Some more considerations and anticipations about the future of the PvP in WoW for the next year.
(For what is possible. I’m often mocked because I usually “predict” this and that but I believe that it’s also important to try to anticipate where things are going instead of just stating the obvious after they happen. I’m an observer and that’s what I find interesting.)
This is a collection of interesting comments from Caydiem (and it’s thanks to her that there’s something worth discussing from time to time):
This is a multiplayer game, and we want to encourage people to work as a team. As such, I don’t believe separating out the queues would solve the issues you’re seeking to solve without causing another batch of problems in their place. Queue times would be far longer, for instance, and that’s something that’s already a large complaint. (No, we can’t just whip up cross-realm queues, either; that will take quite some time.) So many people are asking us to stop treating symptoms and start curing the whole thing, and we’re doing everything we can in that direction — but it’s a massive undertaking and thus won’t be done anytime soon.
The separation of the queue would cause further problems and honestly wouldn’t solve a lot of the issues prevalent there. I apologize if you felt it was the answer, but there are many schools of thought on the subject.
The simplest thing you mentioned is to pair “Join as Group” with others who use the feature, and put individuals in their own. However, there are concerns with this method. The field doesn’t consist entirely of pick up groups and incredibly organized teams. There’s a middle ground. The teams had to practice together quite a bit to get to that stage. It’s much harder to learn when you’re being crushed, and thus the powerful remain powerful while the unskilled remain unskilled. There’s not nearly as much chance to “learn2play” in such a system, I’m afraid; joining as individuals will not allow you to get with the same people each time, thus seriously stunting any practice. In addition, it would cause queue problems for the people in Join As Group, as there are scant few people who would play the game that way.
Battlegrounds are about teamwork, and we don’t want to discourage group play.
Cross-realm battleground queues are in consideration already, but it requires tech that isn’t in place, so no, again, not simple. ;) Also, the game “detecting” things like how much fish they caught in a given time — and acting on it — is not something that could be implemented currently, and is in fact another quick fix you seem not to like very much.
To address the whole issue…
The Honor System and PvP is being reviewed, but the fruits of such labor will not come for some time. I appreciate your feedback, but it’s not time yet. No, the Honor System isn’t going to be scrapped, but it will be reworked, with the objective being to reward skill. That’s a long time coming, however. Just because we add these fixes to aid the worst of the symptoms doesn’t mean we’re not treating the problem at large… we are, but it’s going to take a while.
Ideally, the developers want the Honor System to reward skill more than just time investment, and to better reward those fighting more skillful players. They want matchups to be more even and less one-sided. They understand your frustrations, and they’re right there with you.
But currently the game has no real way to understand and track the nebulous thing that is “skill” in PvP. The Honor System would need considerable changes for this idea to occur, and as such, it’s a long way out there.
But it is being talked about. It is something the developers want to do with the game. It just may take us a while to get there.
My idea is that the game will try to move toward the perfect matchmaking (hell, even Koontz suggested it. So it will happen), at least in the longer term.
But to even start to consider that possibility they’ll have to support cross server BGs to have a bigger pool from where to draw the players and “match” their performance. Which is also what Caydiem explained in the comments I quoted. Considering what was hinted at the BlizzCon the cross server BGs won’t be possible till the release of the expansion, so we are talking roughly about June of the next year (just to have an idea of the timeframe).
Now I don’t like at all the direction where all this is going. For a very, very simple reason that everyone seems to forget: There’s no skill in a RPG. Exactly because, in the second we add statistics and complex rulesets where each character is different and can increase its power “artificially” (levels, skills, loot), the “skill” shifts from the one of the player to the one of the character. That’s the essence of an RPG and the “character progression” that also made WoW so successful and addicting (there’s a reason why most of the mmorpgs are RPGs, it’s not just because the producers are stupid).
Simplifying:
Skill = phat leet
Here’s a riddle:
We are in Arathi Basin.
Group 1 is about 15 players with epic mounts.
Group 2 is about 15 players with standard mounts.
Who is more skilled?
—
If this is true and if the new matchmaking system will couple “even” matches and calculate the honor values accordingly, this means that the only way to climb ranks effectively in PvP would be through the access to uber purple loot and with organized guilds supporting you. Which means, once again, that a casual player will have, guess what? NO CHANCE. Because “skill” is for a good 70% about what your character is wearing and with these premises you’ll have no way to progress in PvE (hello 40-men raids and tier 2 and 3 armor) NOR in PvP if this system is going to reward more those that already “have”. Something that Caydiem (that looks smarter than the actual designers) summarized with:
“The powerful remain powerful while the unskilled remain unskilled.”
Which is exactly what will happen in the perfect matchmaking service + ladder system.
This concept is rather important and more than how it appears. In fact it makes obvious another one that may appear silly but that is simply true: DAoC’s Realm Points mechanic is as good as it can be.
You really cannot find a better progression system for PvP and for a very simple reason (again). This is an RPG and the only mechanics that could be appropriate (fit) are RPG mechanics. In fact the hypothesized ladder system rewarding “skill” that WoW could implement in the next year can surely work and it is demonstrated to work for other games (for example Warcraft the RTS). BUT ONLY if you discard every kind of persistent character development. Simple example: in Warcraft 3 your heroes can “level up”, which is an RPG mechanic (and that, still, some consider like an intrusion), but that progression lasts only for the duration of one match. It’s self-contained and you cannot “port” any of your progression from a session to the other. In fact the only thing you are porting is your “skill”.
So let me repeat the concept: it’s absolutely impossible to create a system that can measure “skill” in a RPG. And even if you were able to create this chimera and factor absolutely everything (loot, classes perks and roles, skills, levels, ping values etc..) you would obtain a game where the progression would be simply nullificated. You would basically cross the fence and transform the RPG into something completely different. Something that would remind what SOE did recently with SWG and that I’m not sure the WoW’s players around the world would appreciate (considering how they are rabid about simplified and overstretched character progression).
My “prediction” is that Blizzard will surely burn a lot of resources and rewrite significant parts of the current game to reach that goal. I’m also sure that they’ll manage to build a matchmaking service as good as it can be. But the point is that it will remain an half-assed PvP system not better than the half-assed system we have right now. Because the goals and the solutions they are chasing are not appropriate and will continue to be problematic and rise problems till they won’t accept that “skill” is a concept that cannot fit in a RPG without erasing or dumbing down the character progression.
Which also brings to the commonplace that says that you cannot expect the PvP to work in a PvE game. Because “skill” and RPGs are antithetic. You cannot invent any fancy solution to bring them close without a fucked up outcome.
Of course I also disagree with the commonplaces. DAoC, in fact, has a very good PvP character progression done through Realm Ranks that has never been considered a big problem and that added a lot of “spice” to the game. But this is another important topic that I won’t comment here.
Caydiem:
Yes, the developers are working on bringing PvP back into the world itself rather than just Battlegrounds.No, I don’t have any details to share… yet. ;)