Rated Battlgrounds - WHY Premades?

#0 - June 21, 2010, 5:26 p.m.

Hi there, I'm sorry to have to be another player to ask this, but I have not found an answer to my question. If I could get an official response to this, I would be very grateful.

Why do we need to be in a premade in order to queue in a rated battleground?

I can think of no reason as to why we should be in a pre-determined group. Let me explain.

In previous posts, it has been stated that your rating is completely personal. Your group does not have an effect on that rating, and your group can change every match if you so choose. All you have to do is win.

If this is true, then why do we need to forge a group in order to enter? Why can't we just queue up individually and still get the benefits of having a personal rating?

Or, if you still want to fill the premade niche, why not have two versions of rated battlegrounds; one that allows you to queue alone (or with one or two other people) and one that allows for a full premade? Each one having their own rating, of course.

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The reason why I'm concerned about this is because, as it is, I know that battlegrounds will go down the same path as arenas.

Arenas ended up failing. In terms of forming your team, they started out with the mindset of "What would I LIKE to have?" and ended up being "What do I HAVE to have?"

You say we can queue up with anyone for rated battlegrounds, but when it comes down to it, random groups that are filled with players who just want to PvP are NEVER going to win against a fully planned out premade.

Telling us to join a PvP guild or get a group of people to queue with for this reason is not an acceptable solution, either. In doing so, you're ruining the fun of those who enjoy battlegrounds for what they are right now.

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My point is, the reason why Battlegrounds do so well is because you DON'T have to have a regular group of people in order to do well, and you DON'T have to pre-plan everything before stepping foot into it. Battlegrounds are the only bit of end-game content that does not require you to rely on any set number of people. That is what makes it so successful.

Anyone can quickly join, beat each other up, and be done with it. It's fun because of its convenience and spontaneity.

If that is taken away, if we are forced to treat battlegrounds as though forming a raid or arena team... I can only see its demise.

Thank you for reading my concerns.

Ghostcrawler

#24 - June 22, 2010, 8:44 p.m.

We feel like 5-player dungeons are the kind of thing we can more-or-less randomly assemble and give you a reasonable chance of success. Even in that case, however, we make sure you have a tank and healer and look at gear and experience and that sort of thing.

Putting together groups for BGs is much taller proposition, especially when rating and epic gear are potentially involved. We want players to individually decide what kinds of classes and mechanics they need to be successful. We want players to decide what gear or experience requirements they are looking for. Most importantly, we want players to organize themselves -- we want you to decide who is the leader and / or what your strategy is, and we want you to have a mechanism for handling players who refuse to follow those goals, just want to argue, or are refusing to be team players. Randomly assembling groups would require many additional features, tools and rules that are very tricky to design in order to enforce these things. When someone else does the inviting, they can set the ground rules, and you can choose to live with them, challenge them or look for another group. It does require a little more work on your part up-front, but you'll have a much better experience in the long run.

Ghostcrawler

#145 - June 23, 2010, 3:31 a.m.

To be clear, you can still solo queue for normal (i.e. non-rated) Battlegrounds and still earn honor points to purchase gear. If you want conquest points (which we call Arena points today), you will need to enter rated BGs and you will need to form a group to do so. This is the same requirement we make for raiding, which provides similar rewards.

Ghostcrawler

#147 - June 23, 2010, 3:41 a.m.

Q u o t e:
In case you missed it -- "Most importantly, we want players to organize themselves." You can try to deliberately avoid this requirement, i.e. just pull any 10 / 15 players from trade chat, but you'll be crushed by those "premades" that do have a leader and have thought about a strategy for success. PvE Raids do not allow you to just "wing it", do your own thing, or have no strategy. Neither should Rated Battlegrounds.

If you want that high powered current season main set PvP gear, you do need to care. If you don't, well, you can wait till it's a couple of seasons old and "on sale" for honor points or whatever.

It's perfectly fine that Rated BG pugs will form over LFG or Trade chat. VoA pugs work because someone (or a few players) is / are providing leadership, organization and strategy for the group. Rated BG trade / LFG channel "pugs" will succeed or fail much in the same manner.

If the BG pug is full of charlatans or players looking to just "cheese" some BG points it'll be crushed by a premade, much like Toravon would do to any likewise PvE pug. And just like a VoA PuG corrective action can be taken if necessary.

This is perhaps harsher than I could get away with, but it summarizes our intent reasonably well.

We don't anticipate rated BGs to be the kind of thing where you can run around and duel folks in the midfield and die a bunch and eventually earn your epic gear. :) You will need to win a lot of games. Rated BGs reward success, not just participation. The honor points from normal BGs reward participation.

Ghostcrawler

#149 - June 23, 2010, 3:46 a.m.

Q u o t e:
But we'll still choose Arena over BG's even though we prefer BG's because it will be logistically easier and quicker to form for some of us in raiding guilds that dont enjoy mass PvP.

Some players will stick with Arenas. No problem -- that's part of the design. But we think there are plenty of players who like organized PvP but don't like the smaller battles, the long-term commitment, and / or how influential class composition can be in Arenas.

I imagine players will approach rated BGs in a number of ways. For some, their guild or the folks they raid with will want to participate. For others, they'll join the pugs forming in the cities. This is pretty much how raids form today, though the BGs arguably require even less of a time commitment (depending a lot on which raid you're talking about).