Realm: Mistblade Balancing Battleground Matchmaking

[pedrog]

Unbalanced matchups between Horde and Alliance premade groups have created a frustrating experience for solo players, particularly those on the Horde side. With a smaller pool of active Horde players, the disparity in organized groups has exacerbated the issue. To address this imbalance, I propose two solutions:

1. Prohibit Premade Groups in Random Battlegrounds

Restricting premade groups from queuing in random battlegrounds would level the playing field and improve the experience for solo players. This would allow individual players to contribute to team efforts without facing the overwhelming strength of organized groups.

2. Random Faction Assignment upon Entering Queue

Implementing a random faction assignment upon queuing for battlegrounds would further enhance fairness and reduce the impact of faction imbalance. Solo players would have a chance to experience both sides of the conflict, providing a more balanced and enjoyable experience overall.

[LyranVirgo]

Good shit, well said!

[ICritMyKilt]

Being able to queue as a group and get into a voice chat and organize your efforts is part of the game.  Coming up against a pre-made sucks, I would not disagree at all, but it is still a part of the game.  Blizzard didn't restrict group queues and I'd imagine that won't change here. There are guilds dedicated to PvP that would be on here or putting in tickets asking for that to be changed back because they want to play together and if you did stop pre-mades there would be an addon or something to help them pre-made by dropping the queue if their friends aren't all in the same BG with them. Aside from all that, if PvP participation is really low, you couldn't stop pre-mades without completely killing PvP.  Think about it, if there are 20 people queued for the BG and it takes two teams of 10 and you don't let that 10-man pre-made queue then they'll individual queue and, without your #2 suggestion, they would end up a big pre-made anyway, with your #2 suggestion, they could keep dropping and re-queuing until they got on the team they wanted, or they could simply quit playing BGs completely.

I'm not sure what kind of changes to the base code it would take to allow the game to randomly queue people to either faction.  I could definitely see it being a benefit if, for example, there are 15 alliance and 5 horde queued for BGs and it randomly split the 20 people into two 10-man groups rather than having to wait for more horde to queue.  Aside from possibly requiring a lot of changes on the server to make that possible, there may be other draw backs that have to be considered.  If you are alliance and you are put on a team two a tauren, how easy are you going to be able to look at what is coming up the hill at you and know if that is a friendly tauren or not; will PvP newbies have difficulties with that; will we need big flags like in arenas or race changes and tabard color changes?  Would every horde player who ended up on the alliance side of the map become human?  Would every alliance that ended up on the horde side of the map become an orc?

Don't get discouraged if the admins do not feel your ideas are feasible or in the best interest of the server, keep the suggestions coming and hope that some of them can be implemented and make improvements to the server.

[LyranVirgo]

The problem with the developer team here is that they respond to every suggestion as "it is how blizzard intended it so we see no problem". Yes, blizzard intended it for 25k player per realm. Not 1000 active pvp player. This is why the suggestions. Your server is NOT and CAN NOT BE like blizzard intended because of playerbase, this is what you need to understand.

[Aithne]

Nope, more often than not it is just "more trouble than what it is worth" or "would create player dissatisfaction elsewhere". Prohibiting premades would cause excessive uproar, in addition to being highly ineffective since ppl can just, y'know, queue all at the same time and they will get invited to the same bg most likely due to player counts, and iirc we did have at least core-level support for forced xfaction bg, but it is also not exactly as popular as you think it would be. For a large portion of the playerbase, just "randomized" opt-in mercenary mode is confusing enough, let alone forced randomized mercenary mode. That said, server-altering decisions (and, if needed, the corresponding decently complex core-side changes) are unlikely to be made during the holidays.

[ICritMyKilt]

Not every suggestion receives the same response.  Some suggestions actually get considered and make it all the way to implementation. It happens the same way in retail. The game has evolved over the years because players make suggestions, ask for changes and complain about issues. Some things get implemented and some things do not.  Some of those nots are because they simply can't implement the change or because the negative impacts it has in other areas out weight the good it may do in another.  Eliminating pre-made groups, for example, could improve life for the PUGs, but if all those pre-mades quit playing that would reduce the number of people in queue, so it could turn out good or bad.

The devs try hard to keep a clean code base that is free of janky bandaids, so being able to implement ideas in a clean way is important so it doesn't cause issues down the road.  It takes extra time to do things right.  Fast, cheap or good; pick two.