Hello, everyone who regularly plays Battlegrounds has probably encountered this issue. Personally, I run into it almost every second match, and it is one of the main reasons why I stopped playing 4v4.
In my opinion, this is one of the biggest problems with the XvX format. XvXvX naturally solved many of these issues through match flow and pressure distribution, but since we apparently cannot have XvXvX anymore, then please at least address this problem.
I honestly do not understand who thought it was a good idea to allow players to stay AFK on the spawn platform, completely untouchable, for several minutes.
This is especially bad in Deathmatch. Almost every match where one team starts losing, someone either on my team or the enemy team spends the entire second round standing AFK on the spawn platform in the back. With the current system, everyone else then wastes up to 5 minutes either jumping around or spectating. It is absurd.
I understand that the platform can sometimes be used strategically by ranged builds, and that ranged gameplay in 4v4 can already feel rough because the maps are designed around short skirmishes. But that is a separate issue tied to the overall 4v4 design.
Battlegrounds are the only PvP content I genuinely enjoy because they provide fast and direct access to PvP. I am not counting Cyrodiil, where I can spend an hour searching for fights only to run into a large group and instantly die to chains of Streaks or a DK Whip combo through 31k resistances.
Right now, 8v8 is basically the only playable PvP mode, and even there, modes like Domination or Crazy King are the only ones where you can consistently have fun matches.
Overall, it feels like there is very little PvP content variety, and I genuinely do not understand why adding more Battleground modes seems to be such a problem.
At the very least, the spawn platform timer should be drastically reduced so matches cannot be stalled by AFK players.