about trying to balance the summons, or that they are trying to push the duration of the games back to the 1hr or so it would take for summons to be effective.

[LavCat]

...
Meanwhile, Warsong Gulch remains a wasteland and now, in my opinion, takes over the "worst battleground" position from AV.

1) Games can literally last forever. We've all likely been in those horrendous standoff games where you've been in the battleground for 45 minutes and nobody's capped yet. If you PuG WSG much, that's guaranteed to happen eventually.

2) If you lose the battleground, especially 3-0, you get jack squat for honor. This is especially harsh when you're in a game caused by problem #1. Once the first cap occurs in a game like that, the losing side tends to just bail en masse, leading to a fast 3-0 loss. Spending an hour of your life to gain 75 honor from HKs is just plain awful.

3) Related to #1, Warsong Gulch has no time limit. Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm games have to end eventually no matter what; a team will get to 2000 points and it will end. Warsong Gulch has no such limitation. I never, ever queue for WSG without an "out" - queuing up for some other battleground so that if the WSG turns out to be a horrible cluster-you-know-what, I can escape to a more sane battleground and not be "stuck" there. Alterac Valley also has no time limit, but the honor gains there are great even if you're losing, and it's been a long time since the epic 16-hour standoff matches.

What I'd do with WSG is implement something like this:

A) What we have now - after X time (5 minutes?) of holding a flag, its position is displayed on the minimap for your enemy. No hiding!

B) After X + Y time (10 minutes?) of holding a flag, anyone carrying the flag takes a 2% health hit every second they hold the flag. "Okay, so they just have a healer stand there and keep them up," you say, and you're right. But it puts that much more pressure on the flag holder and his support when he gets attacked. If you can't get any healing in 50 seconds, you die and the flag drops. Killing the support of a flag carrier then becomes very important. You don't even need to attack the flag carrier - the flag will kill him off for you eventually. If you have 10,000 health, you lose 200 hps every second.

C) After X + Y + Z time (20 minutes?) of holding a flag, a whirlwind drops from the sky and teleports everyone in WSG to a random location on the map. The ensuing chaos would be enjoyable. :)

-Bolty

The only changes I would make for WSG would be to give a bit more honor to the losing side and fix the exploits (as well as problems falling through the world). Hiding the flag is a big part of the tactics. Watching five horde run right past you is fun. Mind Vision and hunter tracking are ways to help look for the flag carrier if necessary. I have only been in one recent WSG that was well more than an hour, and even though we lost it was a well fought game. Having no teamwork and losing in seven minutes may be more efficient but is certainly not fun.

The AV changes may be interesting but Blizzard has a track record of fixing things that aren't broken. I have not had the heart to play my Alliance hunter since they fixed the hunter pets. What they could do to improve AV is to keep people from falling through the world. That, or make the games last longer so that when the GM responds the next day it may still do some good. I have not been in any really long AV games recently but this past week I was in one that lasted two hours forty minutes. Yes we won, but since I did not get in till after Galvangar I did not get much honor (apart from the 379 HK).

[Monkey]

A little birdie is telling me that HGL will be fun, but will not have the depth to sustain a WoW sized online gaming addiction.

So after a week of contributing to Flagship's HGL beta testing efforts, I played some WoW this weekend. And I look forward to discussing comparisons between the two games in greater detail with my fellow Lurkers.

[oldmandennis]

So after a week of contributing to Flagship's HGL beta testing efforts

Last I checked the game was still under NDA :shuriken:

[Monkey]

Last I checked the game was still under NDA :shuriken:

Yes, this is correct. And it's why I am looking forward to discussing the two games:D. The only fair comparison is between the release versions of both games, anyway. Otherwise, it's apples and oranges.

[oldmandennis]

Typically, the NDA's prohibit even acknowledging you are in a beta. I'm not sure about that one though.