Curse

Lykan · Aug 25, 2009, 11:55 PM // 23:55

Everyones complaining but its their own fault. AB has become very stagnant because its always the same players farming in the same guilds.
If you're bored, mix it up and change sides.
The more people that switch the more competition there will be.

fenix · Aug 26, 2009, 12:21 AM // 00:21

You know what change needs to be made to the game to fix it?

Kurzicks need to stop sucking.

That, or lower the reward from JQ so there's a reason to AB again.

Sora267 · Aug 26, 2009, 12:29 AM // 00:29

They could implement double (or triple) faction when the map is in your territory. That way, the good players would only play when their faction is losing in general, and the maps would move around a little more.

FengShuiDove · Aug 26, 2009, 12:57 AM // 00:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sora of the Divine

They could implement double (or triple) faction when the map is in your territory. That way, the good players would only play when their faction is losing in general, and the maps would move around a little more.

A good idea, in my opinion. I used to be in several guilds that would only form groups for AB when it was in enemy territory as the rewards were paltry for winning at home. Rewards should be the same throughout, so that instead of waiting until it's on either side, you're rewarded for AB wherever it's at. I don't think buffing AB rewards is gonna hurt the game, since MQSC, DTSC, vanquishing, and the other competitive missions blow AB out of the water as-is.

P.S. Hi Stranger! Didn't notice it was you

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Risus · Aug 26, 2009, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

LOL.

You clearly were not playing Factions when it first came out. When the game was new, the faction line pretty much NEVER moved. It was always Saltspray. Always. I think it took 2 weeks before we even saw another map. It was a good 2-3 months into the game before we saw one of the deep in enemy territory maps.

They changed the coding of the faction line by adding "momentum" that pushes the line deeper into enemy territory then it really is supposed to go to correct that. The line now moves far more frequently then it used to.

PS, It isn't that Kurzicks suck at AB, its that speed clears or HFFF are so much more efficent in Kurzick areas, that all the people who want Kurzick faction with half a brain do that, leaving only causal players or newbies on the Kurzick side. Hardcore faction grinders on the Luxon side are more likely to play AB.

Completely wrong. Luxons do MQSC, averaging 10-11k faction in 6-8 minutes. Kurzicks do DTSC, which is an average of 15-16k faction in 7-10 minutes. NO HARD CORE FACTION GRINDERS ARE FOUND IN AB. AB is simply a collection of gamers who desire more unorganized large scale PvP. The fact that Kurzicks are stuck is no suprise, as the more advanced players tend to sway Luxon because the better armor skins, the much more easily navigatable areas, etc.

Lexar · Aug 26, 2009, 01:17 AM // 01:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Risus

Completely wrong. Luxons do MQSC, averaging 10-11k faction in 6-8 minutes. Kurzicks do DTSC, which is an average of 15-16k faction in 7-10 minutes. NO HARD CORE FACTION GRINDERS ARE FOUND IN AB. AB is simply a collection of gamers who desire more unorganized large scale PvP. The fact that Kurzicks are stuck is no suprise, as the more advanced players tend to sway Luxon because the better armor skins, the much more easily navigatable areas, etc.

You are right except for the last part, I think most players tend to go for the armor and skins on the Kurzick side, also most people encounter the Kurzicks first in the campaign. Regardless of which side people go to, it doesn't change the fact that people in AB play it for the sake of AB, not for faction farming. I have a pretty big network of people I regularly play AB with, none of them do it for faction farming, all of them do it because it's a happy mess.

I think at some point in the past months, the Luxons just arbitrarily started winning a little bit more, and competitive players tend to want to win and moved to the Luxon side, which caused them to win more, and it becomes a spiral.
I'm not saying the competitive players are the best players, but they're better than average.

Maybe the Luxons originally started winning more because they had a much shorter waiting time, so the average Luxon has played more AB than the average Kurzick in the same timespan. More matches = more practice.

Esprit · Aug 26, 2009, 01:42 AM // 01:42

Until the faction is balanced out, AB is going to be stuck where it is at now.

Jade Quarry (Kurzick)
1. Long waits
2. High percentage of winning
3. High rewards (3x the win amount on a Kurzick controlled AB map)
4. Losses still net high rewards (often higher than an AB on a Kurzick controlled map)
5. Short games (so losses are easier to stomach)

Kurzick Controlled Alliance Battle Map
1. Long waits
2. Chances of winning are random (i.e. not so good)
3. A win gains you okay faction, but not great (compared to the other sources)
4. Losses are more devastating, netting only the number of points you have (always less than 500)
5. Long games (if you do not win/lose when a team holds all 7 points for more than 60 seconds) and losing a game takes a long time

It boils down to the time vs. reward aspect. Alliance Battles are the worst time investment to rewards. To even see the reward levels in AB compared to JQ or SC's you have to win in a map that is severely stacked against you (Kanaai / Ancestral).

Increase the AB faction rewards is a good step. Reducing the map advantage may even be advisable so that players do not simply play on homefield advantage.

Lexar · Aug 26, 2009, 02:07 AM // 02:07

If they keep increasing rewards, it'll be easier to max the title. It's like sawing a piece of the table to make it even, and then another piece to make it more even and then another one and another one etc. And then you don't have a table left, just like the inflation of faction makes the title worth less.

I say, decrease the other rewards a tad and increase AB a little bit as well. Just so that they're all equally good choices if you consider time spent.

cebalrai · Sep 07, 2009, 09:46 AM // 09:46

This needs attention still, bad. The map is ancestral 2/3 of the time and grenz 1/3, and it's getting worse.

Sankt Hallvard · Sep 07, 2009, 12:01 PM // 12:01

Guild leader changed us to kurzick since he's maxed his luxon faction. Then we went AB on grenz and lost horribly. There is no doubt that luxons are vastly superior to kurzicks. Luxons run almost exclusively balanced groups with wikibars, mo/w, r/mo, e/p, prage w/bash. As kurzicks we had problems even finding an ele who would use fire.

On top of the huge increase in difficulty(This alone would be ok, I don't ab for faction so a challenge is fine.) there's also the much longer waiting time as kurzick. Several minutes while the timer restarts while as luxons we usually went straight in. We're changing back.

Sarevok Thordin · Sep 07, 2009, 02:16 PM // 14:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sankt Hallvard

Guild leader changed us to kurzick since he's maxed his luxon faction.

Bit self centered don't you think?

lilDeath · Sep 07, 2009, 03:58 PM // 15:58

People still play AB?

Why would they do that if FFF, JQ and FA exists?

The smart Kurzicks don't play AB anymore, so that's why the map stays the same.

Jaran Cell · Sep 07, 2009, 06:05 PM // 18:05

You'r forgetting that FFF, JQ and FA are dead boring mate.

Coraline Jones · Sep 08, 2009, 04:31 AM // 04:31

From what I can tell, anything PvP-related to the Faction War--AB, FA, and JQ--are some of the most broken and messed up parts of the whole game. There's no way that ArenaNet can't know about it as anybody can tell just from playing three to four rounds of them. Since it's been this way for numerous months, my strong belief is that they simply do not care, or they have given up trying to fix them as they are so broken that nothing can be done.

Both JQ and AB are dominated by cookie-cutter builds and have rampant griefing problems. Everybody agrees that TA and RA are dominated by metagame, but JQ and FA are the same way and they have no fixes forthcoming. Most of the serious PvP players treat the arenas as a joke, so I suspect that ArenaNet does too. The leeching is so bad that it is not funny. Today, one player intentionally griefed for ten minutes straight. I.e., he intentionally committed suicide for the entire game. In the end, only three people reported him. The apathy is so bad that people now just tolerate poor sportsmanship regardless of how blatant it is.

AB has long been a joke arena. Even if you are playing your hardest and have a great team setup, you can still lose because you're playing with two other unknown teams who can screw around or be totally ineffective for the entire round. As people have stated, there are now many ways to obtain Faction, and AB is probably the slowest method of them all. I kind of wonder why AB hasn't been buffed in rewards to at least encourage people to run it seriously. The reason why Kurzicks don't win at AB is because everybody that used to play it well has gone to DTSC or other methods of grinding faction.

Sarevok Thordin · Sep 08, 2009, 05:19 AM // 05:19

I do agree that for the time investment AB gives hideously low rewards, no wonder it has become so low.

I think the rewards should be in the 5 figures for winners now, THAT'S a way to get people coming in. Then again it could attract it's share of leechers

Lifestyle · Sep 08, 2009, 05:57 AM // 05:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

I'm Luxon, and I personally love the maps the way they are. The additional faction gained by being in Kurzick territory is simply sweet, and the win-to-loss ratio is still heavily in favor of the Luxons.

Variety would be nice, but the rewards are well worth the sacrifice of variety, IMO.

I think most, if not all, kurzicks share that view.

/Sarcasm end

headlesshobbs · Sep 08, 2009, 06:15 AM // 06:15

It used to be much better balanced before we had updates to boost mainly JQ faction and somehow caused most kurz players to use it as a faction dump, taking whatever reason we had for playing AB right out the window. The only way we're going to rebalance this is by making all territory have a direct effect on what you can gain anywhere. Lose too much and either JQ/FA will be ''OFF LIMITS'' as well as the proper faction balance for getting further into enemy territory. If we can't have AB stick to being the deciding factor for everything on this map, then it's pointless.

cebalrai · Sep 10, 2009, 03:15 AM // 03:15

Well, yeah AB isn't "serious" pvp, but at this stage of GW's lifespan I'll take fun where I can find it.

The solution is very easy to implement - simply rebalance faction gained from these types of pvp.

Why doesnt anet do anything?

Qing Guang · Sep 10, 2009, 05:28 AM // 05:28

What I found was that those of us Kurz who had any skill at all got so frustrated we quit ABing, leaving only the sucky players who a) mob (seriously, that only works for Lux, don't ask why) b) camp the same shrine, leaving all the rest to fall and/or c) get caught up in skirmishing other players and ignore the shrines entirely. They must have been increasing in number, or something, and I guess all the decent players got fed up and left, probably for FA and JQ or something. Personally, I'd finished Factions on those characters that were going to, so I didn't need the faction anymore (my guild has pretty much given up on faction at this point, and our schedules conflict so much we don't have time to get together and AB anyway).

Also, Kurz have always had more faction-giving quests than Lux, making AB (or any form of Faction PvP) completely unnecessary for the "big farm". And our FFF is (or was - never did it, so I don't know how the updates have changed it) easier, I've heard.

Martin Alvito · Sep 10, 2009, 05:46 AM // 05:46

There is no stable equilibrium that encourages players to play all three formats.

One of the following two equilibria will always obtain:

1) One format returns the most faction on average for both Kurzicks and Luxons. The other two arenas are not played. (eg: AB for the first couple of years after the release of Factions, FA post-buff and before Kurzicks realized that bonding NPCs=win)

2) One format is most efficient for Kurzicks and another is most efficient for Luxons. Kurzicks thrash Luxons in one format and have long wait times. Ditto for Luxons. The third is not played. (eg: now)

No amount of developer intervention will produce a different outcome. The problem is the number of formats and the inherently goal-oriented nature of players. Any effort to balance the arenas such that players are indifferent to the faction gain rate (and therefore play all three) will inevitably be undone by future skill balance updates or player ingenuity.

Your best bet is to lobby for the removal of JQ and FA if you want to see Kurzicks play AB. (either entirely or via Smiter's Boon of the faction gain in JQ/FA)