f13.net forums - Upcoming Battleground Changes?

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
July 19, 2025, 10:55:53 PM

we're back, baby

Quote from: WoW Forums

Upcoming Alterac Valley Changes

Spawn/NPC Changes:

* A new NPC/Guard suppression system has been implemented. NPC guard spawns are now more intelligently tied in to towers and NPCs. Players that advance across the map and take out objectives along the way should feel as if they are making notable progress in the Battleground. Both the Frostwolf and Stormpike Supply Officers sell a guide on the battle in Alterac.
* All towers have been changed from having a 5 minute respawn to using a much longer respawn time. This should make assaults much more viable once the initial guard spawn has been defeated.
* Korrak the Bloodrager has gained immunities and has had his spawn timer greatly lengthened.
* Both Ivus the Forest Lord and Lokholar the Ice Lord now make their way to the opposing faction base after 10 minutes of idle time in the Field of Strife.
* NPCs in Alterac Valley will no longer assist players. This change will prevent the enormous NPC trains currently happening in the zone. Additionally, this change along with a change to the way Tower Archers function when reacting to enemy NPCs will eliminate the evade bug issues in the zone.

Item and Looting Changes:

* Alterac Valley vendor sold items should now be soulbound.

We realize that player corpse looting in Alterac Valley can often be problematic and are investigating ways in which to make the process of looting a fallen player fair to all involved. For this pass, we are putting max count limits on nearly all turn in related items. The changes are as follows:

* Darkspear Troll Mojo (10)
* Dwarf Spine (10)
* Forsaken Heart (10)
* Human Bone Chip (10)
* Orc Tooth (10)
* Severed Night Elf Head (10)
* Tauren Hoof (10)
* Tuft of Gnome Hair (10)

* Armor Scraps (100)

* Stormpike Soldier's Blood (20)
* Storm Crystal (20)

* Stormpike Soldier's Flesh (15)
* Stormpike Lieutenant's Flesh (10)
* Stormpike Commander's Flesh (6)
* Frostwolf Soldier's Medal (15)
* Frostwolf Lieutenant's Medal (10)
* Frostwolf Commander's Medal (6)

Faction/Reputation/Quest Changes:

* The faction for turning in Coldtooth and Irondeep supply quests has been increased. Players will gain significantly more faction for retrieving supplies from the opposing faction's mine.
* Along with the inventory max count changes, many associated quests have had their turnin requirements increased. This should allow for more interplay among teams. Many different players will now be allowed to turn in quest items to spawn units and bolster defenses.
* The minimum faction to call for a cavalry charge has been reduced to Honored.
* A new offensive faction ability has been added. Offensive air strikes may now be called by players with Revered or greater faction. Offensive air strikes require that the missing Wing Commanders be rescued and returned to base safely. Players should find air strikes as one of their most powerful tools in defeating the enemy.

Honor Point Changes:

* Each team will now gain additional bonus honor if their towers are not destroyed upon the completion of the map (victory). The more towers that remain intact, the more honor awarded.
* If you manage to keep your faction's Captain alive for the duration of a battle, you will be granted extra points upon victory.

We will monitor these changes during the next phase of public testing, and make adjustments as necessary. Thank you all for the great feedback.

My thoughts:

1) Guard spam is terrible. As it stands, the guards go rabid when someone is DoTed around them. The horde has used this to devestating effect on my server when the Alliance is beating down the doors of their base. Hopefully, this "intelligence" business takes care of that.

2) Easier to take down towers is probably a good thing. Speaking from limited experience, it's near impossible to take down the Horde base towers in its current incarnation, the horde puts up a minimal fight.

3) I'm a bit ambivalent about the assisting of players. In limited doses that was actually pretty nice. The problem became more apparent as you got closer to the main bases.

4) Looting is totally broken. Just force everyone in Alterac into one huge group, and auto-set the looting to some sort of group loot, so when an opponent dies, one person out of the 40 (or, within reasonable range of the combat, just like getting HKs) gets sole looting rights to the corpse. I know, a side effect of this is that efficient killing classes will be giving away part of their CPs to the yokels, and we'll see Rogue and Mage populations in CTF explode. That's too bad, I want Alterac to be about winning objectives and map control. And speaking as a melee class, I have the most to lose with this sort of setup from a looting perspective.

5) To that end, I like the idea of the faction for doing Coldtooth and Irondeep supply increasing. It will make for a greater incentive to actually do those quests, which as an "unintended" side effect, should improve your odds of winning the map overall.

6) "Along with the inventory max count changes, many associated quests have had their turnin requirements increased. This should allow for more interplay among teams. Many different players will now be allowed to turn in quest items to spawn units and bolster defenses."

I have no idea what this means. Translation?

7) Offensive air strikes should be interesting. Will players get HK/CP for a bombing run?

8) All these thoughts are worthless unless they address imbalance. If you're on the underpopulated side, no one wants to walk into a "fair" Alterac game down 20-40. Incentivize people to roll new characters; something like a /level command, but only to the underpopulated side.

Two words: RACIAL BATTLEGROUNDS

As a human I really really want to kick the shit out of elves.

No point really with those changes till underlying issues are resolved. There are servers that have never yet even been able to SPAWN the freaking valley instance yet due to imblances.

kaid

I see this as a change to speed up the instance. It is half the battle though.

In effect, it will just let (on my server) horde play even more times and lower the wait times just a bit for alliance. I'm still thinking lowering the instance form 4 hours to 30 minutes is a good thing, no?

The real problem as I see it, is the massive amount of honor points you can get from CTF. There are people on my server pulling in 90k contribution points a day in CTF. While the max you can get in Alterac is around 10k a day. So basically the honor system should be renamed the ctf system. Since the honor ranks are on a curve, the ONLY way to compete is to spend all your time in CTF, which sucks. Not that I dont like the CTF games, but they should be a fun aside, not the only way to get contribution points. They need to ether VASTLY increase the honor in Alterac. Some of the ways I thought they could do this is to drastically increase the honor bonus for winning. As it stands right now, I believe its the same bonus as winning a ctf match. Humm... 15 minutes vs 3 hours for the same honor bonus.
Also they need to remove diminishing returns from player kills in Alterac.

These two fixes would really help get more people interested.

Quote from: Morphiend on June 17, 2005, 11:46:26 AM

I rather get faction in alterac for permanent epic items than farm honor forever to get the pvp epic items. I haven't even tried CTF yet and i doubt i will until i reach exalted in alterac.

I think a way to get people more interested in the kill point system in general is to just make it not suck so much.

Even if your gear DIDNT fall off for losing ranks, getting epics via CP's is still perhaps the most grueling grind ever devised by any mmog. The reason being that others want it just as bad, if not worse then you. All these rabid hamsters are running furiously in thier wheels, but they dont get thier coke-pellet unless they run farther then the other hamsters...

Basically, even though MC might take alot of time (actually it dont take that much, we cleared up to shazzrah last night, raid started 9pm and ended about 12:20, comparable to a 5-man scholo or lbrs), what you have to do can to some degree be measured. Its finite, assuming you dont keep letting new people in the guild (each other mage that gets an epic for a given slot, is 1 less slot you're rolling against). Wheras with PvP rewards, everything is relative.

Its kinda ironic. PvP epics aren't really about competing against the opposing faction. The amount of CTF wins you garner or people you gank dont matter, so long as you are doing it more then the next highest guy on your own side. The REAL competition, for PvP epics anyay, is intra-factional...

The realization of this lead to some rather disturbing trains of thought as to what is truely the most efficient means to harvest CP's... and i liked none of the conclusions. The only way i have found to enjoy pvp again is to just pretend CP's dont exist, pvp was a helluvalot more fun before its introduction anyway. The only PvP rewards i have any interest in whatsoever is Frostwolf Clan faction.

Quote from: Sogrinaugh on June 17, 2005, 12:15:57 PM

The only way i have found to enjoy pvp again is to just pretend CP's dont exist, pvp was a helluvalot more fun before its introduction anyway. The only PvP rewards i have any interest in whatsoever is Frostwolf Clan faction.

I totally agree about making pvp fun again. Thats the way I am trying to look at it. I havent seen any armor come from the Frostwolf faction, only rings, necklaces and weapons, and there isnt a good 1h sword.

I did see some pics of the improved Bloodfang rogue armor, and it looks really sweet. Its just a pisser, cause my plan was always to get the pvp armor, and use my dkp for weapons. I do think that the pvp rewards should not be rank dependant. But I doubt that will happen.

I've noticed a sad trend in CTF. If you capture the flag in a pickup, some of these folks don't assist you. Instead, they actually hang around near you and wait for you to lose the flag before beating on the opposition so that they can reclaim it and score the bonus points for themselves. Between this and folks in Alterac who only bother with looting to get reputation instead of fighting, there are good reasons to believe that battlegrounds won't actually help PvP. Either you already have a good group of PvPers who cooperate well, or you're SOL and have to put up with the same selfish wankers you kicked out of your instance groups for ninja looting.

Quote from: Righ on June 19, 2005, 02:39:12 PM

Its sucks, yet it should be expected behavior. When blizzard decided to do things like, put in "bonus" points for the flag-bearer, or put in lootable corspes that give faction (rather then just letting the kills themselves give faction, and auto grouping everyone in the battleground so healers get thier fair share), i wonder weather it was intentional grief-enabling design, or if it was simply a product that was rushed out to compete with guildwars. The only reason i even consider the former, is that a number of the designers who used to work at blizzard were huge into hardcore PK'ing in d2 (including max sheafer, lead designer). While he left during the mass exodus awhile back, they say corporate culture starts at the top... and not everyone left with him.

My advice for enjoying a game of ctf is to not even think for 2 seconds about joining a pickup group. Go if you can get of 10 guildies or 10 friends, and when you do don't even think about the CP's, just go and enjoy the mini-game blizzard has created for you, it can be fun. Can't really say much about alterac, since i dont play it once i found out that ninja-looting was the most efficient method to become exalted with them.

God forbid the emphasis be placed on teamwork and strategy.

PS dont tell me you get X bonus rep from completing Y and this is blah blah blah. Thier are ARLREADY exalted paladins on my server, you know how they got thier? SHIELD, loot loot loot, die. Add motherfucking nauseum.