Say NO to Battleground Matchmaking

#0 - Oct. 2, 2006, 7:37 p.m.

Get ready for battlegrounds to become beyond boring and stale.

See, one of the fun things about BGs is the "Forrest Gump" nature of them -- like that box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.

The worst idea is this nonsense about gear-matching. Great -- same damn opposition, battleground after battleground. Greens versus greens, blues versus blues, purples versus purples. BORING.

Yes, it is fun to mow down people while in purples. And even when opposing better-geared players, it also makes for interesting play when the lower-geared team can try to use superior tactics to eek out a win.

Same is true with pick-up groups versus teams. If you're a pug and you face a team, chances are you're going to lose. But sometimes pugs do fairly well against partial teams, that can be a lot of fun. Even more interesting is when partial team/pug groups do well against full teams.

And while on a team, yes, it IS fun pwning dysfunctional pick-up groups, and it's even better when you get a match of some pugs, some teams, and everything in between. Some easy matches, some tough matches = interesting, diverse gameplay.

Now, all of that is gone. Blizzard has caved to the socialist whiners who suck at this game -- the serial dopes who believe that if a match isn't perfectly equal gearwise and teamwise, it's "unfair" and they need to whine about it.

Whine so much, in fact, that Blizzard is going to destroy one of the best things about battlegrounds, the wide-open, Wild-west type dynamic that pit the best versus the worst, the best versus the best -- and everything in-between.

All gone now. Now it's going to be the same teams, and the same gear, game after game after game after game after game . . . .

Whiners, you seriously are sucking all the fun out of this game. And Blizzard, shame on you for listening to them.

Drysc

#289 - Oct. 4, 2006, 5:26 a.m.

The matching system is only going to be able to match players and teams to a degree, and that will fluctuate between each match. It's going to do its best, but as time goes on it begins to broaden its search and in those cases you're going to get the toffee, the caramel, and the weird ones with that meringue-type stuff in them but it's all hard and crunchy.

Aside from that we're not matching based on skill, or any subset of what could actually be considered skill. Even if both teams are completely equal based on their organization and gear, you're still going to have some players more skillful than others. That's going to go for any match that could be made, and any variety of the players that are in that game.

It isn't going to be a science, there is plenty of room for various types of players to get in and have fun PvPing. With cross-realm battlegrounds there's a much larger pool of players to choose from, and allows us to be a little more picky as to who we put together. What the matching system IS going to do is attempt to match up players as best as possible and provide a more generally even playing field. In turn, sure it's going to put a little more emphasis on each player's abilities within the battleground. I do find it odd that you would proclaim so loudly that you doubt yours. :)

If you're looking for whacky match-ups and team uncertainty then we're planning a lot of outdoor PvP objectives in the expansion that you will probably enjoy. The battlegrounds have always been intended as a more sterile environment, and this matching system is the next progression of that. Of course the arenas take that to the extreme and put a heavy emphasis on small-team cooperation and skill, and the rewards mirror those achievements in PvP ability.

To clarify on arenas and avoid any further confusion: the ranked team matches will not be matched based on items. They will however be matched based on each team's rating which fluctuates based on your team's wins/losses and the rating of the teams those wins/losses were attributed to.

Drysc

#297 - Oct. 4, 2006, 5:47 a.m.

Q u o t e:

Hopefully they don't amount to the horrible failure that was silithus/epl world pvp.

I don't think they were a failure in any degree, at least not for us. The intension was to give players that are in those zones something to do that could help their PvE objectives while there, and I see that design goal succeeding on a daily basis. What I think could contribute the most to your view of it failing is the buildup of players creating a perception of what the objectives intentions were, and our inability to curb those perceptions on a wide enough scale quickly. All in all I think they were a success for what we set out to do with them.