Remove all bonuses and quests related to war mode.
Always played on a pvp server and never had a complain that I didn’t get a reward for it, bc killing hordies was reward enough.
Give us back pve/pvp servers so the pussies can go back to where they belong. It’s sickening this constant whining about war mode…
Chill rambo, sylvester gonna be envy of this alpha-ing inside the forums.
yes sure faction balance is(was) closer after the quest had existed for a month (hmm wonder why it took a month for the quest to even out the tables, probably because horde turned it off entirely instead of alliance turning it on entirely). IT’s obvious that the design is flawed. “Oh now this faction is underrepresented so they get a bonus. Oh but they are somehow still underrepresented even though they are doing the new weekly quest they got. Hey guys we did it! It’s finally balanced in wpvp so we can remove the quest! (proceed to watch as alliance turn warmode off and horde turn it on as soon as the quest disappears) woops they got the quest again.” It’s not a healthy concept because it’s so easily abused. You simply turn it on, do the quest and get the free 1k ap, 385 gear and conquest, then you turn it off and laugh at the opposite faction because they will never get that quest even though they are also underrepresented. Alliance are only underrepresented in wpvp when there’s not an invasion up so why the hell should they get free rewards?
blizzard are encouraging alliance pve players to turn on warmode, which they have off for a reason, and discourage horde pvp players from turning on warmode because they will only give these alliance pve-ers free rewards.
When a design meant to even out the balance in warmode is so flawed that Blizzard have to add guards to several flight points because alliance camp it for their weekly quest, and then have to buff those guards a week or 2 later, you know something’s wrong.
I would say all that matters is that the game is equally balanced for both factions. Sure some players play WoW casually but there are those who take it more serious with mythic raiding, m+ pushing and rated pvp so why should 1 faction be treated better than the other? It was more than enough that Siege of Boralus is different for Horde and Alliance players. The alliance trash before first boss can butcher the group whereas the horde trash aren’t even close to scary. Same goes for first boss, horde basically always have 2 adds up whereas alliance have adds constantly spawning.
More like wpvp ganking at a neutral flight point because of 2 quests is happening (or when alliance camped Vulpera Hideaway cuz they realized the “horde” guards are hostile to horde players once they engage the alliance campers instead of the other way around, or worse, when alliance raided Dazar’Alor several times a day for the quest cuz no guards exist.)
Exactly. This is proof that Blizzard can’t take the time to think their designs through. If they spent more time working on their design before implementing someone would’ve realized “oh but what if alliance players turn on warmode purely for the quest and then turn it off again so the imbalance of warmode players is still the same at the end of the week?”
This is a good idea. It also encourages wpvp for both factions.
Tbh all I care about in wow is killing other player’s pixels. I don’t care what my opponents location or motivations is. As long as wpvp is happening, and regardless of other’s definition, wpvp is…
W = world = wq, fp, assault, base, anywhere
P = player = solo, party, raid
v = versus, no rules, chaos
P = player = solo, party, raid
The incentive has helped somewhat with rebalancing, but it’s also a mechanism to increase conflict. Conflict has increased, doesn’t matter when players wm on or off. Conflict has increased. That is great for wpvp, group up and retaliate. In game Horde are doing just that, and getting their revenge for aoo ![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
In reality, an extra 385 item and extra 5 or 10% is irrelevant. The conflict it creates is priceless!
I generally leave WM on all the time. I rolled on Defias Brotherhood RPPvP because I love both RP and PvP
The only times I turn WM off is if large scale PvP is lagging the servers out really bad or the zone has for some reason become a 100v1 situation (I think sharding causes this?)
Shards are faction balanced, lfg can cause temp imbalance. Solution = lfg. Mind you, been wm on since start of bfa and never witnessed 100v1.
I think Blizzard thought it through, and that is exactly how AOO suppose to work by design, because it just can’t work any other way - get more players in WM to do this quest and hope that some of them stay. Plus WM will have more players on underrepresented side overall during the week, because different players play and do stuff at different times.
Unfortunately it’s a solution that tries to solve bigger issue with smaller effort, that’s why it is working for balancing numbers from time to time, but not improving the quality of actual experience of the game mode.
If you’re interested in discussing it more, here is the thread - Suggestion: Weekly Higher Quality Reward WM Activity Quest (don’t mind derails…)
You can also search this forum section for other suggestions and feedback.
War Mode buff should be based on particpation. Well, that and also based on zone/area/shard population - you are not outnumbered if you are the only person there!
Participation should ramp up with War Mode activities - slaying players, capping open world locations and PvP-specific world quests. It should also decay through inactivity after a while.
End of week rewards should be calculated based on level of participation and duration above a certain threshold.
So capping participation at the start of the week and doing nothing else will mot get you any reward by the start of the next week due to decay. Capping at the end of the week will get you a chest but a crappy reward. Capping throughout the week and keeping that participation high throught the week would net you a weekly chest and better rewards.
Going above and beyond the “cap” per week should put you on a leader board, granting even better rewards and acclaim. Maybe an appropriate title and progression towards a special transmog. Scoring highest on the leaderboard should give you a weekly “High Warlord” style title, access to a permanent transmog set and have that set cast special ambient effects while you have the weekly title.
Would these work?
Region imbalance is an issue. Outnumbered buff being based on region faction pop is designed to address that. Need a viable alternative if you want to remove it. Outnumbered on zone/area/shard is irrelevant to rewards, PvP is the solution to that.
Apart from that, I’m all for being better rewarded based on actual participation.
Nobody kills at FPs as a raid group, you get no honour. That’s just small groups and individual players working together to purge Horde filth.
A great past time when waiting for the rest of your dungeon group to arrive at Tol Dagor or such, too.
How is zone/area/shard population irrelevant when its the only population that any player will come into contact with?
How is Regional Population relevant when no single shard will ever hold the entirity of the Horde and the Alliance EU playerbase at the time.
Being “outnumbered” is irrelevant when the values the designation is based on will never come into affect. There could be 100 Horde and 20 Alliance yet being “outnumbered” in total if the Alliance fight as 20 against 1 or 2 at a time.
Each Shard has a capacity that can be quickly filled by both Horde and Alliance .
Other words abuse the system and change shards? When horde decided to overfill my WM shard during invasion, grouping up for Alliance was met with being transported to anathor shard. LFG and sharding already destroys shard balance. Yes this was a shard lost to Horde I just observed them after trying to kill people twice and avoided the deathball of 1 a 2 full raid groups.
The bonus won’t work if not regional, so every time you jump shards your buff changes? Every time Alliance or Horde joins or leave buffs change? Changing zones and your buff changes?
The region problem is overflow shards, those are terrible for WPvP. If one faction has a higher pop than the other in region, the overpopulated faction gets auto put onto overflow shards - zero enemies and free bonus. Going by the drop in complaints from Horde about overflow shards after reward changes started, this was happening more often before, therefore an improved situation. I have never seen a viable alternative to region outnumbered rewards proposed to rebalance both faction pop and player type within the factions in region.
Shards are faction balanced, lfg and player distribution can unbalance a zone, subzone, etc. Lfg, guild, community, friends list, local def, are the solution to being outnumbered in this situation. Solo players are vulnerable, but that is their choice to play solo in a multiplayer game. Nothing needs changed to help the solo player, when there are existing PvP solutions.
Rather than abusing the system now and getting an “outnumbered buff” while actually outnumbering the opposing faction in that area?
There could easily be restrictions on being able to move shard. “Abuse” of hopping shards with my system would simple mean you are jumping into the frying pan. To get the best value of buff you’d have to get stuck into the very teeth of the enemy. Being doing World Quests alone while being swarmed by the opposing faction.
Pretty much! Almost like a metal detector, the buff would rise as you get closer to a group of opposing faction players.
If the ratio of Horde:Alliance is equal, there’d be no change in the base War Mode buff value. If no Horde or Alliance are in range, you would not get a bonus to the War Mode buff at all - how can you be outnumbered if you are the only person there?
As I said; no nearby enemies, no bonus to the War Mode buff. Heck, should there be a War Mode base buff at all? Maybe removing it would press more people into finding the enemy and risking their health for a bonus at all?
Regional Population is not viable. Just because its the only thing that Blizzard has hastily slammed on does not make it viable. My idea is more viable that RP determined “outnumbering”. The whole One-Sided rewards mechanic is unviable.
Yes, LFG will unbalance a zone, but what if that LFG zerg is Alliance? They swamp the area getting the outnumbered buff while the fewer Horde in the shard get nothing. What if the Alliance never even come across the Horde at all? How can you be outnumber by something that isn’t even there?
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First, technical - system in your idea would have to calculate buff for every player of every shard on each event of players moving anywhere. For each player system would need to detect shard+zone+area where they are and get all data (for that players all other players there), then new shard+zone+area to which they move and all data from there, and then recalculate bonus not only for that player, but also for every other player in those shards+zones+areas. Same for players changing only zones/area, accepting queues, porting in/out, logging in/out, etc.
Bigger the population, more popular area, more players are moving = more calculations overlapping, more resources needed for everything to work.
It’s going to be a HUGE lag and many many problems probably.
Second, complexity - system would be way too complex for anybody to care. Bonus is constantly jumping on it’s own, nothing stable, and those who want to get something out of it would need to play a game of “constant watch for current bonus”, shard jumping, etc, instead of playing the actual game.
In the end - it won’t solve faction balance in any way, rewards will still feel ether “meh” or “unfair”, and it’ll be just a needlessly complex system that will demand huge amount of server resources, and will be very distracting from the game-play for anyone who cares.
In other words - player who can play every day for ~2 hours, 14 total a week, willl get the best rewards, but player who can play 1-2 days a week for the same or more hours total will get crappy rewards…
It doesn’t look like it’s rewarding participation, it looks like it rewards only a constant everyday play-time.
If it rewarded for overall participation - both players who could spend similar amounts of time doing WPvP activities would get same level of rewards for the week.
I think more flexible and fair:
Hello stealth detection! Much needed feature that will make stealth classes very happy…
Because system can only balance shards initially, then LFG influxes happen, then exodus happen - it’s reasonably impossible to accommodate, because it is not a BG with fixed number of players in a limited zone with a queue.
Because of that, Regional population is the only reliable value that point to a probability of players on one faction (underrepresented) encountering players of the other faction (overpopulated) more often. As well as players from overpopulated faction can have more numbers, or at least faster, when needed with LFG.
That is another cornerstone when you try a solution that is way more complex than problem needs. More complexity = more potential problems = more and more restrictions to avoid problems, and in the end - system would be not just needlessly complex, but also way to restrictive to actually work.
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Yes, one-sided rewards is not good. But I don’t think your suggestion will make overall WM situation any better, worse probably.
I think that current bonus and AOO feels bad because there is nothing else, since Call to Arms is just a quick 10 kill quest, and everybody got all achievements they wanted a long time ago.
I still think that solution that will take into account actual results of player participation in WPvP activities, and then on the next week will give quest with rewards based on participation, for both factions, in addition to current bonus +/- system, will work much better.
Plus new achievements each PvP seasons, some of them quick, some would require to actively play through season, with titles/mounts/transmog rewards.
And there it is - very simple for anyone, effective to give incentives for participation, effective to reward this participation.
Suggestion: Weekly Higher Quality Reward WM Activity Quest (don’t mind derails…)
The reason for existence of outnumbered bonus/aoo is the region faction population imbalance. Nothing to do with being outnumbered in zone, subzone, shard, etc.
Being outnumbered in the zone has a PvP solution. Therefore no reason to provide a bonus for that. The incentive is all about rebalancing region faction population. Need region based incentive for that.
Ever heard of the addon Spy? It detects when enemy players are nearby, and it does this for every individual player using the addon. That seems to be more than capable of detecting players.
The buff and rebuff of the Outnumbered, er, buff would change after intervals and would change depending on thresholds of player difference. It would not change for every single player. Honestly, Guild Wars 2 is able to do something similar, why can’t World of Warcraft?
Your own idea, though clever in pointing out that sanctuary areas would not provide progress towards your reward, is just the same as mine. You just have a minimum boundary that can’t be unearned once gained. The further rewards are what I was implying with going beyond the cap.
My idea is to keep people active in War Mode throughout the week, people who can only play 1 or 2 days are really just in the same category as those people who turn Warmode on once to do the weekly quest or assault then switch it off again.
If there needs to be seperate rewards or quests for killing X number of opposing Faction for a reward then perhaps that could be used instead. Bring back PvP Vendors and give the Quest a currency reward so that players who can only play 12 hours a week over 2 days can still participate but not hamper the over all “throughout the week” fight.
Spy. Legal Addon. Tells me if an enemy is stealthed nearby. Doesn’t tell me the direction or the distance away. Doesn’t hamper stealth classes at all.
Regional Faction Population has nothing to do with the number of Alliance you’ll ever meet on a single shard. If there are 100,000 Alliance players, you will never see all of them on one shard. So why should they get the Outnumbered Bonus on a shard where they are 100 and Horde have 50 just because “overall” regionally the Horde has 250,000 and they have 100,000?
At best, this whole thing is just trying to stop Horde players from playing Warmode. They are actively trying to make people stop playing their content. Its rediculous!
Because Blizz want equal’ish faction balance in region, to reduce need for overflow shards.
Being outnumbered on a shard because of LFG, solution is LFG.
not only spy, and all of these addons work by monitoring combat log for stealth detection. That means that they can only detect players who used stealth ability when in a nearby proximity, and only if it was put in combat log, and only after that happened. When players approaching already in stealth - those addons can’t detect.
That means, that these addons are showing to you only what you can see for yourself by turning camera around (with med+ view distance), and they can’t show you exact correct numbers and players all the time.
Your idea would make stealth detection possible without anything, and would also made possible to know exactly how many players there are in stealth around, simply by calculating of bonus percents and visible players.
That is a very big difference.
How long of an interval? How reliable and accurate this bonus % is going to be for example at a location of elite WQ or other similar location/area where population constantly changing? Horde raid phased out, Alliance phased in, but because of interval bonus is incorrect.
With intervals it won’t be accurate, bonus % will still be “unfair”, system won’t change much at all, at least for the better. But additional data gathering, calculations and server resources are still needed.
It’s not the same, re-read it.
In your idea number of days someone plays is what’s important.
In my variation - actual playing time in WM is what’s important.
Players who can play in WM doing WPvP activities for the same amount of time should get the same rewards, because they spend the same amount of time/effort for the same activities. It doesn’t matter if it is for 2 hours for 7 days or same 14 hours in 1-2 days.
And no, players who spend 1 or 2 days are not the same as those who turn WM just for one weekly quest. Less than 1 hour is not equal to 14 hours, not matter over how many days.
Vendors and conquest currency - yes, preaching from the start of BfA.
And again - nobody is going to skip fighting, if it is a fighting for the same 14 hours, no matter over how many days.
LFG. The more players on a faction side in War Mode = the better chances to get players in your group = more players and faster influxes on shards.
Sharding system initially balances shards to as much of an equal numbers as possible. Then only LFG is what’s making shards unbalanced.
Yes, they should, because that 50 Horde can much more easily become 150 than that that 100 of Alliance.
Only PvE Horde players who are not doing PvP and turn it on for bonus, according to Dev interview. And yes, system balances it also by bribing Alliance PvE players, etc… blah blah… That’s why current bonus is not something worth focusing on for improvement of incentives and rewards of WM - that system is already at best what is could give, even if it doesn’t feel the best overall.
Solutions like quest based on participation and results of actual WPvP activities, long and short seasonal achievements, and other ideas that expand (separate in a way) actual incentives and rewards from current bonus system is what current War Mode lacking, imo, and that is the direction it can be improved for everyone in it.
Solution should then not involve the overwhelming faction of that shard gettingany “outnumbered” benefits when they themselves are the outnumbering force.
You are still going to have the same “stealth detection” as Spy does. Most classes can do very little even if they know that you are somewhere vaguely in the vicinity. Besides, again the interval changes on the Outnumbered Buff would not change for a single player. If you were suddenly 10:1 with a bunch of Alliance Rogues on the hunt then stealth detection is the least of your worries.
Guild Wars 2 uses an outnumbered bonus for its own epic battleground like gamemode called WvW (essentially Server vs Server). An outnumbered buff is given to the team with fewest players on any given map. This adjusts when a threshold is achieved and the system checks this every 30 seconds or so. Might be a minute I am not sure.
A minute of the buff while flooding in is hardly going to be disasterous.