First of all I absolutely love blitz! It has completely revitalized my love for bgs. I would strongly encourage anyone thats unhappy with the state of regular bgs to give it an honest try.
That being said it can obviously be improved, and the changes they’ve listed for next patch are looking very promising. Here are some other changes I think would make it a better experience.
Allow duo queue for everyone
The value of having just one friend to play with is immense. I think duo queueing is the perfect balance between competitive integrity and social aspect
Give healers other incentives
There definitely has to be incentives to encourage healers and reduce queue times, but I think those are better off being gold/conquest/cosmetics/titles, and make them scale with scarcity like the war mode bonus (greater bonus when fewer healers)
Add an adventure guide section for battlegrounds
With information about the game modes, make it easy for players to understand the differences between regular bgs and the blitz versions. I still dont know how many points a flag cap gives in Eots or how many points one node is worth in AB/dwg
Also: this has been suggested in other threads, but an account wide debuff for people declining queues to prevent syncing and getting rid of having the queue pop and then someone declining 3x in a row.
I am all for dps duo queue, but then give triple queue to healers. May even revive 3s as a side effect if I can queue for both. Bonus points if they remove random bgs.
Gold, Conquest and titles have not worked in SS, and would not work in blitz either
Because more coordination would make the games better, not worse and playing with someone is fun. We will never get RBGs back, but small “squad” could be doable.
Not that I think anything is going to happen. There will be 0 changes in either direction
Would lead to even more synchronized queuing with win traders and boosters. Blizzard must fix that first.
What incentives would you recommend? The extra honor and conquest barely help. It’s gonna be difficult to fix the core issue that healing in pvp is not fun and you’re often blamed for losses.
No thanks, remove duo queue for everyone instead. This bracket is titled ‘solo battlegrounds’, not ‘duo battlegrounds’. You shouldn’t even be able to duo queue in the first place. The bracket would just turn into tons of people not queuing unless they have a BiS partner. The bracket is already bad enough when games are won or lost in starting rooms on things like flag maps depending on who has a Pres Sub duo, and on Silvershard when the number of damage immunities is far too advantageous.
There is no competitive integrity in games being won or lost in a starting room based on class design. Universal duo queueing would exacerbate this.
Can you imagine? The premade unrated spammers would then unironically be saying ‘go and queue that solo bracket where everyone is premading’.
Appreciate that. Im not unfamiliar with the general strategy in each bg, it was just an example to demonstrate the kind of information they could include in such a feature.
I think claims of sync queueing and wintrading in blitz are greatly exaggerated. Not saying it doesnt happen at all, but I have a feeling that its a very small issue compared to what most people on this forum seem to think. I also dont see how allowing dps duo queue would increase the frequency of sync/wintrading. One person “afk” is usually enough to decide a game at high rating.
I think a combination of gold, conquest, honor and cosmetics/title would help a lot - maybe with a bit more emphasis on gold. It would definitely make me more likely to queue up for blitz and shuffle as healer if I got 200-1k gold (depending on scarcity, like I mentioned initially).
Im sure they could rename it to blitz in the queue tab as well, if that became a huge issue.
That is a somewhat valid concern, although I personally dont find it outweighs the benefits. The same logic also applies to the current system, so hard to say how much it would exacerbate it. It sounds like your concerns are mainly focused on the top tier of the playerbase, and not the general player experience.
Class balance is definitely a big issue, like with everything else in wow. Hopefully they will make improvements there, but I dont see how thats relevant in this context.
If you want a game with a perfectly balanced competitive environment, then maybe wow isnt the game for you I play wow to have fun, and to me playing with friends, even if just one, makes the game a lot more fun - regardless of how it impacts my rating.
Doesn’t apply anywhere near as much when you can only duo with a healer, so you’re mostly just hoping you have someone duoing with a Pres/MW/Holy Priest. Universal duo queueing would just be every DPS looking for either an S+ tier healer, or a Sub, Ret, Boomy or MM Hunter. Also, it could just result in frequent double Pres Evoker, making flag maps an absolute nightmare to play in the absence of SIGNIFICANT changes to that class.
Not really, because the Blitz MMR is so welfare and inflated that even really low skilled players can reach high MMRs just by the virtue of a few win streaks. The ‘top tier of the playerbase’ is COMPLETELY irrelevant in Blitz until the last week.
And other people have different ideas of fun. This is advertised as a solo bracket, if you want premading and organised groups with your friends, feel free to go to the ‘rated battleground’ part of the PvP tab and/or make suggestions about improving that bracket. Until then, ‘Solo battlegrounds’ should be true to its name.
I understand the concern. Im not sure how the current system works, but I think if they made it so each team would have the same number of duos - or at least limit it to a maximum gap of 1 duo to mitigate queue time impact, it would solve this.
I simply meant that it seems like you’re mainly focused on class/spec balance and synergy concerns, which are most apparent on high rating. For the vast majority of players, these changes wouldnt be noticeable.
There’s multiple ways of looking at it. On one hand, a team full of duos fighting a solo player team doesnt sound very fair, on the other hand more people would now have a chance to also duo and possibly be on voice, softening the blow of the enemy pres+rogue duo. As far as the actual team balance is concerned, I dont think this would have a negative impact, rather the opposite - assuming there is a system to balance distribution of duos. But I understand that it can be annoying as a solo player thinking about how certain situations might have turned out differently if you had a duo on voice. Each to their own.
It’s apparent everywhere. Doesn’t matter if you’re 2k or 3k, Pres is in the next expansion on flag maps for example. Do you think a Pres Evoker Duo on flag maps is only a high rating concern?
No thanks, there’s 1 way for me: ‘Solo Battlegrounds’ should be solo queue only.
This is just an another duo queue propaganda and rationalization topic.
Duo queue is the root of the every problem like wintrading, boost selling and unbalanced class/spec distribution. No need to mention stacking 2 broken specs and communicating in voice chat is like bringing a gun to a fist fight.
If you want real advices:
1- Remove duo queue. It will also end sync queues indirectly.
2- Stop standardized rating gain/loss. Everyone in a team gain or lose same rating without considering their contribution to match in terms of damage/healing/objectives.
Fairness aside, it also discourages cheaters/sabotagers from intentionally doing less damage/heal.
I play wow to have fun, and to me playing with friends, even if just one, makes the game a lot more fun - regardless of how it impacts my rating.
