Icecrown: Rated Battlegrounds

Given that custom features will at least be considered, I have a recommendation that I think will exponentially increase player experience on Icecrown.

Currently, due to the expansion of Icecrown, there are no Rated BGs (which were implemented in Cataclysm). This need not be the case! Rated BGs will take PvP to another level on Icecrown, and it will be at the cost of no person.

The first benefit for Icecrown will be more PvP activity, particularly from those of us (me included) that are tired of farming low geared players over and over again in Random Battlegrounds. Rated PvP will give us another reason to come back.

The second benefit is, it will push guild rivalries much further, making PvP much more exciting once again.

Finally, with high geared players supposedly playing Rated Battlegrounds, the Random Battleground queue can become more balanced, and will allow low geared players to both have fun, and get gear faster.

This option will of course merely give players the possibility to play the new bracket, rather than forcing anything on anyone, so it will not harm what the current players are doing.

Rewards can be chosen by staff, although I think the beating a rival guild is sufficient reward itself as well.

Hope Warmane considers this for the future!

I'm just guessing here, but I believe what would turn this into a "no" isn't that it's a bad suggestion or that it couldn't have the beneficial effect you mention, but that this might require tweaks on the game client, not just server side.

Great idea, i would def play BGs all over to be honest this way, not just like now that BGs are 99% one-sided depending on the premade
I personally dont know if as Obnoxious said , it might require edits on client game; what if would be just needed to edit the 5v5 arena slot, if they have done a 3man limitation, i guess they can extend it to 10/15? or simply start with just 10 OR 15man bgs and see what happens? Might be the same system as soloQ on Blackrock.

The only question would be the MMR system...

The thing is the game client doesn't has any UI support for that, I believe. Think of transmogrification on Outland. Having the code for it on the server wouldn't be a problem, but there's no UI for it. Jury-rigging it with other UIs and expanded game modes might just not be a path we would take. Regarding the solo queuing, that's going the opposite way - you're not adding a whole new thing that has no support, you're removing something, skipping the need for a group.

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Originally Posted by Obnoxious

The thing is the game client doesn't has any UI support for that, I believe. Think of transmogrification on Outland. Having the code for it on the server wouldn't be a problem, but there's no UI for it. Jury-rigging it with other UIs and expanded game modes might just not be a path we would take. Regarding the solo queuing, that's going the opposite way - you're not adding a whole new thing that has no support, you're removing something, skipping the need for a group.

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What i was meaning wasnt to soloq for rated BG, but , editing that system, using it as bracket to que with a group of players 10-15, with people queing with that system as group, as 5v5 is dead on WOTLK anyway. In mostly cases if there will be rated BGs, i guess it will be just like arenas, where causal players jumps between teams/creating new ones, and who want get "top ranks" (if they will ever exist) will have a core group mostly like.
If im not wrong there is the DuoQ on Blackrock for 3s, so it might for for a costum rated bg bracket or whatever.

Keep in mind that i got no clue of how actually such mechanically works, so might be completly wrong about that

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Originally Posted by Obnoxious

The thing is the game client doesn't has any UI support for that, I believe. Think of transmogrification on Outland. Having the code for it on the server wouldn't be a problem, but there's no UI for it. Jury-rigging it with other UIs and expanded game modes might just not be a path we would take. Regarding the solo queuing, that's going the opposite way - you're not adding a whole new thing that has no support, you're removing something, skipping the need for a group.

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Would it not be possible to use a new NPC character that can make the queue for Rated BGs, similar to how arenas are currently queues by talking to an NPC?

Ratings can all be through the armory. Seems like a difficult problem, but so too did transmog on WotLK, and Warmane pulled that off!

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Originally Posted by -Notorious-

Would it not be possible to use a new NPC character that can make the queue for Rated BGs, similar to how arenas are currently queues by talking to an NPC?

Ratings can all be through the armory. Seems like a difficult problem, but so too did transmog on WotLK, and Warmane pulled that off!

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Yes, transmogrification was pulled off, but it's dealt with completely outside the game through the website, on top of not dealing with any game mechanics, being something completely cosmetic. Adding NPCs, using "borrowed" UI elements, showing data on the website, etc. are all things I group as the jury-rigging I mentioned earlier. Plus, I doubt anything like this would even be considered before cross-server PvP is finished, tested, implemented and rid of any bugs.

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Originally Posted by Obnoxious

Yes, transmogrification was pulled off, but it's dealt with completely outside the game through the website, on top of not dealing with any game mechanics, being something completely cosmetic. Adding NPCs, using "borrowed" UI elements, showing data on the website, etc. are all things I group as the jury-rigging I mentioned earlier. Plus, I doubt anything like this would even be considered before cross-server PvP is finished, tested, implemented and rid of any bugs.

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I don't reckon it would be considered before cross-server, but just something to consider at that time. I also don't necessarily agree with this being THAT much different.

In essence, we are adding NPC's, much like Transmog added items. It's not adding anything at all to the character per se, because as I suggested, there doesn't NEED to be any rewards, just a way for guilds to play each other, and then log the results on the armory.

Anyway, just a thing to consider. I know most of my guild mates refuse to play WotLK as they prefer realms where Rated BGs can happen, and sadly MoP is mostly ignored by our Dev team :(

I'd also like to have challenging BGs with equal geared players but unless u can queue solo for it rated BG would most likely be even more dead than 3s and 5s arena are right now.
If ppl are too lazy to search for 2-4 players for 3s or 5s arena then I highly doubt that they would recruit 9-14 ppl for a rated BG.

I've made a post about this feature and got 0 replies. It includes a possibility to add MMR to it.
I dont know if i should post the link to the post, since i got a "punish" hammer when i did it a while back on some other topic.
So ill quote what i posted:

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Ok so my idea is composed of 1) Way to do it , 2) Reason to do it. I invite anyone who is willing to contribute to add their opinion or constructive criticism.
I'll start with "Way to do it", so the devs can see how easy this would be at least in terms of abstraction.
1) Way to do it:
Ok so what im suggesting is to give each character a variable called BG Rating. This does not need to exist in the client (visualizable to the player within the game) and can be easily added to the website under the armory page.
Now. How to get this value? Well, this is where we gota think about the best way to do it. Personally, i would make it something between win/losses for BG, HKs (not killing blows please) per BG. perhaps we can also add "objectives captured/completed" but that would be something to discuss further.
So basically what im thinking off is creating average values of performance in battlegrounds. So mathematically you would go like this:
Wins - Losses = win ratio. (Potentially not decrease BG rating on deserting. The only beneficial way of exploiting this system is to downgrade your rating).
HKs (in bg) / bgs played (once this is integrated, not historical) = kill ratio. (Kill ratio is something that could be exploited by joining a bg and not killing anything just to decrease your rating, so maybe not use this value at all).

" Wait i just joined!": To fix this we can add a multiplier. "Time played". Calculated as a percentage of played time from the time you played the bg as opposed to 100% which would be the BG duration (from beginig to end). So if you played all the game, you get a x1 multiplier. If you played 80% of the game, you get a 1.2 multiplier (adds %20). With a perhaps minimum playtime of 50% of the bg duration. if you go lower than 50% it could be argued that your win/lose ratio should not be modified. perhaps 40% is more accurate? the number should be significant to what a player can do to change an outcome on a given amount of time. This would apply to both win ratio and kill ratio. A cap to this multiplier can be stated so players dont exploit playing only already started bgs. But i wouldnt worry so much about this since an average HK amount of a top score player is maybe 30-50 kills (depending on bg) . so 30*1.5 = 45. but this "30" would be applicable to players that played the entire game, so we could state that a player joining at half the match would get half the kills. so we get 15*1.5 = 22.5. Of course, if a player is joining a bg that he already left (case of AV) , he would have a multiplier of x1.

So one way to go is just to make an addition with those 2
BG Rating = win ratio + kill ratio.
So once you got that, you add it to the character table (Db) and query for it when displaying the armory/realm/character

2) Why to do it:
This is going to be a hate fest but i ll explain my case anyways.
You've implemented the BG ids for random bg, i understood your reasoning and found it a great modification to the realms. It adds to the gaming experience in several levels.
Continuing in that path, of making bgs a competition and not a /faceroll fest, i think characters should have , without exclusion, a BG rating. Even when joining random, or particular bgs.
Then based on this new bg rating, players will be matched with each other and against opposite faction players that are as close as possible to a BG rating value, calculated from 3 averages:
averageAllliance: average bg rating within joining members to the BG.
averageHorde: same as above.
averageTotal: (averageAlliance + averageHorde)/2
These values will get modified dynamically as each member of any faction joins a bg since a new bg rating value is added to a faction's average-> totalAverage.
So lets go by phases:
Phase 1) Player joins bg on X faction. No player has joined faction Y. One player is inside the BG right now.
averageX = playerBgRating.
averageY = <notSet>.
averageTotal = playerBgRating.

Optional: We could stablish a minimum number of players before calculating and determinig who should join first next. Lets say we wait until 2 players have joined on each faction. So we have 4 players that joined randomly (not even half of a warsong match on each side). If its decided not to use this optional clause, i guess all values will be calculated upon the first player who entered the match. Leaving the following numbers:
averageX = player1_factionX
averageY = 0
averageTotal = (player1_factionX + 0 )/2 . Basically the player's bg rating divided by 2. Wouldnt be too problematic to just use this value and not use the optional clause. But this could be changed i guess based on what people do to cheat this "system".
So if we go with the optional clause of waiting for 2 playes on each faction <inside> the bg (not queued only) then we have
averageX = (player1_factionX + player2_factionX)/2
averageY = (player1_factionY + player2_factionY)/2
averageTotal = (averageX + averageY)/2
averageTotal is what we want to be using to determine who enters next.

Premade Case (up to 5man allowed for this case):
We simply take the optional clause stated above and change the minimum player amount per faction to 5. Solved.

Phase 2) Who enters next?
To decide who enters next, we have the averageTotal to take from, which has been modified before (after optional clause?). So we get players to any of the factions that are queued and closer to this value on their BG Rating.
So lets go with an example: 3 players from X and Y faction queues. The player whos closer to the averageTotal value will enter the BG. Tnhen the averageTotal will be recalculated, and this process keeps on going until the BG fills up.
Keep in mind the idea is to be pretty close to what arena ratings use, so we would take the variable "time" to determine proximity to the averageTotal. The further the "time" variable advances the further we can go from the averageTotal value in order to get people inside the bg wihtout making them wait too long.

Note:
Keep in mind this would work for any number of BG Rating. So this will end up creating a better competitive scenario for "new comers" (low gear) and "capped geared or close to it" players. So with this, we have a lot more chances of having great deals of fun ( or my idea of fun at least, which is competition (as fair as it can get), even if you just started, or if you are sitting with a toon with BIS gear and queueing with a premade.

P.S.: Again, the way to do it can be discussed. You or someone could have better ideas on how to determine a character's bg rating. But i think the "why to do it" is pretty solid to my understanding. I hope this is considered.

Additional notes: The premade (5 man ) factor is still somethin im trying to figure out. Im open to ideas.
solution 1) one way to solve it is by calculating the average BG rating of that premade (5 man group) from the top 2 . This will prevent people building premades with 2 or 3 lows just so they lower their "group" average rating. once the group joins ( or any indiviual member, no need to wait for any number of joined characters, just do it with one as they join in) modify the averageX faction and then translate to averageTotal. But we would indeed wait for the top 2 to join before doing the math over to the faction average -> total average. This would be to prevent people from telling the 3 lows in their group to join first and thus reducing the totalAverage of the BG, so the top 2 face very low opponents (averaged ofc).

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Ofc, the idea of using an NPC for queueing into this "feature" completelly eluded me since i thought it was a "no-go". But it would kinda put everything together, without the need of modifying the clients at all. Even so, if its an NPC, then the MMR should be calculated like Cataclysm does, or arenas, instead of this utter insanety ive idealized in my head by thinking it wasnt possible to differentiate between a rated queue and a non rated queue (fixed with NPC).