Curse

kvndoom · May 18, 2006, 08:45 AM // 08:45

Let me start off saying that I am in love with Alliance Battles. To me they are far more fun than TA or RA ever could be. I play it with my Warrior as well as my Monk, and enjoy it tremendously regardless of which end of the sword I'm on. There are issues with the system of course, and they've been documented numerous times. Here are my proposed solutions.

1) Battle Chat. As it stands, the only way to talk to all 12 people on your side is through Local, and of course your opponents get to see your conversations too. Not very effective. Add a separate chat channel that is only used in Alliance Battles, and only the 12 people on your side can see this chat. The only other option is to restrict local chat to your 12 allies when in an Alliance Battle, but that could cause other problems.

2) Health Bars. When I'm playing as a Monk obviously my focus is on my own team of 4, but it's silly that I can't help out friends in the neighborhood when necessary. But I'm too busy looking at the Red Bars of Insanity (TM) to try to single out any allies outside of my team to offer a timely heal. Solution? Two parts to this: 1) A 3-tier party window. The top tier is the 4 people on your immediate team. The lower two tiers are the other 2 teams. Instate a checkbox that lets you turn the other two tiers on or off manually. Some classes won't need to see other people's health bars. For a Monk it can be a godsend. 2) Smaller "radius of effect" for the 8 people not in your immediate team. In other words, currently when someone on your team gets out of radar range their health bar is greyed out. This is fine. For the 2 tiers representing the people not in your immediate team, their radius of effect should be considerably smaller, probably aggro-circle range. This way it only takes a quick glance to know that one of your allies close by is in trouble. My primary responsibility is my 4-man team, and so it should be with the other teams as well. But if you're in the same spot with someone who needs a boost, you can give it without any trouble. If they're outside of the aggro circle, then they get greyed out and you focus on your own team. This can be VERY helpful when making a stand at a shrine.

3) Matchmaking. I'm gonna get flamed for this one. So,

Anyway...

Get rid of repeatable Faction-Farming quests. Sure, let people do it once, but then no more. Anet wanted the community to be more PVP-oriented with Factions, so make Alliance Battles the primary source of faction in the game. Sitting in the arena waiting 10 or 15 minutes to get a battle started is crazy. and why is it happening? Because the top alliances are out farming faction, since that's the faster means. Take away the repeatability of those quests. Make faction be earned on the battlefield where it should be, not by killing the same group of enemies or delivering the same package 100 times a day. That way, if people want faction, they have to fight. If they have to fight, then there will be less of a shortage of combatants, and less of a wait. Some will hate me badly for saying it, but that's how I feel it should be. Either that, or lower the PVE faction rewards and/or increase the PVP faction rewards. Make it so the faction earned per time spent is always higher in Alliance Battles than in any repeatable quest.

Zubey · May 18, 2006, 03:00 PM // 15:00

I agree.

Aspenwood, Quarry, and Alliance Battles need to become the preferred way of getting faction.

Repeatable (/farmable) quests are OK, but the return-per-time needs to be considerably less than winning in the new competitive formats.