New Update for the Test Realms

[MongoJerry]

There's a new patch going up today for the Test Realms that makes some important changes to Battlegrounds. Read the patch notes for more details.

The changes mostly sound good, except the whole no longer being able to capture an enemy tower thing. I guess I'll have to try that out, but the ability to capture a tower made taking those things strategic.

[oldmandennis]

Yah, the no more capturing thing has me worried too. Basically, it seems like it would make the battles see saw wildly.

One side could work their way all the way down to the base, get togeather and mount a 40 person assult on the final base. Since they are covered by 2 towers, the other side might only lose 5 people and wipe the offense. They immediatly counter, and route the 10 people who are the first wave of Ressers, and then mount up and move onto the next graveyard. Meanwhile, the 30 other people in the offensive now have to ghost run all the way back to the next GY, and are beaten there by the mounted defense. Once you get rolling, there is no reason to stop without towers to slow you down.

Another thing is that with nothing respawning, it seems like rogues would be way over powered. It seems like 5 rogues could form an assination squad, and rub out all your NPC leaders that don't respawn anymore. They could also probably burn down back line towers. When I was playing (before I ran out of money, pls fix that first bliz kthxbye), semifrequently a group would form up to sneak behind our lines and attack a tower, very often sucessfully. Our response was usually "pfft, we'll take that back when we feel like it", but now that message being broadcast means that a sizable contingent HAS to break off and deal with it. An even more annoying stratagy would then be to send rogues solo to towers, to trip the message, and constantly distract the enemy.

[Gurnsey]

Yah, the no more capturing thing has me worried too.  Basically, it seems like it would make the battles see saw wildly.

One side could work their way all the way down to the base, get togeather and mount a 40 person assult on the final base.  Since they are covered by 2 towers, the other side might only lose 5 people and wipe the offense.  They immediatly counter, and route the 10 people who are the first wave of Ressers, and then mount up and move onto the next graveyard.  Meanwhile, the 30 other people in the offensive now have to ghost run all the way back to the next GY, and are beaten there by the mounted defense.  Once you get rolling, there is no reason to stop without towers to slow you down.

I haven't played Alterac myself, but it seems like all these changes are needed to make the whole thing 'winnable' while still being an all-out war. I don't think the original concept of 'winning' worked as well as they thought - there needs to be a more clear-cut win and restart or there will just be certain 'Alliance' battlefields and certain 'Horde' battlefield instances where one side completely dominates and is at the 'win' condition at all times.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, though I have no characters of that level range yet.

Another thing is that with nothing respawning, it seems like rogues would be way over powered.  It seems like 5 rogues could form an assination squad, and rub out all your NPC leaders that don't respawn anymore.  They could also probably burn down back line towers.  When I was playing (before I ran out of money, pls fix that first bliz kthxbye), semifrequently a group would form up to sneak behind our lines and attack a tower, very often sucessfully.  Our response was usually "pfft, we'll take that back when we feel like it", but now that message being broadcast means that a sizable contingent HAS to break off and deal with it.  An even more annoying stratagy would then be to send rogues solo to towers, to trip the message, and constantly distract the enemy.
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Hooray for strategy, tactics and intelligence (perhaps there will be a use for that silly Sentry Totem now)! I think that this is a great thing! Keep in mind that both sides can use it, and it's not limited to Rogues to give 'false alarms'. Again, no direct experience but this seems like it will add a lot more strategy and tactics to the battle.

[MongoJerry]

I haven't played Alterac myself, but it seems like all these changes are needed to make the whole thing 'winnable' while still being an all-out war.  I don't think the original concept of 'winning' worked as well as they thought - there needs to be a more clear-cut win and restart or there will just be certain 'Alliance' battlefields and certain 'Horde' battlefield instances where one side completely dominates  and is at the 'win' condition at all times.

Having the towers be captureable gave sides minigoals to achieve when the fight is raging in the middle of the zone. It seems like all that's going to happen now is that everyone's towers are going to be destroyed after the first hour or so, and there'll be nothing left to capture but graveyards (which are pathetically easy to capture) and the two main bases at the extreme ends of the zone. That would seem to make relatively even battles quite boring with nothing left to accomplish in the middle of the zone and the bases at the extreme ends of the zone too difficult to conquer when defended by a relatively evenly matched foe.

[Gurnsey]

Having the towers be captureable gave sides minigoals to achieve when the fight is raging in the middle of the zone.  It seems like all that's going to happen now is that everyone's towers are going to be destroyed after the first hour or so, and there'll be nothing left to capture but graveyards (which are pathetically easy to capture) and the two main bases at the extreme ends of the zone.  That would seem to make relatively even battles quite boring with nothing left to accomplish in the middle of the zone and the bases at the extreme ends of the zone too difficult to conquer when defended by a relatively evenly matched foe.
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Is it inevitable that all towers will be destroyed? If the team knows that towers are not recapturable, will they place more emphasis on defending the towers? Do the towers provide enough advantage that anyone even cares?

[oldmandennis]

Is it inevitable that all towers will be destroyed?  If the team knows that towers are not recapturable, will they place more emphasis on defending the towers?  Do the towers provide enough advantage that anyone even cares?
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Well, I'm happy to educate you, young padauan, based on my lofty experience of 2 fairly lengthy play sessions.

First off, I can see why they wanted to make things more "winnable", nobody won in either of my sessions.

To your questions:

Currently, capturing an undefended tower is not superdifficult. A bunch of people run in, distract the guards, and someone yanks the flag down. Capturing a well defended tower is difficult, because the PC's will snare you, and interrupt the guy pulling the flag down.

Towers do provide a significant advantage. The archers hit fairly hard, and once they aggro they have a very long range. The towers provide an excellent place to regroup if you are being pushed back, and are difficult but not impossible to bypass.

If towers are destroyed, not captured, it probably will put more emphasis on defending towers. However, the towers are quick enough to destroy and spread out enough that they are hard to get to that defending them means putting 6-7 people on permanant tower babysitting duty. Doesn't sound like fun to me.

Sentry totem doesn't help for 2 reasons : these things have to be balanced for both factions, and they only last 5 min. It is frequently a 5 min round trip from the frontline to the back, so you don't gain anything.

As far as stratagies goes, capturing random towers behind lines is one, it's just one my side said pfft to. If, durning the time they were in enemy hands, they made a break through, they could have turned the tower they already had into major gains. While the tower is in enemy hands, it is more difficult to go to the main base, for repairs and to drop off blood and armor. So eventually, a group of us broke off and retook it. While we were doing that, if they made a major push, we would be undermaned. Making towers be destroyed, in my mind, limits that. Since riding to a towers defense is often impractical due to distance, the only stratagy that keeps your towers safe is to keep a patrol back there. Who wants to do that? And once the towers are destroyed, they are elimated as a stratiegic item.

Similarly, since the leutinants and explosive experts no longer respawn, I fear they too will be quickly assinated and removed from the game as a stratiegic element. Briefly, there are minefield on the map. Briefly, there are minefields on the map for both sides. They can be avoided, rogues can disarm them, or you can kill the explosives expert to remove them. I believe if you can kill all 4 leutenents in a set period of time, it burns down the foreward base. I'm not sure what this does, since NPC's still spawn there. But again, if they don't respawn, they will be killed relativly quickly, and removed from the game as a stratiegic element.

There are ways to fix the winabilty problem without making the battlefield empty after 1 hr. And they will be, niether towers nor leutinants stand up to the large summon well. An obious one to me is to spread out some of the GY - Tower combos that are exceptionally difficult. And it may just be that the good stratagies still need to be discovered. How long did it take for Oxy to go down?

And finally Jerry is right, capturing towers gives you mini goals. Even if your team sucks, and you are pushed all the way back to your main base, you might be able put togeather 5 good minutes and take the first tower back. From there you might be able to get your mine back.... Where as if you can't get towers back, you break out, but as soon as you stumble you are right back where you started.

[Gurnsey]

Before I start, just to let you know: I'm not some super-Blizzard Fanboi trying to defend their decisions, just thinking and asking questions and hopefully forwarding the discussion - I hope that comes through.

Currently, capturing an undefended tower is not superdifficult.  A bunch of people run in, distract the guards, and someone yanks the flag down.  Capturing a well defended tower is difficult, because the PC's will snare you, and interrupt the guy pulling the flag down.

Towers do provide a significant advantage.  The archers hit fairly hard, and once they aggro they have a very long range.  The towers provide an excellent place to regroup if you are being pushed back, and are difficult but not impossible to bypass.

If towers are destroyed, not captured, it probably will put more emphasis on defending towers.  However, the towers are quick enough to destroy and spread out enough that they are hard to get to that defending them means putting 6-7 people on permanant tower babysitting duty.  Doesn't sound like fun to me.

Hmmm, let me see if I can sum up: Towers provide significant advantage, but are too easy to take when PC's are not directly defending it. This is acceptable when towers change hands, since you can conversely take it back quickly, but unacceptable when the towers are destroyed since defenders can't get there in time.

Possible solutions:
1) Towers go back to changing hands (ping-ponging and/or no progress or winning possibly).
2) Towers are destroyed but take much longer or require explosives or some other thing to make taking a tower harder (defenders have time to get to the tower, unless a major push is made by the opposing team to take it, in which case they have a weak point somewhere else).
3) Something else?

Sentry totem doesn't help for 2 reasons : these things have to be balanced for both factions, and they only last 5 min.  It is frequently a 5 min round trip from the frontline to the back, so you don't gain anything.

Heh. Still a totally worthless wind-totem. That's 2/5 that are complete wastes (Windwall and Sentry).

As far as stratagies goes, capturing random towers behind lines is one, it's just one my side said pfft to.  If, durning the time they were in enemy hands, they made a break through, they could have turned the tower they already had into major gains.  While the tower is in enemy hands, it is more difficult to go to the main base, for repairs and to drop off blood and armor.  So eventually, a group of us broke off and retook it.  While we were doing that, if they made a major push, we would be undermaned.  Making towers be destroyed, in my mind, limits that.  Since riding to a towers defense is often impractical due to distance, the only stratagy that keeps your towers safe is to keep a patrol back there.  Who wants to do that?  And once the towers are destroyed, they are elimated as a stratiegic item.

In regards to keeping patrols in the back to defend towers, are you saying that defense needs to be in the hands of the NPC's while offense is in the hands of the PC's? NPC's seem to be there to be static defenses, detturents, and to buy time for the true (read: intelligent) defense to react. Shouldn't there be a group in each team devoted to defense? Beyond defending towers, they could also provide intel on enemy offensive motion, harrass or bait enemy troops, and help fallen players reach the front lines again.

Of course, this assumes that there is strategy going on here :rolleyes:

Similarly, since the leutinants and explosive experts no longer respawn, I fear they too will be quickly assinated and removed from the game as a stratiegic element.  Briefly, there are minefield on the map.  Briefly, there are minefields on the map for both sides.  They can be avoided, rogues can disarm them, or you can kill the explosives expert to remove them.  I believe if you can kill all 4 leutenents in a set period of time, it burns down the foreward base.  I'm not sure what this does, since NPC's still spawn there.  But again, if they don't respawn, they will be killed relativly quickly, and removed from the game as a stratiegic element.

There are ways to fix the winabilty problem without making the battlefield empty after 1 hr.  And they will be, niether towers nor leutinants stand up to the large summon well.  An obious one to me is to spread out some of the GY - Tower combos that are exceptionally difficult.  And it may just be that the good stratagies still need to be discovered.  How long did it take for Oxy to go down?

Yea, but Onyxia is an NPC with a programmed encounter - theoretically, PC's can defend against the NPC's weaknesses on the battlefield.

And finally Jerry is right, capturing towers gives you mini goals.  Even if your team sucks, and you are pushed all the way back to your main base, you might be able put togeather 5 good minutes and take the first tower back.  From there you might be able to get your mine back....  Where as if you can't get towers back, you break out, but as soon as you stumble you are right back where you started.
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Very true here - if one team starts destroying enemy towers faster, it turns into a slippery-slope with the 'losing team' having less and less chance to recover as time goes on. I think this will be a tough balance, especially with the massive difference between an organized 40-man team and a team of 40 soloe'rs. No ideas here. Anyone?

[russ]

I think it's a good change. It makes the group strategy decision important again.

Part of the enjoyment of battlegrounds looks to be based around the strategy, ironically quite similar to the April Fool's Day joke. The first choice when you get into a Battlegrounds is similar to the first second in a game of Starcraft. You have three choices. You can rush the enemy gates, hoping to take enough people off-guard. You can try to create an economy, and try to upgrade enough to expand over the enemy. Or you can set up defenses, and try to counter a zerg.

Zerg beats economy beats defenses beats zerg.

Except it didn't work that way so far. It's not that the benefits aren't equal - like in Starcraft, they're supposed to be completely off-balance - but that there's just no incentive whatsoever to take up certain strategies. As it is, there's no reason to defend; you can just take back any losses if your zerg fails. There's no reason to have your people scattered all over looking for resources or doing sidequests; with no incentive to defend, every enemy will zerg and returning the zerg will give the greatest benefit in terms of armor scraps/quest items/honor points.
There's just no reason right now NOT to have almost all your people at the front lines, and while that sounds good in terms of participation, it doesn't really seem very strategic or likely to leave a lot of variation between one fight and the next. With this change, it seems that people will be more willing to build up heavy defenses and counter the first charge, which in turn will make the choice of building up an economy from the secondary enemies a lot more reasonable.

I dunno (and even doubt) that this will be the ultimate fix to that problem, but it's a step in the right direction.

The part where it will appeal to casual gamers (who will find this cuts down on the maximum lifetime of a battlegrounds significantly, and boosts just as significantly the effect one has in a battlegrounds while one is there) is just a nice side effect.

[Treesh]

Heh.  Still a totally worthless wind-totem.  That's 2/5 that are complete wastes (Windwall and Sentry).
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Windwall is not useless. It is a very much situational tool, but it has helped keep my butt safer. I don't know how it fares in PvP, but it comes in helpful in PvE. Sentry is one I just use if I'm bored. It is fun being able to keep an eye on Bloodhoof Village when I'm sitting in Thunderbluff though. ;) Fun, but not really something that even I would call really useful.

[oldmandennis]

Whew... I started replying to you last night, then decided to check if the AV was back up. It was, and I ended up playing in 3 battles over about 4 hours, and going to bed way too late. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly, and then responses to your comments. Hang on tight folks, this might run a bit long, long enough it might be faster to log on yourself and make up your own mind.

The good: a long list of fixes posted on the public relm, you can read them yourself. For whatever reason, and I'll speculate later, it seems to be more winnable, as two out of three of my matches ended in a win, as opposed to 0 out of 2 before.

The bad: Mongo and I were right about the towers. Most of them are destroyed within about 2 hours of the game starting. Also, maybe I just hadn't noticed before, but Pally's can pull flags while bubbled. Very imbalanced.

The ugly: NPC's still cause equipment damage, and on the forums Blizz is saying it is a possibly reversable design choice, not a bug. At least with fewer towers around it happens less often :P

Hmmm, let me see if I can sum up:  Towers provide significant advantage, but are too easy to take when PC's are not directly defending it.  This is acceptable when towers change hands, since you can conversely take it back quickly, but unacceptable when the towers are destroyed since defenders can't get there in time.

Possible solutions:
1) Towers go back to changing hands (ping-ponging and/or no progress or winning possibly).
2) Towers are destroyed but take much longer or require explosives or some other thing to make taking a tower harder (defenders have time to get to the tower, unless a major push is made by the opposing team to take it, in which case they have a weak point somewhere else).

I think you misunderstand the design of this battleground a little, it is pretty much linear. Take a look at this shot of the map Mongo made. You also might have an inflated idea of how many towers there are, they are only 4 each.

99% of the action is one big zerg fest.

Right now the difficulty of the towers is well balanced. Properly defended, they are nearly impossible to take. But if the defense gets scattered a little bit, or the defending side overextends to try and take the next graveyard, it is possible to mount a quick push that tears down the flag. They are annoying to bypass, but it is possible, making one viable stratagy to use against a turtling team to run to the next graveyard and try to take that, then come back to the tower, now that their reinforcements have to run farther then yours. If you make the towers tough enough to take down that the back ones can stand up to 5 PC's for the 5 min it would take relief to get there, they will be almost impossible to capture if defended at all.

The explosive idea is a great one. Maybe PC's can pull down flags to disable towers, but destroying it requires escorting a sapper team there. Maybe the sapper team will only go to frontline towers.

In regards to keeping patrols in the back to defend towers, are you saying that defense needs to be in the hands of the NPC's while offense is in the hands of the PC's?  NPC's seem to be there to be static defenses, detturents, and to buy time for the true (read: intelligent) defense to react.  Shouldn't there be a group in each team devoted to defense?  Beyond defending towers, they could also provide intel on enemy offensive motion, harrass or bait enemy troops,

This battlefield is too linear for that. There is one big furball, and a couple of stragglers running back to town for repairs and to drop off blood for elemental summoning. Maybe if the mining mechanic was better understood and worked better a group would stay behind and do that and would be available for defence, but in reality it would just be 6-7 guys sitting on their thumbs.

Of course, this assumes that there is strategy going on here  :rolleyes:
Yea, but Onyxia is an NPC with a programmed encounter - theoretically, PC's can defend against the NPC's weaknesses on the battlefield.

But the NPC's are the hard part of winning: the last base might be too tough. There is a village, where a sizable number of NPC's spawn, and then a ramp going up to 2 towers, that fire down onto people fighting in the village. The ramp also has a lot of spawns on it. Last night the alliance hit on one stratagy: rush past to the final graveyard. Still, 30 alliance took 45 min to take that final base against 12 incomplete idiots (if we were complete idiots there would be 40 of us).

For now, it seems the main stratagy is to bottle the losers up in their base until they get tired and try relogging to a more competitive battleground.

I think this will be a tough balance, especially with the massive difference between an organized 40-man team and a team of 40 soloe'rs.  No ideas here.  Anyone?
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You should get crushed. Join a guild, or hope you get put into a ground where you are filling out an organized group. If the game can't be won easily by superior tactics and orginization, then it is random and silly. This could be mitigated by trying to balance the teams when people come in from the random queue according to honor.

[Gurnsey]

Ack, too much to quote anymore :) Thanks for the long and excellent response.

I had seen the map for the battleground before but I had not realized how much of a bottleneck there is towards each base - it is very linear, as you have said.

As for taking the flag down disabling the tower, I think this would be worse for 'wins' than taking the tower over, if the defenders could simply raise their flag again. I am out of ideas here...

The main obstacle to winning seems to be that the final base is just too hard to take. Perhaps it needs to be toned down a bit, but perhaps, as you said in an earlier post, it is just a game mechanic that has not been discovered yet. It'll be at least two months at my current rate before I can even start to experience this battleground, so I guess I'll let you all play it madly 'till it's perfected.

As for the CTF battleground, I haven't had more fun in a long time, even though I was at the bottom of the level range, and our flag got launched up on top of a tree at some point and we couldn't get it back, which broke the round. I have the feeling I'll have more fun at this than Alterac, but who knows.

Keep us updated on how it's going! It looks like the Blizz is going to try get this as 'right' as they can before they launch since they have so much riding on BG's!

[Gurnsey]

You should get crushed.  Join a guild, or hope you get put into a ground where you are filling out an organized group.  If the game can't be won easily by superior tactics and orginization, then it is random and silly.  This could be mitigated by trying to balance the teams when people come in from the random queue according to honor.
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OK, so one quote :)

I was speaking more of the NPC balance - can you balance the towers and guards such that a pick-up BG can win, without making the NPC's trivial to an organized team?

[oldmandennis]

OK, so one quote :)

I was speaking more of the NPC balance - can you balance the towers and guards such that a pick-up BG can win, without making the NPC's trivial to an organized team?
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Oh, definatly.

There is a village, where a sizable number of NPC's spawn, and then a ramp going up to 2 towers, that fire down onto people fighting in the village. The ramp also has a lot of spawns on it.

So move the double towers to the very front of the village, so the village NPC's don't help so much with their defence. If you want to keep the charging up the ramp mechanic, put a single tower at the top. Double towers, if they are defended at all, will still be very challenging.

[oldmandennis]

I'd say about 80-85% of the time, when you zone in, all 4 towers in the middle of the field (not counting the 2 in each base) are down. Note that this does not stop the battle from continuing for another 3 hours from that point.

Also, it appears I was incorrect, NPC's no longer cause equipment damage :)

The trolls in the cave on the mid western part of the field apparently guard a goblin that needs rescuing. Supposedly, after you rescue him you can pay him significant quanities of Thorium, Mithral, and Iron for a lvl 62 elite shredder. The shredder is a beast, I've seen it rampaging.

The Horde elemental is bugged. Frequently he does not go on the offensive, and just hangs around midfield.

Anyone know how to trigger the Wolf Riders? Once you collect sufficent wolves and ram hides, he makes a bunch of announcements about how he is riding, but then parks his butt just south of mid field, and my side couldnt figure out how to get him to move.

[MongoJerry]

The Horde elemental is bugged.  Frequently he does not go on the offensive, and just hangs around midfield.

Apparently, you need to "feed" him kills to power him up. Once he's fed enough, then he'll go on a rampage and up toward the alliance base. If there's no battle going on mid-field, then have a person train NPC's to him to feed on.

They need to make the four towers in the middle capturable again. The middle is just too boring of an area right now. Fights go from one end of the zone to the other in practically an instant.

Btw, to get the shredder, you also have to give him something found in the battleground in addition to all the iron, mithril, and thorium. The Horde have to get some kind of saw from the alliance lumbermills. Dunno what Alliance players have to get.

[oldmandennis]

Thanks Jer! Between the two of us, we might be able to get this whole thing figured out before it goes live! That is, if they ever spawn more then one BG. Recently there has only been one instance, and I haven't had the patience to wait in the queue.

Are you sure about the elemental though? For those who haven't seen it, he starts pretty small, but when he kills alliance he gets bigger. We had him pretty big though, and he wouldn't move except in persuit of the alliance. Then the bastards were able to spawn their cavalry, and it wiped him out.

Any info on how to trigger the cavalry?

Also, the armor scrap thing is broken. They need to make it decay or something, because about 90% of the time when you zone in your guys are already maxed.

[MongoJerry]

Are you sure about the elemental though?  For those who haven't seen it, he starts pretty small, but when he kills alliance he gets bigger.  We had him pretty big though, and he wouldn't move except in persuit of the alliance.  Then the bastards were able to spawn their cavalry, and it wiped him out.

Yep, I've seen him rampage up to the Alliance base. It gave the Horde a chance to destroy the two towers up there, before the Alliance was able to kill the elemental and recover. It took a while to power up the elemental before that happened (at least a half an hour). Dunno if perhaps you need someone to give it orders or not, though. Maybe you have to be high enough rank or something to trigger it.

I have no clue about the charge thing, either.