The new random battleground feature is quite enjoyable. I’ve been playing a lot more battlegrounds and PvP as a whole since its implementation. However, there are some times when the whole “work as a team” mechanic breaks down.
You see, I had just picked up a Corroded Skeleton Key for my PvP set. For Rogues, especially in arena comps that don’t have a healer, this trinket is invaluable. Popping it before Vanish fixes many of the Vanish “bugs”, such as being knocked out by pets that don’t properly disengage, autoattacks, etc. Not to mention, it allows me to Vanish when I have DoTs or when someone may be able to still target me and quickly reopen. Its really a great Rogue PvP trinket with a shorter cooldown than the Battlemaster’s trinkets. The only advantages to using a Battlemaster Trinket are having additional offensive stats as opposed to stamina, and the additional health you gain from a Battlemaster Trinket lasts the entire duration even if its damaged through (so a healer could essentially “restore” the bonus by healing the extra health back). Regardless, its a great trinket in many situations, and many skilled Rogues use it.
Regardless, I use this trinket all of the time to get off “clean” vanishes. However, some people may not agree.
I joined an Eye of the Storm to knock out my daily. While waiting up in the bubble, someone says in BG chat “LOL ROGUE WITH Corroded Skeleton Key”, followed by many unintelligent variations of “that is a poor choice for a trinket”. I mentioned it was barely different from a Battlemaster trinket, only to get further lambasted.
Well, who really talks in Battlegrounds anyway, except to say “I’m the best and we are losing, therefore everyone else is doing everything completely wrong”? The only reason I even keep BG chat on is to hear callouts for what bases are under attack, as well as make those calls myself. As my EotS game went on, I was completely disregarded. One of the towers I suggested to hit was completely unguarded, and I capped it without any help, despite my calls for assistance. The two or three loudmouths had completely “discredited” me in the eyes of the rest of the players. We could have easily kept the tower with 2-3 more people there. They blamed me for “wasting my time” at that tower instead of helping elsewhere, and we ended up losing as everyone blamed eachother.
Its not so different than the situations where tanks make ultimatums because they have instant queues. They can say “kick this player or I’m not pulling/leaving”, as they can force players into long queues that are instant for the tank. This is fixed somewhat with the increased deserter debuff, but tanks do often use that sort of thing as leverage. I’m not opposed to tanks doing this, as abusive tanks further encourages more people to play tanks and perform well. Its a completely social mechanic that deals with the lack of tanks: players who don’t like egotistical tanks have to find a way to satisfy them, or find their own tank friend (or reroll), otherwise you have to deal with these kind of people on top of long queue times.
But, the majority of people disagree with me on that and can’t stand these kinds of tanks. In general, players can’t stand egotism and selfishness. Many people on my server complain about top guilds selling runs for things like the Rusted Proto-Drake, which are still very difficult to obtain, because they don’t think its “fair”. While many of these issues can be handled by the community aspect of the game, that is, you can ignore players you don’t like or find like-minded players to play with, the cross-server random aspect does not have this element. You are unlikely to play with the same people twice in any reasonable amount of time. While you can ignore people to not group with them again, you probably won’t group with them incidentally anyway.
Of course, this goes both ways. I’ve played with a lot of great people using the matchmaking services. However, the bad experiences outweigh the good substantially. The alternative, of course, is to not use the random matchmaking service if you don’t like it. I’m not quite at that point yet, but I would love to “thumbs up/down” players so that myself, my friends, and my guildmates could collectively play with likeminded players.
Do you like the way the matchmaking systems for the Dungeon Finder and Battlegrounds work, or do you think things like deserter and vote-to-kick need to be changed?
I would like to see some kind of cross realm rating system myself. We all have our different personalities and playstyles, BUT sometimes someone decides to be lazy or pull when they’re not the tank, etc. Sure, mistakes happen, but more often than not, it’s a result of this ‘gogogogogo’ mentality.
Sure it’s potential for abuse could be huge, but I think at the very least it would hopefully put people with common mentalities into groups.
A rating system would work nicely, but only if it’s tied directly to the PuG instance you’ve entered. Kind of like:
A) down a boss, a clicky window pops up on the side of the screen and asks to rate healer/tank/melee dps/range dps on a scale of 0 to 5 with 0 being bad. A comment screen could be included to add precision (ie – too eager in pulls, cannot hold agro); or
B) finish whole instance and then window pops up.
The player can see his or her avergae rating once they exit the instance. Rating can be checked by other players in game or the matching system can match similar ratings or low rating with high ratings or however they match players together now.
It kind of falls along the lines of the GearScore vs skill argument though since some people will find a way to stack the rep score in their favor.
My 2 CDN cents.