Do BG's need diminishing returns?
by Matthew Rossi 
Nov 26th 2007 at 10:59AM
As we all know, with the changes to Alterac Valley in patch 2.3 have come changes to the tactical balance of the game. Specifically, if you're not willing to put some real effort into defense, you're not going to win, and you can end up in a turtle game waiting for one side to run out of reinforcements. Which leads me to wonder: if the games are inherently limited by the reinforcement factor... if by killing opposing players you will eventually win the game and as result there's no way the games can last indefinitely... then what do we need diminishing returns on honor for? Battlegrounds are limited in that you have no real choice but to kill the same people over and over again, after all.
There's never going to be a setup where one side agrees to be honor famed by the other in AV now, if that ever happened in the first place. One side is going to lose, the game is going to end, and a new game start up: but if you've played in a lot of AV's lately where one side put up a vigorous defense and the two factions clashed for a significant melee, then you may have noticed as I have that your estimated honor for the day will often be wildly overstated. For instance, yesterday I managed to squeeze about 4k honor out. But when I went to bed, it said I had almost 6k honor estimated. I understand what estimated means, that it's not accurate, but the idea that the system estimated an additional 2k honor over what I had actually earned made me wonder if there was a way to improve this. With Arena 3 coming out tomorrow, people have either acquired the honor they want or will be working to do so, so it seems like a good time to consider if we need what seems to be an outdated means of preventing repeated ganking or honor farming.
Then again, I suppose you could do it in Warsong still. AB and EoTS also have their limiting factors built in, but Warsong keeps going until someone caps 3 flags. Maybe we could just eliminate the honor decay in the other three BG's? That might make Warsong drop in popularity, though.
What do you think? Do we need diminishing returns on honor in battlegrounds?
There's never going to be a setup where one side agrees to be honor famed by the other in AV now, if that ever happened in the first place. One side is going to lose, the game is going to end, and a new game start up: but if you've played in a lot of AV's lately where one side put up a vigorous defense and the two factions clashed for a significant melee, then you may have noticed as I have that your estimated honor for the day will often be wildly overstated. For instance, yesterday I managed to squeeze about 4k honor out. But when I went to bed, it said I had almost 6k honor estimated. I understand what estimated means, that it's not accurate, but the idea that the system estimated an additional 2k honor over what I had actually earned made me wonder if there was a way to improve this. With Arena 3 coming out tomorrow, people have either acquired the honor they want or will be working to do so, so it seems like a good time to consider if we need what seems to be an outdated means of preventing repeated ganking or honor farming.
Then again, I suppose you could do it in Warsong still. AB and EoTS also have their limiting factors built in, but Warsong keeps going until someone caps 3 flags. Maybe we could just eliminate the honor decay in the other three BG's? That might make Warsong drop in popularity, though.
What do you think? Do we need diminishing returns on honor in battlegrounds?
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, PvP, Factions
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Zumwalah Nov 26th 2007 11:18AM
this has corssed my mind many times, whats the point in killing players in AV cause odds are youe allready received honor for thier death previously.. also as far as i know diminishing returns is for thw whole day, not that particular BG so if u come across th same ppl in AV a few times, yes your estimated honor is going to be way overstated.. i agree that this could be used to farm honor in WSG.. but how often does that happen any more? i think honor DR should not count in BGS as its designed more as protection against corpse camping.. and there for it should only apply to world pvp.
Braz Nov 26th 2007 11:34AM
While extra honor with minimal effort would be appreciated, I would not mind the diminishing returns on honor if the estimated totals were more accurate. It seems like the totals could take the diminishing returns into account, rather than being simply unreliably for those who engage in lots of pvp combat.
Yohan Nov 26th 2007 11:55AM
I don't know if this is what happened with you, but there seems to be a bug in the game now related to the daily BG quests. It is somehow related to completing the daily BG quest, logging out and back in, and having your estimated honor display the 419 honor (at 70) from the daily quest multiple times. When the honor is calculated the next day, it only counts the daily quest honor once, so you could have thousands of bogus honor being displayed from that quest rather than from diminishing returns.
But I agree, get rid of diminishing returns in BGs, give us more honor.
Brian Carnell Nov 26th 2007 11:39AM
I think diminishing returns on honor points should be eliminated, period.
Nathan Nov 26th 2007 11:41AM
@1
Honor farming in WSG still happens. (in my battlegroup, the twink guilds Crazy Eighty Eights and AK Forty Seven are the probably the biggest offenders).
If there's one thing that sucks more than being pwned over and over again by an enemy premade with no intention of capping the flag, it's being held hostage by your own team when you only need 3 more marks, forced to wait out a deserter debuff or wait 1-3 hours until the kids get bored.
If they'd put some sort of time limit on WSG games, so that they'd actually end, I'd be all about it. It's not like diminishing returns is stopping it as it is.
(45 minutes, high score wins, ties get 2 marks, 0-0 ties get 1 each)
BillDoor Nov 26th 2007 11:47AM
@3 I agree, but only in battlegrounds. Camping someone for honor in the regular zones isn't fun, and I think that's why the diminishing returns exists at all.
@4 WSG should be fixed like AV has been fixed. Each team starts with 1500 points, and capping a flag reduces your opponents points by 500. Each kill also reduces it by 1. It'll still take awhile to break a turtle or a hiding flag, but eventually it'll end.
Vort Nov 26th 2007 11:51AM
Elimate HK honor in BG's totaly. That way you earn honor by winning or losing. That shold eliminate farm HK farming for good.
That should at least force people to play as a team, and even things out for healer classes vs one shot DPS clasees. Healers might actually heal again.. Wow the positives are endless.
(puts on flame suit) "Fire away".
Matthew Rossi Nov 26th 2007 11:57AM
Vort -
I heal in BG's on my resto shaman (indeed, that's just about all he's good for) and I seem to clear plenty of honor, comparable to my warrior.
Connrad Nov 26th 2007 12:02PM
@6 - The issue with only granting points if you win (or even granting a small portion to the losing side) is that on some servers with severe realm imbalances, only the horde or alliance would have a lot of wins (and therefore points) and would therefore get the good PvP gear, thus compounding the problem.
FireStar Nov 26th 2007 12:32PM
I see it's been said, but WSG needs it. Actually, they should just add a timer to where if you don't win in 30 minutes it's over, and the one who capped more gets the win. If there's a tie, they both get 1 mark.
robotrock Nov 26th 2007 12:38PM
I just wanted to say glad the comments were updated like your sister sites :P
Green Armadillo Nov 26th 2007 12:45PM
Actually, I think comment 6 has a good idea - eliminate HK's altogether from BG's.
Yes, I'd expect to see some corresponding benefit in bonus honor to keep honor gains constant, and yes, WSG is a problem because it has no time limit (though this problem already effectively exists once you've killed most of the other players). But think how often your team's progress towards an objective that could actually win you the battle gets held up by people farming HK's somewhere en route. Think how often your PuG refuses to defend objectives because the people on defense get no HK's.
The way the system is now, playing defense means sacrificing your own honor in the hopes of getting the team more honor. That's fine if you're in a guild pre-made rolling pugs as quickly as the queue can pop, but if you're in a Pug it's just not worth missing out on such a large portion of the honor gain, only to get rolled when the other team finally does decide to come attack your flag because you're all alone anyway. Battlegrounds should reward contribution to the TEAM effort towards victory, not individuals for running off and ganking out as many kills as they can.
Green Armadillo Nov 26th 2007 12:46PM
Actually, I think comment 6 has a good idea - eliminate HK's altogether from BG's.
Yes, I'd expect to see some corresponding benefit in bonus honor to keep honor gains constant, and yes, WSG is a problem because it has no time limit (though this problem already effectively exists once you've killed most of the other players). But think how often your team's progress towards an objective that could actually win you the battle gets held up by people farming HK's somewhere en route. Think how often your PuG refuses to defend objectives because the people on defense get no HK's.
The way the system is now, playing defense means sacrificing your own honor in the hopes of getting the team more honor. That's fine if you're in a guild pre-made rolling pugs as quickly as the queue can pop, but if you're in a Pug it's just not worth missing out on such a large portion of the honor gain, only to get rolled when the other team finally does decide to come attack your flag because you're all alone anyway. Battlegrounds should reward contribution to the TEAM effort towards victory, not individuals for running off and ganking out as many kills as they can.
Slayblaze Nov 26th 2007 1:17PM
How about this for WSG: it should have an "Honor Multiplier" that constantly ticks down and decreases, like a timer as soon as the match starts. The honor awarded from each flag cap/re-cap and HK would be based off this multiplier, but as the match progresses the amount awarded keeps decreasing. Finally after a set period (30 minutes maybe) the multiplier would be reach zero meaning no more honor will be awarded from that point on. Caps would still count towards a "win" and kills would still count towards your lifetime kill record, but you just wouldn't get any more honor for drawing things out.
This would force people to want to get flag caps *right away* for maximum honor instead of hiding for prolonged farming (which have diminishing returns anyway) thus removing the most irritating element of WSG. Games would move along quickly and have a sense of urgency. Good teams fighting bad players would have to quickly steamroll them instead of drawing things out, or else risk less honor bonus for that match. Good teams fighting other good teams would be truly epic again...more like a race to the finish that rewards efficiency, knowledge, and skill.
Dave Nov 26th 2007 1:28PM
I think in all the non-AV BG's diminishing returns needs to go, as well as an overall increase in honor gains from HK's. I spent all day yesterday NOT in AV because i needed 30 stupid WSG marks.
I got a grand total of 2k honor for 4 hours worth of WSG (26 games). yeah. I could have easily pulled 3-4 times that much in AV, but of course when one needs marks before Tuesday... marks outweigh honor. :( Granted, most of those games were losses... but I think WSG needs an overhaul. I think WSG should be a "cap as many flags as you can in 30 minutes, winner gets a big bonus to honor, losers get much less" sort of game. Clearly there are too many incentives to turtle (or too few ways to avoid it?) and the only honor comes from flag caps for the most part, and you just don't get a lot for that anyway. It's a horrible BG, and it shows.
It's good that we get incentives to win. Unfortunately, blizzard hasn't decided that we need incentives to LOSE as well. If you get jack crap out of a BG for the time involved, why would anyone sensible go to that BG in the first place? If things like WSG aren't your favorite BG, and you're almost always going to lose... and you're not going to get any honor... why would any rational thinker play the bg except to farm marks, and even then there's no guarantee they'll care enough to win.
On top of that, I have NO IDEA how honor gain is factored now. Why do we get more points for some than others? Before it was a product of their PVP rank, but we don't have those anymore, so why is one guy worth 8 points and another is worth 3? Everyone could get a flat 10 to start and diminish to 5 if Blizzard really thinks it's necessary or something, but it's damn confusing to me why we can't get a real accurate honor count every day.
arb Nov 26th 2007 1:44PM
Some interesting suggestions and I think there should be a whole new topic on how we'd change BGs to incentivise people to properly pursue the team objectives.
Regarding diminishing returns, I believe removing them altogether would be too open to abuse, but they need a tweak to account for longer matches, and also in Battlegroups where the same players constantly cycle through the BGs. Perhaps resetting the diminishing returns counter at the start of each BG and every 5-10 mins during the BG.
amasen Nov 26th 2007 1:59PM
Some people have mentioned that we might just eliminate HK's for battlegrounds all together... While I want to agree with this sentiment, I think it needs to exist in some form or another. If you completely destroy the opponents team in both BG objectives and deaths, you should get more honor than if you just won a BG.
The big problem with HK's at the moment isn't the diminishing returns (which only serve to slow down the honor gain of people who play to much), it is the way honor is gained from HK's. You have to be alive and near the kill to get honor for it. This means that if you are the warrior that selflessly charges to the front and takes focus fire until dead you will get no honor. Or if you are the person who holds the flag/node that never see's any PvP action, you will get much less honor than those that zerg mindlessly around the map.
My solution is have a zone-wide bonus for honor kills, and eliminate the per person bonus for killing. This bonus would be tailored to each BG and have a diminishing function built in.
Green Armadillo Nov 26th 2007 2:48PM
@17: Unfortunately, having the bonus for HK's be zone-wide only encourages AFKers. The more honor that it's possible to rake in by sitting somewhere and tapping space every so often, the more incentive there is to do it. The only way it could possibly work would be if Blizzard changed the AFK reporting system to actually remove people from the battleground and then awarded honor for HK's to the whole BG at the end of the match (so that there would be time to remove the AFK crowd before the honor award happens). But even a single honor point per team HK would be a huge incentive for the AFK'ers to come to their keyboard just often enough to run into traffic and clear the debuff.
Burg Nov 26th 2007 2:06PM
WSG always descends into an overly drawn-out game of hide-the-flag. The flags should auto-return to their base if not capped after 5 minutes. If that's not a good option, then maybe they could become visible through walls, etc after 5 mins of being held without a cap.
Ahoni Nov 26th 2007 2:32PM
I like what Slayblaze said. Make some sort of diminishing return in WSG. Right now, it is the only open ended BG. All the others have limits on how long they can last, but WSG could technically go on forever if neither team caps the flag 3 times.