Some thoughts on Alterac Valley 🤔

[Jito-turalyon (Jito)]

Prior to Battle for Azeroth there were a number of changes made to the large-scale Battlegrounds.
Back then Blizzard made a post asking for feedback about them, which can be found here:

Feedback: Epic Battlegrounds

Greetings, You may have noticed we've been doing some updates to Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest recently. Our goals with these changes are to both improve the gameplay experience in these battlegrounds and to also design them around a longer duration format. We feel that with the longer match length, players have more room to switch strategies in a match, change from offense to defense a few times, etc. to provide a, well, more epic experience. With that, we're looking to you to give us f…

Specifically in regards to Alterac Valley the following changes were made:

@Taepsilum

Alterac Valley

• Increased the number of Reinforcements by 100.
• The NPCs health and damage will match the players level and gear, which will result in a more consistent difficulty.

And the following thoughts were given by Blizzard afterwards:

@Taepsilum

Alterac Valley

We feel Alterac Valley is in a pretty decent spot. We’ve seen a dip in Alliance win rates, but want to give them time to re-adjust and strategize after the changes. We’ll continue to monitor things and make changes where necessary.

We realize players have a passion for some of Alterac Valley’s classic mechanics (Ivus, Lokholar). While we have no immediate changes to announce yet, it’s something we may adjust in the future.

@Aerythlea-2611

Alterac Valley
For Battle for Azeroth, we’ve put scaling on the creatures to make them more of a consistent challenge . Our intent is that the gameplay experience of Alterac Valley remains consistent, as in the creatures remain a challenge as your gear progresses.

This was all 6 months ago. So this is a bit of a post mortem, if you will.

I think the changes made are generally good and have worked well.
More reinforcements and stronger NPCs make for longer games. It helps ensure that the key to winning the battleground is teamwork. And it emphasizes the need for an actual strategy that people try to follow.

I’m missing some changes that reinvigorate the desire to collect resources.
Blizzard stated that they realized players have a passion for the classic mechanics like Ivus and Lokholar, but they didn’t have any immediate changes to announce, though adjustments might be made in the future.

Well, now it is the future.

Alterac Valley feels too similar to Isle of Conquest. The focus revolves entirely around capping points of interest whilst making incremental advancement toward the enemy boss. In Isle of Conquest there’s some uniqueness to be found in the siege vehicles and the need to destroy the enemy’s gates. In Alterac Valley however, there is no such thing. It would be nice if the resources looted from enemy players could be increased, or the amount of resources needed for the various base contributions could be decreased, so invoking these buffs and summons would play a more central role in the battleground.

The map layout is problematic.
Blizzard noted after implementing the changes that they’d seen a dip in Alliance win rates, but they wanted to give them time to re-adjust and strategize. And then Blizzard would monitor things and make changes where necessary.

Again, 6 months have passed, I’d say that the Alliance have had plenty of time to re-adjust, strategize, and otherwise become familiar with the changes made to the battleground.

I think it’s obvious that whereas in the past Alliance would win the majority of Alterac Valley games by just blitzing all the enemy towers and rushing to kill the boss within 10 minutes – usually a minute sooner than the Horde could accomplish the same – then that is no longer the case.

The Horde seems to have a considerable advantage following the changes made, because they foster a strategy where you try to take one tower at a time – and Stonehearth Bunker is a lot more exposed and vulnerable than Iceblood Bunker is.

Usually the map will look like this after a few minutes:

https://imgur.com/a/tLn8JpW

And after 6 months of trying, the Alliance have yet to figure out a strategy to turn this situation around.
Stonehearth Bunker always falls as the first, putting the Horde in a very favorable position.

In the odd cases where the Alliance manages to win, it is usually achieved through brute force by killing lots of Horde players and winning on reinforcements.
Whilst a win is a win, I believe it is problematic that there doesn’t seem to be an objective-based strategy that the Alliance can pursue to win, and that the only way seems to be to have players who are good at killing Horde players without dying themselves.

Something has to be changed here. That Stonehearth Bunker is too exposed and vulnerable, whereas Iceblood Tower is easily defended because of a narrow choke-point and close proximity to the graveyard.

In summary.

• Make resource gathering matter again.

Buffing your NPCs and invoking powerful summons should be what makes Alterac Valley unique and interesting.

• Do something about the map layout.

It seems clear that the current layout does not present the Alliance with an objective-based strategy they can pursue to try and win. Rather, the strategy becomes to try and prevent the Horde from winning, which is not a very satisfying gameplay experience.

Other people’s thoughts?
Feel free to share them!

[Dredscott-ravencrest]

I don’t remember if I like Jito or not

But, I will say I agree 100% with this post. I would say regardless of what side I’m on, Horde wins, and most games aren’t terribly close.

The worse part about it is, the “epicness” takes too long to conclude.

Some said in a game today, while we were putting up some resistance, but were otherwise being stomped, that in vanilla there was literally nothing else to do, so just “killing” time in there was acceptable. But when you can do WQ, M+, other BGs, whatever, being trapped in a long, drawn out, low reward game, really seems outdated.

I am not the bg quitting type, so just played it out. But, it was 15-20 minutes of meh, after the game had effectively been decided.

[Sylvare-argent-dawn (Sylvare)]

@Jito-turalyon

And it emphasizes the need for an actual strategy that people try to follow.

If turtling up is still the strategy then its questionable wether or not its goof because the strategy hardly takes into consideration any of the goals of the BG and automatically assumes that playing the BG by its objectives (towercapping) is an automatic loss

The taking the bunker down one at a time was a response to a response, AV was put on a seperate queue, so hordes that signed on didn’t join randomly and had An interest in learning the BG, a counter strategy of defense was created to counter the Blitz, for a short while the horde meta was defend atleast 1 base (but ideally both IB and TP) while one group attacks, splitting up in a push group and defense group with Just one goal; cap all their towers before they cap ours (defs only function was to delay Alliance capping)
This lasted until Alliance started doing the same which meant neither groups push groups were able to make it past defense, the reply to that was turtle up at the first tower then slowly push down with 40 people while not letting anyone pass

Havent played it in a while so not sure if there is a new tactic again in place of the turtle, but the turtle makes the game last longer which is fine but it does so in the most boring wat available (which is why I havent played it in a while)

The main reason for this is the current configuration of resources, but how to fix it I dont know because your options are increase it further but that would further delegitimize the goals of the BGs, you can remove it and make the victory condition killing the Boss only but that would cause emphasis on the turtle tac and lowering the amount will just get you where you were

As for how to make resources matter, unless you put in an obstacle that would require you to farm them or make the turn in easier people wont bother I’m afraid, I’d personally suggest a tabard for rep that ports you to the base like the trinket used to do to make turning in more accessible