MasterDinadan
20-09-2006, 08:09 AM
I apologize if the length of this seems excessive, but I wanted to be thorough and provide good feedback. I intend to post this in the official blizzard suggestion forum soon, where it's likely to reach a larger audience, but I wanted to share the idea here too. If you have any thoughts on how I might improve my ideas before I post on the official forums, I would be happy to hear it. Without further adieu, I give you my proposal:
The recent patch has brought an outstanding revival to the popularity of WoW's battlegrounds. The battlegroup system is a feature that made great progress to improving battlegrounds, especially on newer realms, and the implementation was great. However, I think there are a few more ways that battleground could be improved.
One thing that can be a little frustrating is the level brackets: 10-19, 20-29, etc. While the system in place is effective at preventing players of vastly different levels being pitted against each others, it does have it's share of inconveniences and problems.
Players interested in PvP feel like they can only be competitive in a battleground if they are near the top of the level bracket. Players in their early 20s, early 30s, etc, are simply out of luck until they level up a few more times. This also contributes to a feeling of players at the top of a level bracket trying to avoid gaining too much experience so they can continue to battleground.
I'm very familiar with this effect myself, as I was recently playing a level 19 rogue and doing quite well in Warsong Gulch. In order to improve myself further in this bracket, I wanted to acquire a Cruel Barb, so I went to the Deadmines. Along the way, the group insisted on completing a few of the out-of-instance quests, resulting in me acquiring more experience than I had anticipated and causing me to level up just before the end of the instance.
I am against any gameplay mechanic that causes player to feel leveling up is a bad thing, as some feel is the case when leveling up into a new PvP bracket.
There are two alternate ideas I have come up with to try to alleviate this problem. Neither is perfect, but it is my hope that by proposing these ideas, we can come up with ways to improve the system.
My first thought is simply abolishing the level bracket system and put a automated matchmaking system in place similar in function to the ladder AMM in WarCraft III. Players who queue up for "First Available" will be placed in a pool of players in their battlegroup waiting to join the battleground. The matchmaking service will pick players of similar level to start up the next battle, giving players who have been waiting longer priority. When a player first joins the AMM, it will look for other players of very near levels to put into the group with (or into an opposing group) but if the player remains in the queue too long, it will start to become more lenient of level gaps in order to allow the player to battle, just like in WarCraft III.
If a player wishes to join an existing battleground, he will only be able to view and join battles which began with a level spread that the player falls into. For example, if the AMM picks a group of 20 players between the levels of 28 and 34 to battle, no player outside that level range can join the battle afterwards.
I imagine that there will be so many levels 60s queueing up that the AMM will have no trouble filling up battlegrounds with level 60 players only (or 70 after the expansion), so the max-level battleground experience remains more or less unchanged.
Though this system does away with the problem of having to be the highest level in the bracket (or near it) to avoid being inferior to the other players in the battleground, it also does away with some of the merits of the old system. Since MOST of the players queuing for a battleground would be at the top of a level bracket, you could always be sure that being at the top of a level bracket would provide a mostly equal battleground experience. With AMM, no matter what level you are (except max-level of course) there is always the risk of being paired against enemy's that are simply a higher level. This was not a problem in WC3, where being a higher level didn't yield any actual advantage in game, but it could be a problem in WoW.
The other idea I've got is merely tinkering with the existing brackets. There's two thoughts on this one.
First, we could simply have smaller brackets, like 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, etc. Which means that players at the low of the bracket are not too much weaker than players at the top of the bracket, and it also means that players at the lower end of the bracket don't have to level as much to get to the top of their bracket. The problem here is that there may not be enough players in the pool for a certain level range for battles to be started in a timely manner. At any rate, I can't imagine the queue times being any worse with smaller brackets and battlegroups than they were with large brackets and no battlegroups.
The other idea is to keep the existing ranges, but stagger them with different battlegrounds. For example, Warsong Gulch gets 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, etc, while Arathi Basin has 20-29, 30-39, etc. In this way, even if you are not at the top of the AB brackets, you'll still be at the top of the WSG brackets. The only way to be the "highest" in both brackets is to reach the max level, but this system allows you to almost always be competitive in a battleground, even if it may not be the battleground that you necessarily prefer. With new battlegrounds being added in the future, additional staggering can be added to give even more opportunities for players to be competitive in one or more battlegrounds at their level.
I hope that the ideas I present here will be considered as possible improvements or changes to the current system. Battlegrounds have come a long way, but the current level bracket system just feels awkward to me in that it encourages people to stay at a level just so they don't advance into a new PvP bracket. Battlegrounds have seen immense changes and improvements, especially lately, and I hope and expect that Blizzard will continue to improve on the outstanding PvP.
The recent patch has brought an outstanding revival to the popularity of WoW's battlegrounds. The battlegroup system is a feature that made great progress to improving battlegrounds, especially on newer realms, and the implementation was great. However, I think there are a few more ways that battleground could be improved.
One thing that can be a little frustrating is the level brackets: 10-19, 20-29, etc. While the system in place is effective at preventing players of vastly different levels being pitted against each others, it does have it's share of inconveniences and problems.
Players interested in PvP feel like they can only be competitive in a battleground if they are near the top of the level bracket. Players in their early 20s, early 30s, etc, are simply out of luck until they level up a few more times. This also contributes to a feeling of players at the top of a level bracket trying to avoid gaining too much experience so they can continue to battleground.
I'm very familiar with this effect myself, as I was recently playing a level 19 rogue and doing quite well in Warsong Gulch. In order to improve myself further in this bracket, I wanted to acquire a Cruel Barb, so I went to the Deadmines. Along the way, the group insisted on completing a few of the out-of-instance quests, resulting in me acquiring more experience than I had anticipated and causing me to level up just before the end of the instance.
I am against any gameplay mechanic that causes player to feel leveling up is a bad thing, as some feel is the case when leveling up into a new PvP bracket.
There are two alternate ideas I have come up with to try to alleviate this problem. Neither is perfect, but it is my hope that by proposing these ideas, we can come up with ways to improve the system.
My first thought is simply abolishing the level bracket system and put a automated matchmaking system in place similar in function to the ladder AMM in WarCraft III. Players who queue up for "First Available" will be placed in a pool of players in their battlegroup waiting to join the battleground. The matchmaking service will pick players of similar level to start up the next battle, giving players who have been waiting longer priority. When a player first joins the AMM, it will look for other players of very near levels to put into the group with (or into an opposing group) but if the player remains in the queue too long, it will start to become more lenient of level gaps in order to allow the player to battle, just like in WarCraft III.
If a player wishes to join an existing battleground, he will only be able to view and join battles which began with a level spread that the player falls into. For example, if the AMM picks a group of 20 players between the levels of 28 and 34 to battle, no player outside that level range can join the battle afterwards.
I imagine that there will be so many levels 60s queueing up that the AMM will have no trouble filling up battlegrounds with level 60 players only (or 70 after the expansion), so the max-level battleground experience remains more or less unchanged.
Though this system does away with the problem of having to be the highest level in the bracket (or near it) to avoid being inferior to the other players in the battleground, it also does away with some of the merits of the old system. Since MOST of the players queuing for a battleground would be at the top of a level bracket, you could always be sure that being at the top of a level bracket would provide a mostly equal battleground experience. With AMM, no matter what level you are (except max-level of course) there is always the risk of being paired against enemy's that are simply a higher level. This was not a problem in WC3, where being a higher level didn't yield any actual advantage in game, but it could be a problem in WoW.
The other idea I've got is merely tinkering with the existing brackets. There's two thoughts on this one.
First, we could simply have smaller brackets, like 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, etc. Which means that players at the low of the bracket are not too much weaker than players at the top of the bracket, and it also means that players at the lower end of the bracket don't have to level as much to get to the top of their bracket. The problem here is that there may not be enough players in the pool for a certain level range for battles to be started in a timely manner. At any rate, I can't imagine the queue times being any worse with smaller brackets and battlegroups than they were with large brackets and no battlegroups.
The other idea is to keep the existing ranges, but stagger them with different battlegrounds. For example, Warsong Gulch gets 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, etc, while Arathi Basin has 20-29, 30-39, etc. In this way, even if you are not at the top of the AB brackets, you'll still be at the top of the WSG brackets. The only way to be the "highest" in both brackets is to reach the max level, but this system allows you to almost always be competitive in a battleground, even if it may not be the battleground that you necessarily prefer. With new battlegrounds being added in the future, additional staggering can be added to give even more opportunities for players to be competitive in one or more battlegrounds at their level.
I hope that the ideas I present here will be considered as possible improvements or changes to the current system. Battlegrounds have come a long way, but the current level bracket system just feels awkward to me in that it encourages people to stay at a level just so they don't advance into a new PvP bracket. Battlegrounds have seen immense changes and improvements, especially lately, and I hope and expect that Blizzard will continue to improve on the outstanding PvP.