WotLK spoilerfication

[Koyasha]

Yep, killing the general is what makes AV a race in its current implementation.  Remove that and people would be forced to kill each other, or burn towers for the win.  That and a few adjustments to how honor is distributed at the end depending on what towers are still standing and who owns what graveyards and mines, and AV would be almost as good as it was in its first incarnation.  Almost.  Without that mechanic in the new PvP zone, I'm more confident that there'll be actual combat there.

[lamaros]

Hey, at least AV is better than Halaa.

[slog]

Incoming sir bruce

AV is also a bad example because of all the fucking changes that have been made to it over the years.  It was intended to be an open zone like this new one, but they dropped it in an instance to provide some PvP content and fairness on the wildly population-imbalanced servers. 

So they couldn't get it right over how many years?  I think that makes it a GOOD example, not a bad one.

Originally there WAS a lot of PvP in the zone, when games could last 12-24 hours.  You'd see wolf riders and towers go back and forth, and the giant tree or icelord.  It was a fun time. However, games lasted 12-24 fucking hours!  So they started peeling back stuff bit by bit... until you have the PvE zerg race we now see.

Equally stupid that it also gives so much honor for the amount of time a game takes, which is WHY people avoid PvP.  Slowing down to pvp means less honor/ hour. The reinforcements still don't fix this because of the "Kill the General" win mechanic. Remove those and you'd see some real pvp In AV.

So you agreeing with my assessment of that blizz doesn't know what they are doing when it comes to designing AV?

The new PvP zone is supposed to be much more like oldschool AV..with multiple areas to win/ lose and quests that pop up as each one is won or lost that give honor (like the hala & BG daily).   I think there's a good chance of it working out fairly well, so long as that fucking "kill the general and ignore everything else" mechanic is gone.

So blizz is taking a similiar approach with the new zone as they did with AV, but this time it's going to work?  Instead of "kill the general and ignore everything else" it's going to be "destroy the buildings and ignore everything else"

[slog]

Yep, killing the general is what makes AV a race in its current implementation.  Remove that and people would be forced to kill each other, or burn towers for the win.  That and a few adjustments to how honor is distributed at the end depending on what towers are still standing and who owns what graveyards and mines, and AV would be almost as good as it was in its first incarnation.  Almost.  Without that mechanic in the new PvP zone, I'm more confident that there'll be actual combat there.

As I said above, replace the PvE objective of "Kill the General" with "Kill the buildings with Siege weapons."

[Fordel]

It's a bad example because they were trying to turn a Open PVP zone into a quick BG experience. It would be like saying Basket Ball sucks because I keep trying to play it in a Hockey arena.


Now a Good example would be all the various 'world' PvP objectives. Those are awesome.  

[cevik]

Well, one thing Blizzard seems to have done a lot of recently is look at what they (and other people) have done in various mmogs and gone on to fix a lot of the issues and spit out new and often better revisions.  Most other mmog companies sink into a fit of emo and write poetry on their myspace about how if all the newbs would just understand The Vision (TM) they would be able to play the game so much better.

No telling if they will be able to maintain that trend on this one or not, but it seems worth giving them a chance to see if they can pull it off.

[kaid]

Old AV was fun but there was so much crap going on in it that it would take forever. Basically the alliance would win when the horde went to bed if anybody won at all. God I remember fighting for 2 or 3 hours just trying to take snowfall. That GY is damn near impossible to cap if its fully defended.


In a persistant zone such as lake wintergrasp that kind of game play could work fine because you would want the attack and defense to take a long time. In a battle ground though that game play did not work as well because people being people they will go to where the best rewards are and you get jack for honor in a BG that lasts 24 hours and so horde would not queue for it. This made the fun 5 or so hour alliance queue times we all knew and loved.

[slog]

Old AV was fun but there was so much crap going on in it that it would take forever. Basically the alliance would win when the horde went to bed if anybody won at all. God I remember fighting for 2 or 3 hours just trying to take snowfall. That GY is damn near impossible to cap if its fully defended.


In a persistant zone such as lake wintergrasp that kind of game play could work fine because you would want the attack and defense to take a long time. In a battle ground though that game play did not work as well because people being people they will go to where the best rewards are and you get jack for honor in a BG that lasts 24 hours and so horde would not queue for it. This made the fun 5 or so hour alliance queue times we all knew and loved.

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

[K9]

The two changes that need to happen with BGs imo:

1) One or Two more maps per gametype (CTF, Control Point, Assault). Either make them selected at random (like Arenas) or make the map vary every two level tiers or something. The BGs are as imaginative as having to run deadmines, uldaman, scarlet cathedral and Underbog for all your PvE instance needs, at every level.
2) Give us large-scale deathmatch, that's PuGable for honour (No arenas don't count).

[lamaros]

It's a bad example because they were trying to turn a Open PVP zone into a quick BG experience. It would be like saying Basket Ball sucks because I keep trying to play it in a Hockey arena.


Now a Good example would be all the various 'world' PvP objectives. Those are awesome.  

To be fair there can be some fun at the Terrokkar towers sometimes.

[Fordel]

Yea, every six hours or so. 

[Merusk]

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

They can't get AV right because they won't completely trash the zone and start over.  The lone PvE  At this point they're nearly there, but much like the old LFG stones, this is probably some higher-ups baby.

[lamaros]

the old LFG stones

It still boggles my mind that someone could have ever been paid to design those stones. Probably the best example of "game devs are fucking stupid" ever.

[Fordel]

More like someone who was the one paying the bills.

[cevik]

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

And it seems like you're missing my point, which is Blizzard has a knack for seemingly not being able to fix stuff for FOUR YEARS and then suddenly pulling something out of their ass that makes you say "ohh, shit they got it.. they actually got it".

And for proof I present you with:

the old LFG stones

It still boggles my mind that someone could have ever been paid to design those stones. Probably the best example of "game devs are fucking stupid" ever.

[Koyasha]

Yea, every six hours or so. 

This is one of the good things.  Compare the towers to Halaa, where you can never actually WIN because as soon as it flips, the enemy can start working on taking it.  Therefore 'victory' is dependent on which side has people that continue to fight the longest.  In Terrokar, on the other hand, you fight until one side wins, and that's it...victory is achieved.  It's not dependent on who's sticking around the longest.

A shorter amount of time would be useful, though.  Terrokar makes it hard for that because essentially, after you win you've got to go do PvE in Auchindoun to get your 'real' reward.  If instead the reward was distributed to every PvP flagged person in the Bone Wastes, the turnaround time could be cut down to 1-2 hours.

[Ironwood]

I like what they've done with Pets.

If only they'd change the way stabling works.

And if only they'd tell me what's exotic.

[slog]

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

And it seems like you're missing my point, which is Blizzard has a knack for seemingly not being able to fix stuff for FOUR YEARS and then suddenly pulling something out of their ass that makes you say "ohh, shit they got it.. they actually got it".

And for proof I present you with:

the old LFG stones

It still boggles my mind that someone could have ever been paid to design those stones. Probably the best example of "game devs are fucking stupid" ever.

Are you seriously saying the LFG stones are on the same difficulty level as a PvP game?  I know you were a fellow Shadowbane player, so you know the difficulty of designing good PvP. You can't fool me!

[cevik]

Are you seriously saying the LFG stones are on the same difficulty level as a PvP game?  I know you were a fellow Shadowbane player, so you know the difficulty of designing good PvP. You can't fool me!

No, I'm saying Blizzard leaves things broken in such a way that makes you think they have no clue for years, and then magically pulls a fix out of their ass that's actually acceptable and even sometimes could be considered "good".  I don't think they can do it with PvP, but I'm willing to at least try out the new stuff and see if they pulled it off.  They've surprised me before.

To be honest, out of all the stuff in the xpac that I've read about, the new siege warfare stuff is on the bottom of my anticipation list.  Mostly because I've hated AV so much in the past, it's been on the worst PvP experiences I've ever played.  But in the previous xpac I thought the rep grind stuff sounded horrible, mostly because all the rep grinds in the game previous to the xpac were terrible, but the TBC rep stuff turned out to be pretty good.  So like I said, they've managed to have a history of taking things that I thought were pretty terrible and turning them into things that worked, maybe there is a glimmer of hope they can do it again.

[Fordel]

This is one of the good things.  Compare the towers to Halaa, where you can never actually WIN because as soon as it flips, the enemy can start working on taking it.  Therefore 'victory' is dependent on which side has people that continue to fight the longest.  In Terrokar, on the other hand, you fight until one side wins, and that's it...victory is achieved.  It's not dependent on who's sticking around the longest.

'Victory' is in fact, a bad thing for world PvP objectives. As soon as one side losses, they go away till tomorrow. Now you can no longer PvP. If an enemy force is still moralized enough for a immediate counter attack, they should be able to.

[Musashi]

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

They can't get AV right because they won't completely trash the zone and start over.  The lone PvE  At this point they're nearly there, but much like the old LFG stones, this is probably some higher-ups baby.

I think the best thing they could do for AV is increase the honor/hr for the other BG's to be even remotely comparable.  That way I'm able to grind grind grind in whichever one I want.  Being forced into AV for indeterminable hours in order to get pvp gear still boggles my mind.  I just can't figure out why they allow it to continue.

[Fordel]

They "have to" make the PvP grind unbearable and stupid to assuage the PvE only folks. All that shit about welfare epics and crap. 

[cevik]

They "have to" make the PvP grind unbearable and stupid to assuage the PvE only folks. All that shit about welfare epics and crap. 

Yeah, but until TBC it used to be "They 'have to' make getting epics require raiding every night in a 40 man raid for at least 5 hours per night to assuage the Hardcore Raider folks.  All that shit about welfare epics and crap.  "

Again, while I don't think they'll be able to pull it off, they have done some rather surprising and against "conventional wisdom" things in the past.

[kaid]

Old AV was fun but there was so much crap going on in it that it would take forever. Basically the alliance would win when the horde went to bed if anybody won at all. God I remember fighting for 2 or 3 hours just trying to take snowfall. That GY is damn near impossible to cap if its fully defended.


In a persistant zone such as lake wintergrasp that kind of game play could work fine because you would want the attack and defense to take a long time. In a battle ground though that game play did not work as well because people being people they will go to where the best rewards are and you get jack for honor in a BG that lasts 24 hours and so horde would not queue for it. This made the fun 5 or so hour alliance queue times we all knew and loved.

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

Actually the problem with AV is the orginal game play was made more for a persistent zone and was stuck in a BG. Due to how rewards work in BG and how the queuing system work its what caused the root of the problem. Simply sticking the old av with a few tweaks in a persistant environment with some half decent rewards for doing it would have been great.

Pretty much what I see when they talk about lake wintergrasp is basically AV as they always wanted it to be but originally did not have the experience to make it work.

[kaid]

Oh I forgot to talk about halaa. The PVP on the attack for halaa is very fun I enjoyed the heck out of it for the few weeks of TBC. The problem with halaa is a couple things. First its in a level 65 zone with level 65 rewards for fighting there and yet as anybody with a brain could predict level 70s soon would be the only people fighting there. So the level 65's get sick of being ganked so they won't fight there and the level 70s other than to gank folks have no real business or reward for fighting there. The daily now does help but thats a bit on the too little too late side.

The other problem with halaa is probably the biggest. There is no reason to defend halaa there is nothing in the town worth holding for more than a couple minutes to do turn ins or to buy an item from the vendors. Combined with the fact that while attacking halaa is a hoot but defending it is a pain most people I know just say let the horde take halaa so we can take it back they don't even try to defend it because its more fun to let the horde have it and take it back.

[Simond]

Actually the problem with AV is the orginal game play was made more for a persistent zone and was stuck in a BG. Due to how rewards work in BG and how the queuing system work its what caused the root of the problem. Simply sticking the old av with a few tweaks in a persistant environment with some half decent rewards for doing it would have been great.

If by 'great' you mean 'the dominant side on the server controls it 24/7', of course. It was instanced for a reason.

[Koyasha]

'Victory' is in fact, a bad thing for world PvP objectives. As soon as one side losses, they go away till tomorrow. Now you can no longer PvP. If an enemy force is still moralized enough for a immediate counter attack, they should be able to.

Winning and losing define fights and make them significant to players.  I don't remember the time I fought a while, killed some people, got killed a few times, then had to leave.  I remember the time I defeated the enemy, crushing them and achieving my objective even if I died a lot more while doing it.  You can no longer PvP is a little excessive a declaration, depending on how long victory counts for.  Furthermore, if there are enough different objectives with different victory timers, you'll almost always be able to find an objective to fight over.  If a battle consists of numerous interconnected objectives, each of which has a victory condition and timer, I can achieve victory, contribute to the battle, then leave if I have to without feeling like I'm abandoning my post.  If, on the other hand, the place I captured comes under attack time and again as long as the enemy chooses to do so, then for me to leave is to abandon my post.

The other problem with halaa is probably the biggest. There is no reason to defend halaa there is nothing in the town worth holding for more than a couple minutes to do turn ins or to buy an item from the vendors. Combined with the fact that while attacking halaa is a hoot but defending it is a pain most people I know just say let the horde take halaa so we can take it back they don't even try to defend it because its more fun to let the horde have it and take it back.

This is the problem with almost any PvP objective, defending is less interesting and typically not rewarding.  At least in a battleground, defending has merit as helping victory be achieved, but in a place like Halaa where there is no victory condition, fighting in defense achieves jack and shit.  If defending a location gave a reward - say, sign up for defense when enemies activate the 'attack window' for a location, then if you still hold the location at the end of the attack window, you get rewarded, being on defense wouldn't be such a problem.  Like you mention - I attack Halaa, but I will typically not defend it because it's too annoying to do so and because there's no victory condition for defense, it's just a matter of staying until we're overwhelmed or the enemy gives up.

If by 'great' you mean 'the dominant side on the server controls it 24/7', of course. It was instanced for a reason.

There are other solutions for that.  Taking AV as an example, it originally had an ample number of NPC's.  If NPC's and players both counted for a certain number of 'unit points', and any time a player enters the zone an equivalent number of unit points worth of NPC's either despawns from their side, or spawns on the enemy side (or a combination of the two) the two sides would remain balanced in terms of unit points.  Yes, determining how many unit points a PC is worth would take a lot of testing, determining how to control the NPC deployments and so on would take a lot of work and all, but it would be possible to have a somewhat balanced mechanism for 'evening out' the battle by using NPC's.

[Fabricated]

Man, you guys talk a lot about PvP in a game that seems to have been primarily built around PvE.

[Fordel]

Winning and losing define fights and make them significant to players.  I don't remember the time I fought a while, killed some people, got killed a few times, then had to leave.  I remember the time I defeated the enemy, crushing them and achieving my objective even if I died a lot more while doing it.  You can no longer PvP is a little excessive a declaration, depending on how long victory counts for.  Furthermore, if there are enough different objectives with different victory timers, you'll almost always be able to find an objective to fight over.  If a battle consists of numerous interconnected objectives, each of which has a victory condition and timer, I can achieve victory, contribute to the battle, then leave if I have to without feeling like I'm abandoning my post.  If, on the other hand, the place I captured comes under attack time and again as long as the enemy chooses to do so, then for me to leave is to abandon my post.

Highlighting is mine. You say that like it's a bad thing. That's the entire point of 'world' PvP. Shit will happen even if you aren't there. The entire point is to create a illusion of permanency and persistence. Without actually creating actual permanency.

The 'Victory Count' instills actual permanency, which means the losers can't umm, un-lose. Which means there isn't any reason for them to fight anymore, which means they go home and craft potions or something. Any time you have a timer long enough to let the winners feel free to leave and not worry, you have a a timer long enough to make the losers feel like not coming back at all.


If there is an objective so desirable that both sides will fight over it relentlessly, how is this bad? Finite resolutions are for the BGs. Taking Halaa is Victory, Holding Halaa is also Victory. Having Halaa locked out artificially for X hours means the fun is over and we might as well just turn it into a instance BG with a lock out timer.




As to Halaa itself, it's major issue is reward (virtually none) and defending is boring. The most effective defense is to camp the launch points for the bombers and gank people as they land. Not exactly compelling gameplay. It's actually rather enjoyable once you reach the stage where the fighting stalls onto the bridge-push, but then falls apart again once you reach the actual Halaa flag and end up GY/Corpse camped.

A simple way to make defending more interesting would be to add player controlled AA guns  . Or hand out special Halaa only rocket launchers to shoot at the bombers. Something active for the defenders to do. If the action fizzles out, give the defenders Halaa only hearthstones that last X hours or until Halaa is captured. They'll act like defense pagers on top of the obvious function. Alerting potential defenders when the attack starts up again.

Cleaning up the GY's for both sides would help, one thing constantly holding WoW's pvp back is how people respawn. You either have to run 10 miles from the GY, or spawn right back on top of the people who just killed you.

The other thing would be for Blizz to actually design buildings and terrain FOR PvP. To date, there hasn't been a building designed with people fighting in/around it in mind.



Fab- It's mostly wishful thinking and nostalgia for DaoC on my part. I have big hopes for WoTLK's supposed World PvP zone, unsubstantiated hopes based off no actual evidence, but hope none the less.

[Register]

Man, you guys talk a lot about PvP in a game that seems to have been primarily built around PvE.

I think that Blizzard did spend a significant amount of time and resources on balancing class abilities and equipment for PVP.

It might be far from perfect, it might not be enough for several classes, but it's enough to get by till something much better comes along, if it comes along.

[sinij]

Man, you guys talk a lot about PvP in a game that seems to have been primarily built around PvE.

Funny that you mention this. I read numbers suggesting that WoW players a) Solo grind b) Do Battlegrounds c) 10 man & heroic d) arena e) 25 man raid... in that order. So if anything WoW is about solo grinding reputation with a bit of PvP thrown in.

[lamaros]

As to Halaa itself, it's major issue is reward (virtually none) and defending is boring. The most effective defense is to camp the launch points for the bombers and gank people as they land. Not exactly compelling gameplay. It's actually rather enjoyable once you reach the stage where the fighting stalls onto the bridge-push, but then falls apart again once you reach the actual Halaa flag and end up GY/Corpse camped.

A simple way to make defending more interesting would be to add player controlled AA guns  . Or hand out special Halaa only rocket launchers to shoot at the bombers. Something active for the defenders to do. If the action fizzles out, give the defenders Halaa only hearthstones that last X hours or until Halaa is captured. They'll act like defense pagers on top of the obvious function. Alerting potential defenders when the attack starts up again.

For world PvP the balance is really tricky, because servers dont have balanced populations. So they need a few things:

1: A reason for people to do the actions, besides fun.
2: For them to be fun anyway, so people enjoy doing them.
3: For both sides to be able to win, despite differences in numbers/skill/whatever.
4: For differences in numbers to be allowable (otherwise the more popular side is forced to have people locked out).
5: For people to get rewarded fairly for their time (no point just rewarding people just for the 'win' if you could play for 2 hours and not see a win in that time)

Because WoW is a equipment based game and a level based game these things are made even harder.

AV has problems with 4 and 5, to a lesser (but more contentious) degree with 3, and as a result problems with 2. A lot of these issues I think stem from #5, which comes from the original design of the place.

Halaa has problems with #2 and 1. Defending is just not fun, and there is basicly no reason to defend. Moreover for largest group of players in the playerbase (level 70s) there is no reward for attacking either.

What Halaa does right, however, is that it is easier to attack then defend (though 'winning' still has issues with 3, because player numbers will determine the flag cap).

Anyway, I'm optimistic that Wrath will have better world PvP. They just need to put it at the level cap, make both defending and attacking fun, make defending and attacking both rewarding, make defending ultimatily futile, make the side swapover generally take only 1-2 hours, and make it so number difference between alliance and horde have no significant impact. There is not reason these things cannot be achieved.

[Koyasha]

Highlighting is mine. You say that like it's a bad thing. That's the entire point of 'world' PvP. Shit will happen even if you aren't there. The entire point is to create a illusion of permanency and persistence. Without actually creating actual permanency.

The 'Victory Count' instills actual permanency, which means the losers can't umm, un-lose. Which means there isn't any reason for them to fight anymore, which means they go home and craft potions or something. Any time you have a timer long enough to let the winners feel free to leave and not worry, you have a a timer long enough to make the losers feel like not coming back at all.

If there is an objective so desirable that both sides will fight over it relentlessly, how is this bad? Finite resolutions are for the BGs. Taking Halaa is Victory, Holding Halaa is also Victory. Having Halaa locked out artificially for X hours means the fun is over and we might as well just turn it into a instance BG with a lock out timer.

Halaa is a bad example for this because it has only one objective.  On the other hand, it could be a decent example.  Let's say Halaa was 10 times larger than it is, an entire zone, each building being an entire mini-base with a purpose and adds bonuses to other connected mini-bases, and each of the wyvern launching locations is a full mini-keep that you have to take in order to begin assaulting the main bases.  Finally, there's no central 'capture the entire zone at once' location.  Now, each capture location can have an 'attack window' triggered by the enemy at the time of their choosing, which gives them a set amount of time to capture that location.  If they fail, that location is locked out for a specific amount of time.  If they want to keep fighting, they can just pick a different location that's not on lockout and attack there.  As long as there are enough capture locations in the zone so that it is practically impossible for all of them to be on lockout at once, the attackers can keep attacking as long as they want to, while giving a real illusion of permanency to the defenders.

Beyond that it gives other advantages, such as breaking the battle up into small bite-size chunks for people to participate in and get rewarded.  At the end of each attack window, the winning side can be issued an appropriate reward.  The lockout need not even be a complete lockout.  If instead of simply making the location un-capturable, the location becomes defended by a battalion of elite NPC's that could theoretically be defeated, but it would be very very difficult to do so, it works just as well or better.

I agree that the key is to give an illusion of permanency, but as far as I'm concerned, the current system for Halaa or the Hellfire towers doesn't do that, while the Terrokar towers goes too far the other way.  A zone where there's a dozen different capture locations on their own individual attack windows, with say a 1 to 2 hour 'secured' time after the attack window closes, would work quite well.  I'm hoping that Lake Wintergrasp has something somewhat like this.

A simple way to make defending more interesting would be to add player controlled AA guns  . Or hand out special Halaa only rocket launchers to shoot at the bombers. Something active for the defenders to do. If the action fizzles out, give the defenders Halaa only hearthstones that last X hours or until Halaa is captured. They'll act like defense pagers on top of the obvious function. Alerting potential defenders when the attack starts up again.

Now this is a brilliant idea that would improve almost ANY kind of world pvp, although I would make them permament rather than temporary, simply have them activate only at the appropriate times.

make defending ultimatily futile,

  That part makes no sense to me.  Winning and losing should be based on who actually does better, not pre-rigged so that one side always loses.

[lamaros]

  That part makes no sense to me.  Winning and losing should be based on who actually does better, not pre-rigged so that one side always loses.

You need to think it through.

(Thinking time).

Of course one side must always lose, otherwise it's possible that one side would, for example, always hold Halaa. Yeah, a PvP aspect of the game that one side never gets to experience, ever, because they have a lower population. Because of the imbalances in server popularions (and skill), and because of the fact that people want to be equally rewarded even if they're on the smaller/worse skilled side, there are certain things that a MMO like WoW has to accept.

The mechanic ensuring that holding the place infinitly is impossible can be done a few different ways, but it must be done.

Read up a bit about Wintergrasp:

#  According to a fixed, rolling schedule, one faction will defend the keep/mine, and the other faction will assault it. Both sides will fight over towers and siege workshops scattered around the zone.
# If the attacking force succeeds in capturing the keep/mine, that faction will defend it during the next rotation. If that attacking force fails to capture the final objective before the next rotation, that faction will be given more resources (unknown to what those might be for now)" to balance out the fight, and give every faction a chance to hold Lake Wintergrasp.

Why is the second mechanic in place? To make it so everyone gets to win at some point.

Wintergrasp looks to have a very good grasp on the PvP problems in WoW, hence my optimism.

[Koyasha]

Hmm.  To a degree that makes sense.  However I'm not sure it's really that necessary, since over time, different groups of people on each side will be the ones participating, thus over time the victories should wind up spread out among both sides.

It does kind of serve the purpose of a 'streakbreaker', though.  In the sense that even if, over a hundred thousand assaults and defenses, the success ratio of each side is roughly even, without such a mechanism there'd be a lot of streaks where one side is winning for a considerable period of time.  I think it just sits poorly with me to know that anything is pre-rigged, or that losing is rewarded (by having more resources next time).