Monday, November 05, 2007

Will the Alterac Valley changes hurt the Alliance?

Alterac Valley has long had a reputation for favoring the Alliance with geographic advantages that give an edge in conquering the Horde's graveyards and bunkers. In reality the edge is very small but it became exaggerated in player's minds over time until it became an accepted fact that the Alliance would win a majority of the Alterac Valley games. This mentality of losing started to affect the Horde and a lot of players begin to use AFK bots and simply hung out in the starting cave until the game was over. This further contributed to the Horde's losing record and the queue population for AV became unbalanced resulting in long wait times for the Alliance.

With the introduction of the AFK reporting feature in the last patch the queue for Alterac Valley has become more balanced between Horde and Alliance resulting in reduced wait times. The Horde now get a full forty active players on their side which has greatly increased their win/loss ratio. Despite the increase in Horde wins the Alliance continues to favor Alterac Valley over the other battlegrounds. This would seem a bit counter-intuitive but can be explained by how honor is distributed in the other battlegrounds.

Warsong Gulch, Arathi Baisin, and Eye of the Storm all award bonus honor directly based on competition with the opponent. The more you kill your opponents and take the flag the more bonus honor you get. Alterac Valley on the other hand rewards bonus honor based on how many elite NPC's your side has killed and how many bunker/graveyards they own. In general only the graveyard closest to the offense is well guarded thus allowing the Alliance to back track and recapture them after the main Horde offensive has passed.

Now why do the Alliance prefer to not directly compete with Horde to get honor? In general its simply a matter that the gear of the average Alliance is a lot worse then the average Horde player. Mainly this is a result of the difference in queue times with the Horde having near instant queues in most battlegroups because of unbalanced populations. This has resulted in the Horde being able to gain battleground gear at a much quicker rate then Alliance. Now other factors such as organization, maturity, and racial abilities get thrown around a lot when discussing the Horde's pvp abilities. But in truth these probably only matter as much as the terrain does in Alterac Valley. These factors may cause a slight disadvantage for the Alliance but most of it's in the player's head.

Now the changes to Alterac Valley on the PTR make it more like the other battlegrounds with a scoring system called reinforcements which will act a lot like the battle points used in Eye of the Storm and Arathi Baisin. This scoring system is directly impacted by players dying in the battleground thus you can count on gear inequality greatly effecting the amount of bonus honor awarded. Now in general if you are going to award items for PvP in battlegrounds it make sense to encourage direct competition instead of the race to kill elites that Alterac Valley had become. However, the current changes on the PTR could turn the battleground into something similar to Warsong Gulch where the out geared side loses with little bonus honor and very few honorable kills.

10 comments:

Shake said...

"Now why do the Alliance prefer to not directly compete with Horde to get honor? In general its simply a matter that the gear of the average Alliance is a lot worse then the average Horde player. Mainly this is a result of the difference in queue times with the Horde having near instant queues in most battlegroups because of unbalanced populations."

this is not really true, the horde have to wait as well. I have had 10 and 15 mins waits for AV, and if allies are winning because of the imbalance would they not have better gear since they would have had more honor than the horde anyway?

Relmstein said...

Shake:
The Alliance in general lose games because of the unbalanced populations not win them. Please re-read the post.

Steps in Logic:
1)Alliance outnumber Horde
2)Queue times longer for Alliance
3)Allows Horde to play more games
4)Quicker Honor = Qucker Gear
5)Alliance start losing even more because of gear disparity

The orginal battleground system was a ridiculous time sink but was more thought out by the developers since there were only a limited amount of spots for both factions to earn gear each week. No one side could gain gear quicker then the other.

Unknown said...

The alliance tend to lose not because of gear, but because the alliance folks tend to run around randomly killing not trying to get any flags or hold any bases. This is not true of every player in pvp but enough to cause loss after loss after loss. Not working together to win is teh biggest crutch for aliance pvp.

Relmstein said...

Yes the Alliance have the worst tendency to zerg and farm honor. They tend to stay in clumps and never defend a node or a flag especialy when the main group of Alliance moves away.

Its almost as if they expect to lose the battleground and any 1v1 encounter and thus the only honor they actually get is when a large clump of them meet a few straggling horde. A stupid way to play in the long run but it seems the only viable option to some I'm sure.

Kaziel said...

"Its almost as if they expect to lose the battleground and any 1v1 encounter and thus the only honor they actually get is when a large clump of them meet a few straggling horde. A stupid way to play in the long run but it seems the only viable option to some I'm sure."

It's one hell of a self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the primary reasons I avoid WSG is there is a strong mentality of "Well we're going to lose anyways, so I'll just go out into the middle, farm honor and get my Mark of Honor." Of course when very few people defend and heal the Flag Carrier and no one tries to recover the flag, you're going to lose. There have been quite a few times I've joined up with a WSG group and found a group of players that somewhat work together, or at least enough so that the flag carrier can stay alive.

It's usually not as bad for AB in my Battlegroup, and EotS can be okay, but it can be really bad sometimes (might have been that the horde is just better in those games). AV, from what I've seen, suffers from Alliance players focusing more on getting honor via killing Lieutenants and capping points than going for the win.

Also, Relmstein, one interesting thing to consider is the impact of Arena gear on a BG. I don't really have any idea of it's impact, but since points are given out weekly, you can't spam it for fast Arena points, meaning neither side has an advantage.

Relmstein said...

Arenas really are the most fair PvP combat I've run across. A couple of classes are overpowered in certain brackets but you don't find them in every team.

I've seen many a battleground decided by a defeatist attitude. My special pet peeve is the guy who argues for everyone to just let the opposing faction win so they can get their mark.

Cap'n John said...

I gave up on the BGs, especially WSG, when I'd grab the Horde flag, run out into the field, and be cut down. Meanwhile my "team mates" are scattered all over the map. This despite me using /chat to inform them I'm going for the flag and will be coming out the tunnel, or ramp, etc.

I long for the good old days when my Guild would PvP together and we'd strike fear into the Horde, even the Twinks. Now I'm just a sad old dinosaur, sitting around wondering where everyone went.

Kaziel said...

I've seen many a battleground decided by a defeatist attitude. My special pet peeve is the guy who argues for everyone to just let the opposing faction win so they can get their mark.

When I read this, I had just signed up to join a WSG match which appeared to be against a premade (6 of the 10 Horde were from the same server). One person was constantly asking for us to do nothing and just let the Horde win. We didn't, and to our credit we managed to get a point. But said person wouldn't /afk nor would the do anything to help. Was quite annoying.

Side note: Next game I got in with one of the primary proponents of trying to win the previous match and working with him, I capped the flag once and he got it twice to a glorious win.

Jeff.Bragg said...

This argument was lot more persuasive to me before the arena existed. Both sides can get gear that is superior to any gear available through battleground pvp by doing arenas. Arena battles also improve small group pvp skills much more quickly then battlegrounds.

As for many of the other arguments about things being lopsided in the battlegrounds, let me sum up.

(Insert side here) doesn't win because they don't play as a team. I was in (insert bg name here) the other night and we lost (insert number of losses) in a row. (insert side here) doesn't ever (insert bg objective). Obviously an imbalance exists.

Really, any side that doesn't play as a team and perform the objectives of the battleground is going to lose. The most effective way of doing this is taking personal responsibility for one small objective and asking for help. Defend that tower. Tell your team that an attack is incoming. Ask other players to come help you.

Anonymous said...

One of the latest complaints I have heard is that the Horde have special skills and abilities that are far stronger than the Alliance. That Blizzard has, from the start, tipped the scales in the Hordes direction.

I disagree, of course. I have looked at the starting stats of the various races in a given class and see that in the end, some races are more suited to a certain class, but if you know what you are doing, it all evens out in the end.

The main reason Horde win is that yes, they work together, and they work together because they usually play more. Give me an average Alliance Vs. Horde pvp record and I bet the Horde score higher on average.

I have no battlegroup, but wish I had one. I am tired of going it alone, so to speak, and find that we of the alliance are at our best when we do the whole guarding objectives thing, and when we do the other Battlgrounds we communicate and change things up instead of pounding away futilly at the same objectives.