Recently Method hosted a RBG tournament, which most of those who are reading this thread were aware of and must have watched. It was a fantastic tournament with edge of the seat thrillers, specially the first two games of the finals. Brilliant individual skills on display, excellent team coordination and the tournament ended up showing, why rated battlegrounds are still the most thrilling aspect of the game, which unfortunately are put into a neglect by Blizzard for years.
The last flag map was Twin Peaks which came in Cata! It was 11 years ago! The last maps that are part of RBG rotation came in MoP, 10 years ago! Having a new battleground map per expansion, is at least the bare minimum the company can do for the PvP population at the least.
The following changes, if implemented, can revitalize the game. Blizzard would of course gain more subscriptions, hence more revenue for them. So its a win-win situation for all. These are as follows:
Design and implement new battleground maps. No reskins of existing maps, but actual new maps, one of them should be a flag carrying map and the others can be nodes. Developers can create 3 node capture maps as well, as seen in other MMOs like Guild Wars 2
Honor and Conquest should be account bound. For sending honor and conquest, a player can buy a bag, and send it to an Alt. But when the Alt opens it, instead of a random loot, it should be conquest points. Like we used to have Flux boxes or the current Paracasual boxes. In fact all in-game currencies should be account wide
Rated Battlegrounds should have its own bracket titles. Like for crossing 1.8/2.1 in RBGs, a player should not get Rival/Duelist title, rather should get something like Horde/Alliance Guard- Horde/Alliance Defender etc.
Rated Battlegrounds should also have seasonal titles like Arenas
Rated Battlegrounds should have its own currencies, points etc. which players can use to buy RBG specific armor, weapon skins and mounts
Vicious Saddles can’t be laying waste in our inventories. There should be an exchange rate for Vicious Saddles for in-game Gold say 10k gold per saddle
Random Battleground and Rated Battleground wins should award 250 and 500 gold each
1 Mark of Honor = 250 Honor progress
I request, RBG lovers to kindly share the views on the above and add more points for overall improvement. Those who don’t care about RBGs, instead of posting negative comments, please give this thread a skip.
Actually RBG can’t be worked into Solo Shuffle for the very nature of the game. 3v3 on a rotation basis in a solo mode without voice is still okay, but coordinating with 19 players, (team mates against 10 enemies) for a rated game can’t be done in a no voice solo mode. This is the very reason the so called no voice teams usually serve as feeding fooder to coordinated voice groups.
RBG is a team game and has to be played as a team game. All that we need is Blizzard to listed to the above suggestions and implement those and the game mode will be totally revamped with lots of incentives for players to Q for the same.
RBG solo queue can only be implemented properly if they seperate arena/pve/bg balancing. several specs are borderline useless in bgs, then you have the s tier aoe specs like feral, assa, havoc, wars, balance etc that needs to be number tuned. Then you have the tank balance like Vdh able to cross flag maps in 5 seconds and other tanks also mostly just useless aside from guardian or in niche cases blooddk.
healer balance with HPS under pressure should also be addressed properly.
another thing to balance is number of stealthers and whether you have a rogue or not because if you dont its very disadvantageous.
the gamemode also need a leaver system similar to League of legends where the game pauses and leaver penalties should be accountwide, if somebody leaves, the game could essentially restart from new and if they reconnect the game gets unpaused.
Very well said. All the points are spot on. Balancing is important and if they can sperate the game modes, it would be really nice. Also may be racials. If we see the RBG ladder, then like 95% players are Night Elf. Either revamp Racials or just remove Racials from PvP as such.
Also, adding new battleground maps will be helpful. In Guild Wars 2, all maps are 3 node capture the node overtime modes, where the node points go with max player of a side alive inside in 5v5 style. If Blizzard can extend this to 10v10 with new maps, it might revatilize the RBGs as in such maps, more 1v1 and tankier specs will be viable and teams will try out new compositions.
Lastly, it is really necessary that Blizzard SHOULD NOT introduce SoloQ for Rated Battlegrounds. It will kill the game once for all. Solo mode kills social aspects and also the very concept that Rated Battlegrounds are a team mode game…
