Some Thoughts On Warzones

[RogueNights]

So wanted to start a thread on this because have been starting to notice that the worst type of pvp games are getting more frequent. More frequent being a gross understatement…

 

In regular wz would say that the vast majority of games are just plain unbalanced, probably 80%+. Would classify unbalanced on one of 3 levels, 1. the winner of the match is known from the start, right when you load in, 2. when you see who’s on the opposing team, or 3. when you see how fast/who takes the 1st objectives.. On some days I play regular, would say there is not a single game where I could impact the outcome the teams are so stacked. If you don’t believe this.. try keeping track yourself, try seeing how many games you are reasonably sure who will win 1 minute in and how often you are wrong, it should convince you…

 

I blame most of the failure on the current system.. Random wz w/ random opposing team and at least 50% random people on your own team is a great idea for giving everyone a shot at winning, the problem is it only lasts as long as the wz loading screen if people can identify the quality of other players.. I think the problem lies w/ the fact that this game has aged, the variance in player skill has increased, and the tendency to premade is very high now. All of which mean that when you form teams by any random process youre more likely to get 2 that are farther apart in terms of overall skill level, and hence un balanced games. Also the fact that the game has aged means that on average players are more experienced and better able to identify all the indicators of whether they will win or lose early on.

 

I just think its time for a different system.. Could see 2 things working.

 

1. Make all games ranked, and have matching based on rank.

2. Get a substantial # of the high/med-high end regular wz players into ranked wz where there is already suppose to be matching based on ranked, there is just not a large enough population to ever notice it.

 

I like #2 more and I only see 1 way to do it.. make ranked wz q’s accept 4 OR 8. (note 4 or 8 b/c you cant do 4 through 8 w/ out also having to take 1, 2, and 3, or else you couldn’t form an 8 person team out of them)

 

Why would this work?

1.

The 8 person barrier to entry is huge… I would say it is the number one reason why there isn’t much of a consistant set of 2nd tier teams in rwz… Most people don’t have 8 good pvp’rs that form a balanced team on their friends list/guild list except at peak hours, and unless there are a lot of teams qing its impossible to hold a “just ok” rwz team together. Losing 3 times in a row, losing vs the same team twice, and losing really really badly, are all pretty much morale breakers (and justifiably so, there is no hope of winning), and the team disbands.. the effort to reward is just tiny if you’re not winning games.

2.

Allowing ques of 4 is condusive to forming teams of 8… if you get paired w/ another good group of four, why not continue quing w/ them? Would actually guess that allowing people to que w/ 4, will eventually result in many more 8 man teams…

3.

Quitters you don’t know hurting your ranking.. I think this issue could be minimized in short.

1. Standard penaly for quitting.

2. Purposefully quiting is already much less common in ranked.

3. if your match’d w/ people not that great and the ranking system works, you should be playing people not that great. Giving people less incentive to quit..

4. Pre start/close to start if someone quits you could kick the whole team and back fill w/ another group of four (who maybe then could play the game w/ only 0 or + impact to their rank, that penalty imposed on the quitters has to go somewhere.. idk where it goes now..)

5. Ideally support for reconnects would need to be added.

 

4. Realistically speaking the whole not being in voice communication w/ the other 4 people could be overcome. Voice communication has improved.. anyone use raidcall? Its free and super easy to create, find, and move between channels. Its as easy as giving someone the name of an unpassworded channel you just created, and all 8 people can be in the same chat.. could see it being more difficult using the traditional ts, vent, or mumble tho…

 

 

I don’t see why anyone would be opposed.. If you are low to med end regular, it means probably slightly longer ques, but a lot more wins. If youre at the high end of reqular wz participants but med to low end of ranked wz participants and somewhat like myself, you probably just want good competitive games to be easier to get started, and probably care only minimally about your rank relatively. If you’re at the high end of rwz, probably would be great to just have some more people in the que, and more easy competition that might stick around for more than a couple games.

 

Would like to see a ranked and regular fixed w/ one stone so to speak.. I think something this simple will do it, and is probably closer to what was originally intended, than what was actually implemented. Certainly back in the day before rwz were launched, when they were being advertised, I thought they would be for pretty much all experienced players, and that getting to the top would be a feat, not that even q’ing regularly for them would be a feat in and of itself…

 

Kinda regardless of what happens to ranked.. would say regular needs to be fixed.. I loved pvp when I started close to launch.. if I had to start now tho 10 months in, I’d definitely not be playing this game tho. I’d say ideally when f2p goes live and hopefully this game gets new players, rwz should be popular accessible enough that the average new player is not getting rolled by premades that have played daily since launch in regular wz.