Battleground progression

From AJS.COM

This suggestion for battleground progression in World of Warcraft was originally posted to the official suggestion forum.[1]

Contents 1 Honor Ranking System Proposal 6/2008 1.1 Problem Statement 1.2 Solution 1.2.1 Part 1: Score Formula 1.2.2 Part 2: Ranking and Point Allocation 1.2.3 Part 3: Progression 1.3 Conclusion 1.4 Glossary 2 Suggested battlegrounds 2.1 Group 2 Battleground 1: Test of Elements 2.2 Group 2 Battleground 2: Tempest of Time 3 Simpler alternative

Honor Ranking System Proposal 6/2008

by Noboom@Argent Dawn

Problem Statement

Currently Arena PvP is well suited to players who prefer tactical encounters, but presents little enjoyment to those who prefer strategic player-vs-player combat. Battlegrounds provide excellent strategic combat, but have lesser rewards due to the lack of a skill-ranking system -- thus any player can "lose to epics", playing at a low skill level until they have enough honor and marks for the best gear. This leads to a sense of disenfranchisement on the part of those who prefer strategic play.

Solution

Overview / Executive Summary: A progression of battleground PvP that provides both tiered development and a ranking system based on personal achievement without the "grind or die" ranking that existed in pre-TBC PvP.

Part 1: Score Formula

The initial proposed score formula (this is not a rank, nor is it directly converted to honor or points) is as follows:

(damage + healing + (HKs*1000) + (killing blows * 10000)) / deaths

Note: "deaths" is a metric representing number of deaths, but with some modification to avoid division by zero or very large changes between 0 and 1 deaths. Most likely "deaths" = actual deaths + c where c is an arbitrary small constant on the order of 5 or 10.

Further this should be pro-rated based on time spent in the battleground, so a score of 1000 should be multiplied out to 2000 if a player joined half way through the battle. Score should be penalized when leaving a battleground early (e.g. by AFK or queue-hopping).

Caveats: Players will min-max this, and tuning will be required. Damage done, for example, to non-honor-target NPCs in AV should not count toward total damage done (i.e. you cannot clear the kobolds and get top score for never dying and doing lots of damage).

Also, the 1000 and 10000 multipliers should be tuned based on real-world data. The goal is to have damage and healing give more reward than HKs and killing blows, but those two should give some score.

Part 2: Ranking and Point Allocation

All scores are then compared (from both sides). Then a number of points are allocated to each player based on their relative score. You might get 100 points for being the top score while the person half way down might only get 5. Finally, the lowest scoring player(s) get 1 point.

Ranks are then assessed based on average number of points per BG, with a small adjustment for the number of battlegrounds fought (so that playing in 2 very good BGs can't carry you through an entire season without having to directly decay points over time).

Points are intended to provide a battleground-neutral way of assessing scores (which might tend to be higher in some BGs than others).

Part 3: Progression

Each BG gives a type of mark. Existing BGs' marks are legacy marks and will be considered "group 1". New battleground groups will be introduced every other arena season (BGs requiring more design work than arenas). Each new wave of BGs will have a rank requirement. Should you attain a certain rank, you may progress to the next group, and start earning the new tokens.

Honor is assigned as it is now, so gear of all groups still requires honor.

Ranks are assessed on a per-group basis, so every player has one rank per group.

Because there is little incentive to "slum" by entering lower-group BGs, ranks within those BGs will decay eventually and players within those BGs will have the opportunity to advance.

Conclusion

This system provides many useful results:

• Strategic PvP with excellent rewards
• Tiered progression for BGs
• A ranking system that rewards individual and group effort
• No more "losing to epics"
• Eventual progression for most players
• Reasons for Blizzard to introduce new BGs
• Introducing new tiers of BGs every other season puts the emphasis on arenas during the "off seasons"

Glossary

BG

battleground

score

a measure of how well you did in a battleground which does not translate to any reward directly

points

a measure of your relative score to all other participants in a battleground

rank

a measure of your relative average points per BG when compared to those you played with and fought

token

like (and including) the current battleground tokens; rewards given at the end of a BG

group

like an arena season or a PvE tier; groups are tiers of BGs with increasingly powerful rewards

Suggested battlegrounds

Of course, this requires a "group 2" set of battlegrounds. I think each group probably only needs 3 battlegrounds, so let's start with two of them. I'm sure Blizzard can come up with a third.

Group 2 Battleground 1: Test of Elements

Backstory

The Horde and Alliance have discovered invaluable mineral deposits in Outland that were exposed when the world was shattered. Dwarven and Orc miners have been excavating the site and discovering labyrinthine caves with all manner of underground flora and elemental deposits... leading to unexpected conflicts in these mazes of rock and strange substances.

Layout

The map is broken up into five tunnels which radiate out from the center in star pattern. The central hub is a wide battlefield. Each tunnel ends in a potential starting point, graveyard and flag. It also contains a unique environment: rock paths through watery depths or laval pools. Jagged paths of jutting volcanic rock. One is mushroom-lined, damp and slick. If a side holds no flags, they will resurrect in the center hub of the map.

Start

Each side starts at a random tunnel end-point. There is nothing special about this graveyard, however.

Goal

AB-style resource acquisition based on flags held.

Group 2 Battleground 2: Tempest of Time

Backstory

Horde and Alliance have begun considering the tremendous power represented by the Caverns of Time. While the keepers of that realm are far too powerful to challenge directly, some "leakge" occurs, and an island just off the coast of Tanaris is a perfect place to capture these energies. Discovering that human wizards were gathering these energies for their own ends, the Horde has sent Troll mages south from their encampment near Orgrimarr along with some Blood Elf scholars who have studied time magic to challenge them and gather these energies for the Horde's purposes. Brave adventurers are needed on both sides to turn the tide of battle ... and of time!

Layout

Similar to WSG, there are makeshift camps at either end of the map and between them are the wreckage of both sides' amaturish dabblings in the magics of time (similar to the anachronistic wreckage in the CoT hub).

Goal

Portals of time energy appear in random places in the central part of the map. They appear for 1 minute each and may be captured by either side by clicking on them and channelling for 10 seconds. Any damage taken will end the channelling. Each portal gives 100 resources and the first side to reach 2000 wins. Portals that are being channelled after their 1 minute is up will remain until the channelling is broken or succeeds, but become unresponsive to any other players clicking on them.

Simpler alternative

I think the above is the best long-term solution, but I also posted a much simpler solution that would be trivial to implement after the 3.0 patch: