Make Battleground great again

gummy292 · March 15

Battlegrounds currently suffer from uneven matches, matchmaking issues, and queue fragmentation.

A possible solution is to introduce Battlegrounds with more teams but smaller team sizes, combined with one unified queue system that dynamically assigns players to different formats depending on group size.

Current Problems:

1. Matches are often decided very quickly
It frequently happens that one team is significantly stronger than the others. When this occurs, the match is effectively decided within the first moments.

2. Previous 4v4v4 formats had incentive problems
While 4v4v4 helped spread power across more teams, it introduced another issue: sometimes fighting was not rewarded. When two teams fought each other, the third team could win by focusing purely on objectives and avoiding combat.

3. Too many queue options increase waiting times
Adding more queues risks splitting the player base and increasing queue times.

4. Matchmaking struggles to create fair teams
When there are only a few teams in a match, the impact of a single overpowered team becomes very large.

Proposed Solution: More Teams Per Battleground
Instead of fewer teams with larger sizes, Battlegrounds could include more teams with smaller team sizes.

Possible formats:
1v1v1v1v1v1v1v1
2v2v2v2v2v2
3v3v3v3v3
4v4v4v4

Benefits
- Reduces the chance that one team can dominate the entire match
-Makes it harder to win purely by avoiding fights
-Creates more dynamic engagements across the map
-Adds more chaos and excitement to Battleground gameplay

With more teams present, objectives become more contested and matches feel less predictable.

Queue System Proposal
To avoid longer queue times, Battlegrounds should have one unified queue, while the actual format is determined automatically based on group size.

Example system:
Solo queue
Can enter any format

2-player group
2v2v2v2v2v2
3v3v3v3v3
4v4v4v4

3-player group
3v3v3v3v3
4v4v4v4

4-player group
4v4v4v4 only

This keeps queue times low while still allowing different battleground formats to exist.

Result
This system would create Battlegrounds that are:
-Faster to queue
-Less dependent on perfect matchmaking
-More dynamic and chaotic
-Playable with any group size
-Instead of trying to perfectly balance a small number of teams, increasing the number of teams reduces the impact of imbalance and creates a more engaging PvP experience

El_Borracho · March 17

I like the 1v1v1v1v1v1v1v1 proposal. I have always thought a "Battle Royale" or "Royal Rumble" style of BGs would be fun. It would have to be done in a way where everyone has the same build to avoid cheese tanks as it would immediately become 12 tanks sitting around blocking.

gummy292 · March 19

If you make it a deathmatch that wont be a problem

El_Borracho · March 19

gummy292 wrote: »

If you make it a deathmatch that wont be a problem

Oh my I totally overlooked that. I was thinking of a WWE style last man standing battle royale where if you die, you stay dead. Without tanks, that would make for some fast fights. But the deathmatch idea would take care of the survivor problem of the last man standing. Love it.

Necrotech_Master · March 19

i prefer the 8v8 BGs

realistically ANY bg format proposed will have the same problem as now where matches are decided quickly if someone is significantly "out of league" of the rest of the players

in your 8 person free for all, a single "pro" 1vXer would likely decide the match in the first burst, if all of the other players were not as skilled or non meta builds

the problem has always been and will always be a poor matchmaker compounded by a small population, and also slightly compounded by the sheer difference in skill levels (someone who is first time in pvp is going to get absolutely wrecked by someone who has been pvping for years)

the other problem is multiple queues, even if you forced everyone into the same queue, but required that say a pair of 2 players cannot be matched with anyone other than 2 player groups, thats extremely limiting and will guarantee queues never fill unless people are playing solo all the time, or larger groups queue at the same time as other groups

overall though, the biggest problems with BGs generally just comes down to small population, which in turn then affects matchmaking

if i had to guess, right now during primetime there are maybe tops 30-50 people queueing for BGs, when i do BGs there are times i get 3-5 matches in a row where 80% of the players are the same and just swapped between teams (and this is on an 8v8 BG match in the solo queue, which requires 16 players total)