Battleground rewards meant to be "a tier behind" arena, PvE gear
by Mike Schramm 
Jun 13th 2007 at 1:40PM
Hellaciouss asks why there is no epic set for level 70 Battleground honor rewards, and Drysc, in answering, reveals quite a bit about how Blizzard views the arena PvP, raid, and battleground experiences.Drysc says the high-end arena gear is "intended to always be about on-par with the current tier players are progressing on." That means that if you play well in Arenas, you can earn gear that's just as good as what the hardcore raiders are earning in PvE. But Battleground gear, says Drysc is actually intended to be not as good. Because Arena and raiding take "quite a bit of effort, interaction, etc" (and BGs apparently do not), the gear for regular honor just isn't as good.
I'll let you decide whether that suggestion is true or not, but I've been playing in the BGs, and there are large numbers of players sitting there AFK just to earn honor-- I reported a few of them. That definitely doesn't match up even close to the effort the best teams put into the arenas. But then again, it takes a lot of coordination and effort to lead a winning Horde team through AV, and if I'm able to do that, shouldn't I get rewarded for it? Just because it's easy for some people to exploit the BGs and earn lots of honor doesn't mean Blizzard has to treat all of the people playing in the Battlegrounds like second class citizens. Instead of gimping the gear, how about upping the effort required, and ditching the AFKers?
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, PvP, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
annoula Jun 13th 2007 1:55PM
Is anyone surprised? People find a way to exploit something and blizzard's natural response is to nerf it into oblivion.
Look at fishing. It was cool for a little while, but the bots caught on and BAM they nerfed it into a long painful timesink that only the most hearty of alchemists would go. It's only now getting back to being interesting/useful.
Zor Jun 13th 2007 1:56PM
put in a reward/penalty system in place.
couldnt be that hard...and will dissuade AFK'ers from taking valuable spots.
If they can implement honor with the amount of effort put in, with a minimum requirement of heals/damage over time.
/spit afk'ers
honorless bunch
make the stationary rules apply to 15 secs
'who sits w/o doing anything for 15secs?'
will take more effort from these leeches to still steal rep then to actualy play the damn BG
Mike Schramm Jun 13th 2007 2:03PM
It's not just the 15 seconds, Zor-- I constantly see people sitting on the spawn in AV making tiny movements. Clearly someone running some kind of software that keeps them moving while /afk, but even when I report them, they're still there.
I don't know how Blizzard will fix the cheating problems in the BGs, but until they do, the gear you get from them will continue to be less than arena or PvE gear, and that's lame.
Belthasar Jun 13th 2007 2:04PM
It does take any effort to sit in AfkV.
Honor rewards should be nerfed even further, honestly. And honor should only be given to the winning team. And AV honor should be cut in half ontop of that.
Poxus Jun 13th 2007 2:09PM
There should implement a minimum area in th Bg's to gain the honor for a win. Like in AV you can sit in the cave but if you actually had to be within 30 yards of so of anything to get that honor, that would get people out of the cave.
Mats Jun 13th 2007 2:10PM
I kind have to agree, only that "hardcore" raiders, and casual Arena pvp'ers should not be put head to head.
I can put in 30 min a week. So in total 1 man hour (in a 2v2 team) and gain epics in a few weeks, while 4 hours of raiding, of 10 people (40 manhours) will only grant far less epics.
There is still a lot of tweaking required to balance this system out. Currently Arena PVP is to easy, Battleground PVP is easier, but takes more time, so it should not grant any worse items then Arena, only require more points
annoula Jun 13th 2007 2:13PM
I'd be great if you could vote someone out of a BG. Have it have a minimum of like 4 votes for 10mans and like 10 or so for AV. I realize it could be abused, but even then, getting rid of the jerk that tries to pull Drek's room and consistently fails would be nice.
ben1778 Jun 13th 2007 2:16PM
So does that only apply to the "Set" pieces for Marhsall or HWL items? THey have already said they are releasing upgraded Belt, Boots, and Bracers of epic level with the new arena season. Those 3 items are all purchased with honor points and tokens from the various BGs. I think only one of them is AV tokens... though I haven't looked in a while.
So players CAN do the BGs to get some decent epic PvP gear but the best gear is from the Arena points.
I've also heard that they are introducing a new ring, neckpiece, and possibly trinket to be upgrades from those currently purchased with honor points.
So basically the only thing NOT getting an upgrade are the current Marsh. or HWL rare sets?
@5 You can't do that since then people can't coordinate killing Bal with maintaining a fast moving front line to SP graveyard on Horde-side. Way too many problems.
@2 I sit for 15 seconds while not doing anything if i'm stealthed and guarding a flag. It happens a lot... especially when I can see an enemy cautiously approaching a flag... if I move too much I might get spotted and scare away all the big game.
Sky_Paladin Jun 13th 2007 2:16PM
Players pre-70 who play the battlegrounds do so for the honor and marks needed to gain access to the final end rare and epics that are available as a reward at 70 (or aim for the 60 stuff).
However, when you reach 70, all of this battleground grinding becomes obsolete because the honor system is not compatable with the arena point system.
Previously, you could use the battlegrounds from 1-69 to slowly grind up honor and exp when your guild mates weren't raiding so that when you hit 70 you could buy the blue 70 battleground gear (and the few purples available) so that you would be able to raid effectively if you were unable to get access to the standard raid armor tiers (eg your guild is small or you are a casual gamer) so that you could then compete in the arena. However, since Blizzard is now implementing a match up system based on gear, it is now means there is no reason to bring extra powerful gear into the arenas because it will mean you will be fighting similiarly powerful opponents. There is no advantage to fighting in the battlegrounds. Why would you do it if you cannot gain a competitive edge? At the moment, the honor rewards are only useful at 60 and 70. Before that, there is the largely ineffective trinket and one or two class specific items that are outshadowed by other ingame items.
In other words, there is no reason to play battlegrounds except for enjoyment - however, with the game based so heavily around grinding and farming for items and equipment, your time is far better invested in these things rather than what has become a meaningless pvp battleground.
Obviously the solution is to allow players to compete and earn arena points pre-70.
I disagree with the attitude that the battlegrounds are not worth providing good rewards for. There are other gaming systems (eg Battlefield 1942) where the focus is on assembling large amounts of people who have never interacted with each other before to achieve a common goal. Sure, the battleground does not take as much time as a raid, but to successively play the game and invest this time deserves similar rewards as the arena. If you don't, you are essentially saying "You are wasting your time doing this when you could be doing something that is more time-effective."
It is no different to Blizzard refusing to update Azeroth content for level 70's. Why would you even bother to grind the Timbermaw or Argent Dawn (for example) reputations when the rewards for investing this time are far greater in Outlands?
I don't think Blizzard are stupid; there is a different motive for these decisions and I believe it is a financial one. If people are happy and enjoying themselves in Azeroth, less would be tempted to buy BC. I wonder how many accounts out there are not upgraded? This is further reinforced by the continued decision to not update the content, and for not creating pre-BC servers.
If Arena points were available to players from level 10, would we see people in the battlegrounds ever again? I think not. I think this really shows Blizzard's change of focus and until they change it again, I do not think we will see any improvement in the battleground playing experience.
DarkT Jun 14th 2007 10:29AM
You also have to take into consideration those that have to sit and play Defense. The not moving for 15sec might affect that kinda stuff, No ?
Daghol Jun 13th 2007 2:23PM
Well, the stationary rule will not work. I've seen lots of AFKers just running in circles in the Horde cave.
I do agree that you should have to do a certain amount of healing/damage to stay in the game.
PyroAmos Jun 13th 2007 3:04PM
bg rewards should be reverted back to the origonal based on title, with honor being gained more dirrectly from HKs/KBs/%dmg/%healing/flag carry&return/base cap&defend ect. As it is now, can just sit in a bg and earn your honor points junk.
arena gear needs to be nerfed or requirements to get it need to be increased if it is to be on par with raiding gear. You can do arena 1 hour a week and earn your arena gear very quickly, whereas raiding costs alot (ALOT) of time and money, not to mention requiring collection and coordination of 25 decent players. to match difficulty/time req/cost of raiding, arena teams should start with 1000 points, after current calculation of points, that should be divided by total games played @ 0.1% points per game played, so you are required to play 1000 games to get 100% of your points, if you play 10 only you only get 1% of your points. That would increase both skill and time played requirements, since someone couldn't log on, lose (or win) 10 games and still collect a good amount of points, people with low skill level would end up with 100, 200 ratings, since they would be required to play enough games that they actually lose a significant amount of points. You should also take durability damage for deaths in arenas, to match repair costs of raiding.
p3ngu1n Jun 13th 2007 3:06PM
The solution against AFKers is to increase the amount of honor from kills and decrease the amount lost from diminishing returns. Currently in AV, your first kill nets ~3 honor, with diminishing returns of 1 honor per kill. 4th kill says you get 1, but in reality you're not getting any (that's why it says "estimated" in that pvp tab). If you're within ~50 yards of the kill, you get credit.
Another thing they could do is reduce the honor received from completing objectives. That's the sole reason for being AFK in the tunnel, free honor.
dmoz Jun 13th 2007 3:23PM
@11 - Sure... but a thousand games?
"so you are required to play 1000 games to get 100% of your points"
Considering the average arena game, in my experience, takes about four minutes (1-2 minutes sitting in the queue, 1 minute warmup time, then 1-2 minutes for the game), that'd be more than sixty hours of arenas. So, maybe they could tweak the minimum games per week from 10, but 1000 is pretty ridiculous.
Also, a person does have to have a GOOD arena team to be effective at earning points. After this many months, the average team still isn't completely decked out in arena gear. Saying that a person can casually play arenas and not worry about winning or losing is somewhat true, but they'll likely end up with 2-3 peices of gear per season rather than 5+.
re: repair costs for arenas... Keep in mind that the charters cost 40G per person. If your raid is prone to wiping, that's maybe one night of raiding for someone in epic plate, but at least arenas do have a cost involved.
Battlegrounds... Having a system to vote people out of battlegrounds would be great. There could be a list of reasons why someone should be voted out, such as "Not participating", "Unruly", "Griefing", etc. There wouldn't have to be a deserter penalty, but if one person was kicked out of n games per week, there could be a more major penalty.
tomhennessy Jun 13th 2007 5:03PM
Yes, blizzard weighs coordination much more highly then time invested - is this news? Exalted rewards are on par with t1 raid rewards - which takes more time? which requires a guild? Yeah, thought so.
BG's REQUIRE no coordination. You can log in, nub it up for an hour, log off. It's all you, there's 0 downtime, you do your things and eventually get a reward. Now, of course, you CAN coordinate in a BG, and then, of course, this interesting thing happens wherein you roll a bunch of uncoordinated soloers and get - you guessed it! - faster rewards.
This is just the same as PvE tiering - you have to grind your way through quests or 5-mans to be able to do Kara, just like a hardcore PvP'er is still going to need to play BG's to get their BG epics and trinket. Does anyone complain that SteamVaults blues aren't as good as Kara purples?
One could actually do the math on the coordination to time balance - compare time investment to get an Arena epic (say gloves) at average skill level (1500 rating in a 5 man, so ~ 370 points/week. 3 weeks for gloves, 10 games a week, 15 min. per game. 450 min of work = 7.5 hours /played for an epic) vs. a BG epic (say Boots at...what, 16k rep? Let's say you play mostly on AV weekend - the best honor and the least effort - and win 1/2 of your games - poor horde! - for 1.5k/hour, giving a best case of about 10hours /played for the epic. Now, if it weren't AV weekend, we can multiply that by 1.5 or so, to 15 hours.
My figures are clearly off the top of my head and i invite criticism, but...1.5-2x time for similar "soloing" rewards actually seems pretty good to me.
Luclan Jun 13th 2007 3:39PM
I don't think that this has anything to do with afk in the bg's. I do think that it has something to do with the complexity of getting the gear though. One man can join a pug BG and get honor and at the very least one mark of _________. But raids only can be cleared once a week, arena points only rack up once a week and you gotta hold a good spot for it to even be worth it. Overall BG's are just to easy to get honor and marks, where as raiding and arena take time to set up and alot more work.
Bdizle Jun 13th 2007 3:40PM
Warlord/GM gear should be subpar in comparison to Arena gear. However if you look at the Arena gear, its not a full set. So if you want your res as high as possible its important to get warlord gear to fill the holes. You want it to be better or equal to Arena? Then take all honor from bgs and increase honor received from world pvp kills. Then you can have your precious bgs afk free. However then I'll start afk'in so people still have something to complain about, cuz how can you be horde without people crying about av?
Dur13l Jun 13th 2007 3:41PM
This makes sense to me. It doesn't take a lot of effort to get BG stuff (about the same as running instances).
Arena do take time like raiding....So i think it is fair.
Of course everyone wants purples with no effort so of course the Tin foil folks are going to cry.
Hoss Jun 13th 2007 4:15PM
I will tell you why afking is such a problem. It is god aweful boring! Bottom line. I have been exalted with AB and AV for over a year now and I dread queing up for AV. I will admit I afk, alot. I netted over 25k honor this weekend afking. The reason for this is that it allows me to gear up for something that I actually do enjoy doing, arenas. Until blizz does something to make this honor grind enjoyable I will continue to afk, because I find absolutely no joy what so ever in AV anymore.
Coherent Jun 13th 2007 4:50PM
Dealing with the AFK'ers would go a long way towards fixing the battlegrounds. Two or three afk'ers is pretty much a guaranteed BG loss for all but the most twinked-out BG-instance-groups.