No one wanted to grab the chaosballs. The match devolved into 15 minutes of excruciating agony for every single player involved.
This is the result:

Destruction of Battlegrounds Chapter 98: Waiting 24 minutes for a lopsided match (Solo 8v8 PC/EU)

They kept returning and interrupting us faster than we could kill them. They saw the opportunity to make us suffer the lopsided snoozefest right there with them for the full duration, and they took it.

Moonspawn wrote: »

@MincMincMinc It should be interesting to imagine how your idea would affect the critical flaws of the two-sided format. Let us assume that it is possible to create 8v8 matches filled with nothing but BG regulars of similar skill. Let us pretend population is infinite, and the matchmaking never needs to expand enough to grab whatever players are available at any given time.

Here's the first flaw:

1. Since you can't use one team against another anymore, it's difficult for BG regulars to engage each other without discarding everything they know about positioning and target selection.

1) Here's a typical 8v8 Deathmatch. Very unbalanced, yes?



2) Use Magic Matchmaking to make both teams identical:



3) Identify the target order. Although there are exceptions, it will generally be determined by squishiness. Tanks and pure healers at the back, gankers and bombers at the front.



4) Do you notice how the BG regular is number 6 out of 8? It means that numbers 1,2 and 3 will just keep coming back before it's time to engage number 6. And if not, 4 and 5 are right there.
The format being 4v4v4 would decrease number 6 position all the way to 3 or 4. If their team was inside a sandwich, it would drop even lower.
Do you see how it was much easier for BG regulars to engage each other in 4v4v4?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are only 3 ways to lower one's place in the target order.
1- Becoming squishier. Be it by changing builds or by taking damage, for example.
2- Being out of position.
3- Getting caught inside a sandwich. (obs: lets keep this one separate, even though it should technically be included in the previous option)
Can you think of any other way?

Problem with your example there is that you are drawing match K/D or order from a non mmr match. With closer MMR matches your teams would have relatively equal amounts of kills. It would be unlikely that one person ends up with a vast majority of the match kills unless they had discovered an exploit or new meta. For a while in BGs 4v4v4 we had people abusing the silver leash into light attack proc sets that were not working correctly. The pull and stun wouldnt let you counter in time before the light/heavy attack procs desync'd you and killed you regardless of any healing ticks. (Procs trivializing GCD play/counterplay is one of the big reasons to not have procs not tied to a GCD without a telegraph)

Your 3 ways to die faster are correct, generally this is what 4v4v4 came down to most of the time at high MMR. We would go 5+ mins with nobody dying and people just avoiding these points. The three teams would continuously circle the map like a mexican standoff. Trying to reposition such that one of the teams is between the other two. Only then would teams engage and target the weakest link. After engaging usually the 3rd team to enter the fight would just clean up. Good players learned how to orbit and bounce off of the sandwiched enemy team instead of engaging fully.

8v8 sort of is the same dynamic except in 2 team format people are moving and repositioning to engage where chokeholds block the line of sight from the enemy healers. Or whether a squishy enemy pushes too much.