Tobold's Blog
Thursday, October 30, 2008
 
Do WoW battlegrounds need a time limit?

Silent has an interesting screenshot on his blog, about a Warsong Gulch battleground that was already going on for 9 hours 52 minutes when he joined it. We talked in a previous post about how this was caused by people doing PvP achievement farming, several players on that screenshot certainly got the "do 300,000 damage in a single battleground" achievement, as well as those about killing flag carriers.

In many ways the Warhammer Online scenarios are very similar to World of Warcraft battlegrounds. But the WAR scenarios have a 15 minutes time limit. With Horde leading Alliance 1:0 in the screenshot above, the battle would have been over and declared a victory for Horde after 15 minutes, and not dragged on 9 more hours.

So, should Blizzard change their battlegrounds to introduce time limits like this, to avoid one side stalling the battle completely?
Comments:
see: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/06/21/achieving-nothing/ (regarding farming achievements in TF2)

Give a man a fish, he eats for one day.

Offer a man an achievement for eating 500 fish over the course of one year, he will eat 500 fish in one day.
 
Hey, at least Arena matches and Alterac Valley battles couldn't go on for two days.. oh, wait..
 
I concur, Ixobelle! Excellent recap.

And they wonder why the content in WoW seems so 'thin' and is used up so fast...
 
I don't really see a time limit serving much of a purpose.

Say they added an hour time limit. That same group farming Achievements would just re-join a new one without losing a beat. As for those on the other team, its either a wasted 15 minutes afking out in the current system, or a wasted hour waiting for the limit to happen.

On the other hand, if you have a legitimate game going on its possible that two great teams could face each other and have an epic, neck and neck battle get cut off by the one hour limit. Seems to me it would do more harm then good.

That and Achievement farming like that is pretty rare. I haven't seen it on the Ruin battlegroup yet anyway.
 
I would prefer WoW battlegrounds had some kind of time limit - specially Warsong.

Setting aside the achievements issue, which is pretty recent, I always despised Warsong because it has no inherent limit on how long it can go on if one side decides to turtle. Arathi and Alterac are currently fine on that respect, as the point countdown serves as a time limit of a kind.

You can also argue that potentially it's easier to balance the time vs reward factor if all battlegrounds are expected to last for the same time as you can try to award equivalent rewards for those (f.ex.) 15 min chunks of time. BTW this is something that Warhammer still needs to work upon.
 
Not on the basis of this evidence. One of the players says that the flag is lost in 'bugdom'. This indicates this long running battleground was the result of a bug rather than some nasty camping.

15 mins is way to short a cap. An hour or an hour and a half would seem more reasonable. Some of us like time for a game to develop and unfold rather than playing to the demands of honor kill farmers.
 
I've played in a Warsong Gulch match that lasted for almost 2 hours and it wasn't due to any turtling.  The horde had several druids keeping our flag on their roof, and our offense couldn't kill them (They were really skilled druids).  Also, our defense fended off their attackers when they tried to get their flag back.  Neither side was turtling, which made the game mostly fun, though a little frustrating at times.  Anyways, even though this was an 'epic' battle, I would still prefer the game ended after 30 minutes.  I enjoy time limits, which are found in most competitive fields.Some my say why didn't I just leave the battleground?  Deserter debuff.  My time is valuable, and I was conflicted with a question that is a song by the Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"While playing Warhammer, there is a scenarion much like Warsong Gulch in that it is capture the flag.  The worst outcome happened; both teams had the opposing flag in their base and the majority of people were defending.  You do earn points for holding onto the flag, but its miniscule, so reaching 500 points would have taken a long time.  After the 15 minute time limit (which I love), the score was 34 to 27.Without that time limit, a worst case scenario would have been that game lasting around 3 1/2 hours if neither team could get their flag back.
 
I don't feel there's any need for a BG (with maybe the exception of AV, because its such a large BG) to go on for more than 30 minutes. I did some WSG last weekend and in one game, 30 minutes had passed and no flags were capped. I /afk'd out. That's a bit ridiculous.
 
Absolutely, yes! That's one reason I NEVER do WSG anymore. It can become such a horrid game if one team decides to 'turtle'. I've said it before and I'll say it again, WoW should steal every scenario feature from Warhammer. It is such a better system. Well...every feature except for the superior rewards that Warhammer scenarios offer over the PVE game.
 
Yes, I think there should be a time limit. WSG used to annoy me to no end because of the lack of it.
 
I always have avoided WSG, simply because you never quite know what you are getting into. AV, AB, and EoTS all have mechanics that force the game to eventually end. I NEVER join a WSG unless I am queued up for another battleground and I rarely join from another battle ground unless we are loosing badly for fear of getting stuck there.


WSG has needed rule changes for years and the flag carrying debuff is a start. But with a true turltle there is very little that an opposing team can do but hope to get lucky when the other team become bored or frustrated. You can observe the "gentlemen's rules" in WSG and see how hard both teams play for that first flag capture but many players will simply begin to farm honor out in the middle once their side falls behind.
 
Yes, since my very first scenario in WAR I thought "why doesn't WSG have a timer?" it was so much better knowing that no matter what happened it would end in 15 minutes. I could know how much time I had to set aside, know that if I were in a bad one it would be over soon. However they'd need to add something else to know who "won" the match. Since if no flags get capped at all in 15 minutes (which happens pretty often) you have to have a way of deciding the winner.

This also stops people from afking out of the wsg match if they get sick of it, because they know it will be over soon.

WSG is just a horrible implementation of capture the flag
 
Blizzard needs to put the time limit in for WSG, no idea why they havent. As Centuri noted the other BGs have mechanisms that bring them to an end eventually.

But really what they need is another couple BGs (also with time limits/reinforcements/supplies/whatever). Ive only been playing for a couple years and I am bored to death with the 4.
 
I aggre, I never do WSG because it CAN take way to freakin' long. Needless to say non of my characters have the PvP pants.
 
No, WSG doesn't need a time limit, but rather a counter like with the other three BGs.

Each Flag Cap is worth 50 points, each HK is worth 1 point. First team to 150 points wins the match.
 
Yes, I think it should have a time limit. However, it might be fine if it was more generous than WAR's 15 minute one
 
Yes. Any BG capable of a stalemate needs a time limit. 15 minutes for WSG would be good, an hour for AV maybe. The other two probably don't need it, but should likely have one to discourage griefing.
 
YES. A THOUSAND TIMES YES.

Unless we have a full premade, my friends and I NEVER go into WSG, solely because it doesn't have a time limit. Even AV has a soft time limit via reinforcements.
 
It still boggles the mind that after 3+ years of WSG action, they still haven't seen fit to introduce a hard cap of sorts (either timer or point countdown). 30 min limit just makes so much sense, we don't really have hours upon hours of spare time do devote to a single game of CTF, dear Blizzard.
 
WSG needs it. BADLY.
 
This comment has been removed by the author.
 
Argh, I actually wanted to say that yes, I think all the BG's need a time limit.
 
WSG could use a time limit regardless. It's the only BG that can get stalled out without both sides collaborating.


The other BGs do not need one. They each conclude in roughly 30 minutes, AV depends on if a turtle or race happens, but even it rarely makes the 30 minute marker in a turtle.
 
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