How to finally FIX/BALANCE BATTLEGROUNDS (in my opinion)

DivineFirstYOLO

INTRODUCTION

Hey, sooo I was asking people in twitch chats and also collecting opinions on the forums and on discord servers about ideas to improve Battlegrounds. Most of the players are asking to separate premade from solo queue (sources: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/461405/seperate-premades-from-randoms-in-bgs/p1 ; https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/400077/premade-groups-are-ruining-battlegrounds/p1 ) and I totally understand why. Especially in lower MMR matches solo players are not really helping each other and basically getting rolled over one by one. The obvious fix is to separate premades from solo queue.

The problem is that there are not enough premade teams to create their own premade queue. Since the latest changes in the queue system my team has to wait for 30 minutes just to get into a match with a broken lobby (2vs3vs4).

Therefore I present you an idea how to solve this situation (and to make BGs a „lucrative“ place for players and for ZOS):

MAIN IDEA

a) separate solo from premade queue.

b) since there are not enough people interested in playing as a group right now, how about adding incentives? Add a serious ranking system for premade groups so that people can queue for „ranked" matchmaking. So basically there is going to be normal non ranked "solo" queue and the "ranked" queue.

The new solo queue should only allow solo and duo teams. (let me know if you want 2 man teams also removed from the solo queue, I think they should stay so that people can learn to fight together to eventually be ready for ranked queue – but up to you guys.
If you don't want to lose points in the ranked queue you can always go and play solo or as a duo in the normal non ranked queue.

Top 5% (or any other number, just not top 100 players please) that participate in the ranked queue will get special end of season rewards – mounts, skins, pets, maybe gold, etc. That does not necessarily mean that you guys at ZOS have to completely design new mounts and skins. Simply use old but very popular skins/mounts like the Dro-m'Athra skin/senche and use different colours.

Forgive me, this was created in a rush:

Dro-m'Athra skin


Dro-m'Athra senche

A season should either be one or two weeks, more than two weeks is too long and one week is probably too short (but that's just my opinion, adjust as you need it)

Suggestion:
Use one of them as end of season reward and put the other one into crown store. Most players are completionists, they will buy the skin or senche to complete their outfit or collection. (return to cover your costs for adding this new system). You could also add furnishing recipes as rewards and sell the corresponding house in the crown store at the same time.

About the ranking system: I've heard WoW has a good system, but I know Counterstrike definitely has a good one. Please consider adding your own team's score, opposing team's score, damage/healing done, win/lose, kill/death/assists and some more modifiers (some listed in picture below) into the ranking equation (don't forget about healers that usually don't get many kills).

example equation:

There needs to be a skill floor – where every new player/team has to start at. People within a certain level will be matched against each other. If you queue solo for a ranked match and win, you should get a few more points than the 2 or 3 man premade in your team. If your team loses to lower rank players you should lose more points.

Everyone else that does not get a skin/mount/pet/etc should still get rewards, a system like in Cyrodiil (rank 1 – rank 3 rewards) is needed. Being/staying on top of the ranked leaderboard should not be too easy tho!

There is one thing that bothers me:
Should matches be 4vs4 or continue to be 4vs4vs4 – right now, having 3 teams prevents that one team completely dominates the other 2 teams (in theory). I guess, with a better ranking system matches could become 4 vs 4, but not sure on that one. Need opinions please!


Further wishes:

- If you decide to add ranked matches, please also consider to balance some skills – blockade of ice and snares in general are overperforming.


CONCLUSION

Battlegrounds are such an awesome place, hardly any lag, no zergs, no sieges. Please show them some love (no more new maps for now, rather fix the queue as soon as possible).

Before somebody comes with the „why reward only ranked, we want mounts/skins for normal solo queue as well“ argument: this is still a MMO, people putting time and teamwork into the game should get rewards (take a look at group dungeons, trials). Solo queue will finally be for solo players, that's good enough and what people were asking for.

I'm pretty sure I forgot something, but let me know what you guys are thinking, add some feedback/ideas please. Discuss rewards, I just gave an idea, I'm not a ZOS employee so I won't go into further detail xD

Thanks for reading!

@ZOS_MattFiror ; @ZOS_GinaBruno ; @ZOS_JessicaFolsom ; @ZOS_RichLambert ; @ZOS_BrianWheeler ; @ZOS_RobGarrett ; @ZOS_Gilliam
@Masel - a common friend told me to add you, because you're doing a great job. Feely is his name and Schaden is his game.

Zelos

Too much work for ZOS to handle, this is a baby company apparently.

labambao

Oh man, sounds good.
But they even can't fix shadow image for years. This is dead game, where you can get only nothing as hardcore player.
Solution is easy, as always : create fluffy pcat, get bow in your hands and Xv1 with snipe in cyro, as 90% of players do. If you don't like it - you always can donate cool looking bow and mount.

Thlepse

some great points, i agree there should be more incentives aside from the current outfit styles, that would bring more players in...both new and old

Aurielle

Excellent idea, OP. I’m primarily a solo queuer, because I like the challenge of queuing up with randoms and I don’t want to wait more than 15 minutes for a match (last time I tried a full premade, we sat in the queue for approx 25 minutes and then steamrolled the opposing teams in about five minutes). By increasing incentives for group queuing, you resolve the issue of fewer premades (and potentially resolve the queue time issue). You also reward teams for putting in the time and effort to create the best team possible.

Also, I’d be down for letting two people queue together max in the solo queue. There’s still room for abuse there (I’m thinking tether healbots), but at least it’s not a team of four werewolves exploiting the Torugs bug with a small zoo clogging up your field of view.

vamp_emily

I think they should not split up premades from pugs. They should have a point system and then match players based on their points.

For example, if I won every match then lets say i have a player score of 500. Then Zeni matches me with some other players that have the score 500. This would prevent good players from playing against bad/new players.

Aurielle

vamp_emily wrote: »

I think they should not split up premades from pugs. They should have a point system and then match players based on their points.

For example, if I won every match then lets say i have a player score of 500. Then Zeni matches me with some other players that have the score 500. This would prevent good players from playing against bad/new players.

You’ve just loosely described the MMR... the problem with NOT separating premades from pugs is that individual players who have a high ranking based (we think) on medals earned are getting matched up against premades who ALSO have high rankings. That’s a problem, because it means good pugs get stomped virtually every time. It’s frustrating for pugs, and no challenge to premades. Everyone loses.

vamp_emily

Aurielle wrote: »

You’ve just loosely described the MMR... the problem with NOT separating premades from pugs is that individual players who have a high ranking based (we think) on medals earned are getting matched up against premades who ALSO have high rankings. That’s a problem, because it means good pugs get stomped virtually every time. It’s frustrating for pugs, and no challenge to premades. Everyone loses.

It could be a problem but I play against premades all the time. They don't win every single time and if I lost then my score would go down and then i would match up with someone close to my score. I will never stay on top if i keep losing premade or not.

disintegr8

Most premades do not really want a challenge, they want to kill everyone else and win. If they wanted a challenge they would accept losing without getting salty.

Let's also face the fact that premades are usually communicating, have usually run before as a group and know what they are doing. I've only ever tried about 6 BG;'s and never even had a group where everyone was in chat, voice or text. It's just a simple no contest.

Aurielle

vamp_emily wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

You’ve just loosely described the MMR... the problem with NOT separating premades from pugs is that individual players who have a high ranking based (we think) on medals earned are getting matched up against premades who ALSO have high rankings. That’s a problem, because it means good pugs get stomped virtually every time. It’s frustrating for pugs, and no challenge to premades. Everyone loses.

It could be a problem but I play against premades all the time. They don't win every single time and if I lost then my score would go down and then i would match up with someone close to my score. I will never stay on top if i keep losing premade or not.

Okay, but this is still extremely flawed. If you can ONLY match up with people close to your score, excellent premades will have hardly anyone to play with. Your system would favour people in the middle of the pack, as far as queue times go.

Separate queues would be much simpler and better for everyone. And perhaps instead of a non-ranked random queue, rankings should exist there too.

vamp_emily

Aurielle wrote: »

You’ve just loosely described the MMR... the problem with NOT separating premades from pugs is that individual players who have a high ranking based (we think) on medals earned are getting matched up against premades who ALSO have high rankings. That’s a problem, because it means good pugs get stomped virtually every time. It’s frustrating for pugs, and no challenge to premades. Everyone loses.

Also I play all the time and there is nothing more frustrating than playing with new or players that don't try. I would love to match up with players at my skill level.

Aurielle

vamp_emily wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

You’ve just loosely described the MMR... the problem with NOT separating premades from pugs is that individual players who have a high ranking based (we think) on medals earned are getting matched up against premades who ALSO have high rankings. That’s a problem, because it means good pugs get stomped virtually every time. It’s frustrating for pugs, and no challenge to premades. Everyone loses.

Also I play all the time and there is nothing more frustrating than playing with new or players that don't try. I would love to match up with players at my skill level.

Again, that’s why I said that perhaps BOTH queues should have a ranking system. That way, the best “solo” players get to play together and the best premades get to play together. The overlap between those two groups is not fun for ANYONE except the cancerous premades who get their rocks off on steamrolling over pugs.

russelmmendoza

Having not enough premade team for battleground is a great/awesome/wonderful thing.
Let them queue against premade, never ever let them in solo queue group.
No more farming for you bunch of premades.
Premades should face premades, let them show their awesomeness against other premades.
Have a taste of your own medicines, bunch of premades farming soloers.

roarr

Sorry, but noone will take BGs seriously with 3 teams. You have good points, but competetive and serious are only balanced modes. 2 teams, not 3, not 4, not 10.
This is why 2 teams play football, hokey, whatever. 2 People are fighting in The pit.

You want to see 5 or more people fighting each other? Go and watch some fake midget wresling show.
Duh

Urvoth

Having ranked BGs with a season/league would be a dream come true. I'd love that so much but ZOS unfortunately has shown little interest in anything remotely similar.

Vapirko

vamp_emily wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

You’ve just loosely described the MMR... the problem with NOT separating premades from pugs is that individual players who have a high ranking based (we think) on medals earned are getting matched up against premades who ALSO have high rankings. That’s a problem, because it means good pugs get stomped virtually every time. It’s frustrating for pugs, and no challenge to premades. Everyone loses.

It could be a problem but I play against premades all the time. They don't win every single time and if I lost then my score would go down and then i would match up with someone close to my score. I will never stay on top if i keep losing premade or not.

This is part of the issue, that rn your MMR doesn’t seems to go down if you lose. But I don’t know if there is a big enough BGs population for this to work.

Androconium

Are you a professional game designer?

Tattooo

awesome

fred4

Well, I certainly think looking to other games with better working ranking / scoring systems isn't a bad idea, nor is separating the queues, nor is providing incentives for groups. For me personally BGs have been a complete non-starter and I fear, again on a personal level, that the problems run much deeper than even this post allows for.

I've said it elsewhere, but I think the (Deathmatch - all I'm interested in for a start) scoring is way, way, way too complicated and opaque. It appears to reward squishy AOE and ranged builds that bear no resemblence to the more balanced build I run open world. In my opinion kills and deaths should be weighed equally, and allowing for tanks and healers to possibly score as well as DDs has, IMO, no place in the Deathmatch mode, at least not when you queue solo. ZOS were - again I must stress IMO - trying to square too many circles and made a complete and utter mess. If it was up to me, the scoring would be kills - deaths. For the group and individually. That's it. No medals, no achievements, nothing else contributing to the score. Even at that, it would be hard enough to work out what contributes to your kill count when several players were involved.

DivineFirstYOLO

Androconium wrote: »

Are you a professional game designer?

No, but at least I can say that I tried to help. Sometimes I get the feeling that ZOS either is out of ideas or does not have enough people/money to create new stuff. That's why I added a way for them to make money with PvP.
Also, what do you think ZOS prefers - people trying to help or people calling them stupid and creating useless hate threads? Forum is full of the latter.

____________

russelmmendoza wrote: »

Having not enough premade team for battleground is a great/awesome/wonderful thing.
Let them queue against premade, never ever let them in solo queue group.
No more farming for you bunch of premades.
Premades should face premades, let them show their awesomeness against other premades.
Have a taste of your own medicines, bunch of premades farming soloers.

Yeah, nice, thank you. That's basically what I tried to say, it's no fun to wait for 30 mins as a premade to get a broken lobby and farm solo players, lose/lose situation for everyone right now... did you not read my text or is my english so bad?

____________

Aurielle wrote: »

vamp_emily wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

You’ve just loosely described the MMR... the problem with NOT separating premades from pugs is that individual players who have a high ranking based (we think) on medals earned are getting matched up against premades who ALSO have high rankings. That’s a problem, because it means good pugs get stomped virtually every time. It’s frustrating for pugs, and no challenge to premades. Everyone loses.

Also I play all the time and there is nothing more frustrating than playing with new or players that don't try. I would love to match up with players at my skill level.

Again, that’s why I said that perhaps BOTH queues should have a ranking system. That way, the best “solo” players get to play together and the best premades get to play together. The overlap between those two groups is not fun for ANYONE except the cancerous premades who get their rocks off on steamrolling over pugs.

Yeah both queues need a ranking, I forgot to mention that. "solo" queue would be for people that want to play more casually.
Take a sniper as an example - you can be really good, but if you face a full premade, the team with the sniper will lose because snipers are no teamplayers. So he could go play in the "solo" queue, while somebody that wants to play as a team could go play in the "ranked" queue using a more team oriented setup.

The main idea is to allow people to play however and whatever class they want, to reduce the queue for teams and to make the ranking more fair and fun for everybody.

Aurielle

fred4 wrote: »

Well, I certainly think looking to other games with better working ranking / scoring systems isn't a bad idea, nor is separating the queues, nor is providing incentives for groups. For me personally BGs have been a complete non-starter and I fear, again on a personal level, that the problems run much deeper than even this post allows for.

I've said it elsewhere, but I think the (Deathmatch - all I'm interested in for a start) scoring is way, way, way too complicated and opaque. It appears to reward squishy AOE and ranged builds that bear no resemblence to the more balanced build I run open world. In my opinion kills and deaths should be weighed equally, and allowing for tanks and healers to possibly score as well as DDs has, IMO, no place in the Deathmatch mode, at least not when you queue solo. ZOS were - again I must stress IMO - trying to square too many circles and made a complete and utter mess. If it was up to me, the scoring would be kills - deaths. For the group and individually. That's it. No medals, no achievements, nothing else contributing to the score. Even at that, it would be hard enough to work out what contributes to your kill count when several players were involved.

Yeah, agreed (to a certain extent). I doubt Deathmatches were designed for pure healers and tanks. They’re meant to be fast-paced, high damage encounters, and pure healers/tanks draw things out unnecessarily. If you look at other games (esp. FPS games, which are all essentially BGs), quick deaths are often expected. No one really cares about dying so long as you finish with a positive K/D ratio. In this game, people are SO obsessed with getting zero deaths (which often necessitates having a pocket tether healtank), it borders on pathological. While I’m okay with getting SOME medals for healing, stuff like Fearless Physician simply encourages healbotting. Matches that end with only a handful of deaths across all three teams hardly qualify as “deathmatches” IMO.

Part of the reason why pug DMs are so fun is that people rarely spec full tank or full heals. No one cares about hitting 1 million damage (let’s face it: the damage done stat is often merely an indication of how many healbots were on the other teams); they care about winning the match, and tend to run balanced builds accordingly.

Diundriel

sounds good dont think they gonna introduce those changes tho within the next year ...

Thlepse

flying mounts as a reward ?

luchide_27

I am playing for 15 years now mmorpgs - 80% constructed/arena pvp in idk how many games and i never saw such a bad community management like zos did. All the players trying to give good advices or start discussions like this topic but zos will not even answer. Tbh i dont know if they will read it..

I made a bg-guild to keep that premade vs premade fights alive but we are not enough ppl cause i have the feeling that majority of the "groupplayers" who want some good fights left the game already.

Its the last chance for zos to listen to such discussions and to change SOMETHING (plz no mmr adjustment again). If they think its too expensive to implement the whole ranking system -- then simply design a 4v4 map and only allow premades to join (spontaneous idea) or implement the system that divine described cause he made a good job and tbh -- he and all the other forum heros making 50% of the job that ZOS have to do !

Otherwise more grpplayer will leave cause zos decide to go for the most profit and lesswork way - separate solo and premade queue without any other changes (1h queue waiting time inc. for grps).

Sorry for my english -- improving right now.

labambao

It's not even fun

namelessfrog

i support 100% of the suggestions made by the thread creator. very good work. I hope zenimax will do something in that direction.

Iskiab

Couple things:
- points are meaningless, so is KvD so long as executes are in the game. The scoring system is borked so shouldn’t be used in ranking
- make it purely based on the win/loss ratio for ranking. So team coming first x points or something
- having separate ranked queues vs unranked queues alone will solve 99 percent of people’s complaints. Premades will queue for ranked and people who’re new/learning will always queue unranked

oxygen_thief

х

DivineFirstYOLO wrote: »

INTRODUCTION
problem is that there are not enough premade teams to create their own premade queue. Since the latest changes in the queue system my team has to wait for 30 minutes just to get into a match with a broken lobby (2vs3vs4).
:

Iam a bad player I lose almost every timebut I need to wait about 30mins in a solo queue. Does it mean there is not enough solo players on EU pc?
The problem is they don't know how to organize matches and they don't care about PvP quality

Androconium

DivineFirstYOLO wrote: »

Androconium wrote: »

Are you a professional game designer?

No, but at least I can say that I tried to help. Sometimes I get the feeling that ZOS either is out of ideas or does not have enough people/money to create new stuff. That's why I added a way for them to make money with PvP.
Also, what do you think ZOS prefers - people trying to help or people calling them stupid and creating useless hate threads? Forum is full of the latter.

<snip>

OK. I have no doubt that ZOS does employ professional game designers, I've seen the ads.

Your generous efforts are wasted, as you don't know the rationale that drives the development effort.
You seem to assume that they are doing this for the benefit of players.

My assessment is that development activities are focused around maximising income as the priority.

There's a fine line between cynicism and reality.

Zevrro

Good suggestions but sadly I can't see them implementing them. Will probably just be some minor tweaks and then they'll release some new game modes and maps to try and get people to queue.

ToRelax

A ranking system with 3 teams and balance where it's at doesn't really excite me that much.