Just because the shard you’re on is balanced (which is already a massive ask), doesn’t in any way mean fights result in balanced fights more often. I will happily fly past a world pvp brawl, and leave my Horde brothers to die, if i’m on a mission of my own (no man’s life is worth skipping on Soundless for, unless they’re my bloodtype with a solid liver).
As others have said, World PVP is by design unbalanced chaos. For balanced fights we have arena’s and battlegrounds and such already which try to achieve a high level of balance, at least in player numbers and roles).
I’m not a big world pvp fan (though i do always play WM on). In my personal opinion, it’s appeal/glory had ended long before WotLK. That said, i think most of the fun world PVP memories that i have, both historically and more recently, sort of grow out of the unbalance of it all.
Get your butt kicked by 2 annoying enemies from the opposing faction, cry about it in general/LFG chat, and you occasionally find a mythic raid sized group of guys and gals willing to seek vengeance, now you turn the 1on2 fight into a 20on2 meatgrinder and you’ll either feel better or find yourself in a 20on50 fight a few moments later.
And yea, more on Warmode in general, like in most of WoW, People all have differing views:
Some people use WM because they really want the rewards.
Some people use WM because their faction is generally untouchable, so there is little downside and they get the rewards effectively for free.
Some people use WM because they like (world)pvp.
Some people use WM because there are relatively more groups (for rares/quests) available with WM on.
does not mean that blizzard can not try to balance it to some degree(or we can go back to the way it was in the start of BFA(a very bad ide but it is the same problem there), it was unfair and unbalanced chaos at that im also), now what degree the balancing needs to be done and how is the question and in my opinion the current way of doing it is bad/wrong.
I don’t think fairness or balance are really things Blizzard should chase when it comes to World PVP / Warmode.
I think trying to do a few things to cram a healthier mix of Horde / Alliance into the same Shard (pre-grouping) is good, but not for Balance, more in order to induce the chance of more World PVP fights breaking out.
I suspect that something what “World PVP” likely lacks, is what lacks in many other areas of the game, (spontanious) social interaction between players. If more people talk in general chat, “announce” when they’re under attack and ask for (or offer to) help in getting vengeance, you’ll likely see a more positive change.
that is what i would call balancing, i would just want the grouping tool to shard you differently compared to now so the mix stays somewhat healthy over all.
what would happen if instead of being moved to the shard of the leader but got into the shard where you are least represented as a faction, the healthy mix would stay somewhat balanced and the other shard would gain more of the lesser faction to also get a healthier mix.
I get that would sound like an improvement in this limited context, but that would be very horrible for many other modes of play.
If i see a rare up (lets say Soundless in Nazjatar) and i create a group for that, and we’d end up phasing away due to this Faction Imbalance, to a shard where Soundless is not up, that’d be a pretty shoddy thing
it would just make it so you would make the group in general instead.
the option could also be that for sharding you would need to move to the main hub first and then get to the shard with the lowest amount of your faction meaning you would not shard away.
ofc it would still make the way the grouping for rares and the like different not that is by default a bad thing.
I don’t know, i feel like 9 out of 10 people or more would not benefit from this “trade”.
Marginal theoretical World PVP improvements for a big loss in the ability to make a group for a quest or rare or the like once you’re standing next to them.
That’s not to say there aren’t many other potential design changes that could be made, which may have positive effects (without as much negative effects as i think this particular change would bring).
But i think at the end of the day, World PVP is largely an “at will” activity, unlike say Visions, and it’s more likely to be popularized by occupying a space where people want/like doing it, or like the rewards (such as through CTA), rather than by forcing limits on other aspects of the game to steer people into it.
Oh, and just spitballing but, if you do wanna semi-force it onto people, i can think of one gimmick with no mega-serious downsides.
The Mr Stabby event
Every so often, when any Alliance and Horde character occupy the same general area (say < 100yd apart) the game could randomly/sometimes trigger a “world pvp enticement”-event.
2 or 3 Stealthed Alliance NPCs (say a feral druid and a rogue) could spawn near the unsuspecting Horde player, and just start attacking him.
These NPCs would only be visible to the Horde player (and his party), like some Quest mobs.
These NPCs gear/power would be scaled in a way that the Horde player could easily get the upper hand against them (regardless of his ilvl), if he even remotely fights back. If he’s AFK he’ll just die.
Once either one of the NPCs gets killed, or once they both get to half health, the NPCs start running away towards that (nearby) Alliance player.
If the NPCs reach the Alliance player, who is unaware and cannot even see these NPCs, they vanish (and despawn).
If the Horde dude chose to pursue these retreating NPCs then he has basically been lured into a pvp-mindset and he’s running towards the Alliance player. He’s likely to end up attacking that player.
The Alliance player, if observant, might notice an angry Horde guy storming in his direction, and may initiate combat all by himself.
Notes:
Of course the Alliance/Horde roles would be reversed half the time as well.
Maybe when the stealthed NPC’s appear & attack, the Horde player in this example could also get a 10 minute debuff where any honorable kills made by him, award him triple-honor, but him being killed (by any Alliance) would also give them triple-honor for that kill.
Something like this could be a replacement for the War Supply drop ship that pops into zones every so often, and simultaneously a replacement for the big void worms that float over the Vale and Uldum, discouraging AFK.
This would improve the experience of PvEers, at the expense of WPvPers. Not a good solution then. Shard manager already shunts groups out of an over represented shard anyway, your changes are not needed.
I suspect balance is generally not that bad, but seems bad because:
A. Player distribution in a zone.
B. Allies being less motivated to assist randoms, or unwritten ‘rules’ about interference, etc.
C. PvP quests.
what is the difference between a Pve’er or a WPvP’er?, as soon as WM is aktive then you by default option in for pvp in the open world nothing more nothing less.
the improvement would make it easier for the shards to be balanced(in ratio of faction), now for the Wpvp it should be a great thing that the shards are semi balanced in ratio as the chances of pvp is higher then, i don’t really know anyone that would attack 5 people alone, but if there is 3 other from your faction close by the chances are more likely that you will attack the 5 or that it will evolve into a pvp situation.
I suspect that balance is generally bad. as A would be removed by just moving around as you would then see most places, making your perception of a zone much higher then if you just stay in a small area.
don’t know about people not willing to assist, but there is a difference between assisting a possible kill or suicide, why assist someone attacked by 7 of the opposing faction as all that will happen is you also dieing, now if it is only 1 or 2 attacking from the opposing faction the chances for people to help against them is much higher as it is not pure suicide.
i’m not really a fan of the PvP quest as i don’t think they really help the shards with anything most of the time(tho there has been some great fights from it in mechagone or nazj lately).
it would making groups for the pvp quest a hell lot harder but to me I don’t think that is a bad thing
They have different motivations, and therefore different view of WM.
I guess it’s just down to different perception of what is fun to people. Can’t please everyone that’s for sure. The people that WPvP that I hang around with seem to think WM is fun. Good enough for me!
