Curse

Patccmoi · May 24, 2007, 05:42 PM // 17:42

I and many others i know always wanted AB to have a 'competitive' version, where you can pick your full team, etc. Because AB has the potential to be a great PvP type, the main problem being that more often than not there is around 20 quite bad players in the game (assuming your team isn't, otherwise it can go up to 24!). This kills any form of competition in AB and limits it to very casual PvP.

Now i'm fine with leaving the current AB where it is. It's a nice place for people to just relax, try stuff with no pressure, and for people who hardly PvPed before to get a little feel of it. But what i'd want to see is a competitive option to AB. My idea for it is what i call 'Invasion'.

The main goals of it would be to present an alternative to HA for casual competitive PvP. Not as serious as GvG where you get penalized for losing (rating loss) and you're limited in who you can invite, but with real reward and progression similar to what HA offer.

So here's my idea for it:

Invasion would allow you to pick your full team, which would remain 3 teams of 4 though. This is required to limit skills like Heal Party, etc. which become ridiculous with 12 players. The 8 other players could be shown as 'allies'. It would likely work with everyone forming teams of 4 and an interface to 'link' 3 teams of 4 together.

1 Hero would be allowed for each team of 4. This is to ease team formation a bit, as 12 people is a lot. This would still limit Heroes to 3/12 slots, which isn't 'heroway' or anything like that.

In Invasion, you would 'progress' through AB maps. The territory line wouldn't affect Invasion at all. Each team would start in their fort, trying to kick the 'invaders' (the other side) out of it. You obviously have a pretty big advantage there just because of the map, so even so-so teams should manage to beat decent teams once in a while, and if you can't beat them in this map forget about the others!

As you win, you would work your way through every map until you reach the enemy fort, where you become the invaders. Rewards for winning would increase for every map (likely increased Kurzick/Luxon faction gain). When you become the invader, you will face teams entering on the other side. Winning an invasion (i.e. last map) would allow you to 'pillage' the fort. I'd picture this as a 'Buried Treasure' of sort, with something similar to what you get in those and that every1 can click once. A gold item, or some plats, or a ruby, etc. Hell, maybe you could even put Ectos and Obsidian Shards. I wouldn't put the very rare stuff you get in HoH though cause there can be more than 1 'invading' team at a time and if yoo many win this the rarity would drop too much. Would be nice if there if a few unique stuff was added to the place, similar to the mini-ghostly in HoH, but that's secondary, the point isn't to add rewards to the game but to add a fun PvP game type where you can do competitive AB, playing in all the different maps regularly and not just watching that line not really move.

If there isn't enough team playing, you would just skip certain maps the same way you can get skips in HA. Atm i think that you could stay at the 'end map' of the other side for as long as you win (since you're at a big disadvantage, any half-decent team should manage to kick you out of there soon enough), but if it's too problematic there could always be a maximum win there, say after 3 wins you get a better chest and you have to restart.

So that's my idea. I'd be happy if this kind of arena (ofc i don't really expect exactly this, it's just a suggestion, but a competitive AB of sort) could be added along with GW:EN, considering that atm nothing was announced for PvP, and this seem like a fairly small addition to make as all the maps are there, the game type is there, all that's needed is something to organize teams and add some sort of reward.

If you have any suggestions or comments don't hesitate to add them!

Lord Mendes · May 24, 2007, 08:07 PM // 20:07

I like
......

bungusmaximus · May 25, 2007, 01:58 AM // 01:58

That would certainly be great, especially the link team thing. Getting 12 people together might be too much hassle. I wonder what it would be like. Every map requires another strategy so you would have to build for all of them in 1 team. Interesting puzzle really.

Don't know if I like the addition of heroes, most people seem to think that they are an annoying random element in any PvP. You could also add fun things for extra balthazar like: 'most kills' or 'most shrines capped'.

I only wonder if fort map wouldnt become rather stale. If you can't beat a team you can always hide in your fort and stash it with spirits and lame defense, let alone traps. If you can make a penalty when all the outside shrines are capped it's more or less like a siege where the besieging party starves the people in the castle. This would force them to come out which would greatly increase the action.

Patccmoi · May 25, 2007, 02:50 AM // 02:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by bungusmaximus

That would certainly be great, especially the link team thing. Getting 12 people together might be too much hassle. I wonder what it would be like. Every map requires another strategy so you would have to build for all of them in 1 team. Interesting puzzle really.

Don't know if I like the addition of heroes, most people seem to think that they are an annoying random element in any PvP. You could also add fun things for extra balthazar like: 'most kills' or 'most shrines capped'.

I only wonder if fort map wouldnt become rather stale. If you can't beat a team you can always hide in your fort and stash it with spirits and lame defense, let alone traps. If you can make a penalty when all the outside shrines are capped it's more or less like a siege where the besieging party starves the people in the castle. This would force them to come out which would greatly increase the action.

Thx for the comments.

I agree that getting 12 people together can be a pain, and that's why i decided to allow 1 hero per team of 4. Cause getting 9 people isn't much harder than getting 8, which is standard for organized PvP. Note that this isn't anything major compared to when people HAed with basically 3 heroes + 2 hench. AB has huge maps, teams will tend to be spread across the maps and you will rarely have more than 1 hero at a time. Thing is, getting 12 people IS hard, and many people prefer, with reason, a hero to a random PuG guy that will more often than not won't do what you expect him to. And it can get annoying if too many people are 'forced' to pick random people that screw up. Allowing 1 hero per team of 4 would do more good than bad imo.

And yes, maps require different strategies and you have to build considering most of them. But hell, HA works this way too, you need to defend altar, run relic, play kill counts and straight 1v1 all in the same build. GvG works this way where you can end up on a map strongly encouraging split or straight 8v8 and you have to be ready for both. You have to take into account all the maps you're likely to end up with and have a plan for each in the same build. I can easily see popular 4 player teams that will develop and that will seek each other out. For example a 4 players team concentrated on running and capping shrines, another better at straight combat, etc. And you could have like 'combat squad looking for capping squad' for PuG forming (cause there would likely be a lot of PuGing too, not just truly organized people. Just like HA USED to have a lot of PuGing...).

For fort map, maybe some modifications would be needed. But if ANet was ever to consider something like that and make AB a serious game type, it also means that they're ready to look at map balance more closely, so i don't think this is a major problem.

Syntonic · May 25, 2007, 03:24 AM // 03:24

Not a bad idea. My personal thoughts for a more competitive AB was slightly different but I do like it regardless. I haven't thought too deeply on it though since I don't think Anet is going to be focusing on AB any time soon. They have their hands full at trying to get GvG back into play along with some certain vocal complaints to address.

One main issue though - Competitive AB would need different titles than the current FF titles. It's either that or start stat tracking when people decide to create "teams." For example, a team must play every so often for their stats to be maintained and it'll have a rating system similar to GvG but without the added inactive guild/subguild rating drama. This would allow for random groups of 4 to get together and say, "Ok, they look like they know what is going on so we should be safe going in with them." If it stays lenient, then it should still be somewhat more relaxed. I don't even want to imagine the chaos of a 12 man vent in a 3+way split situation.

If it's the rating system, I'm not sure it should be the invasion idea as opposed to the map being chosen based on rating. For example, if you have a higher rating than the facing opposing team on average, you'd go to a map that favoured the opposing team. The higher the discrepancy, the farther the map pushes back. This will allow some form of competitive play without steamrolling and /resigns in the first 2 minutes. The only issue is how to handle the rating (up/down) since there is an inherent map imbalance but it should be very lenient. The main issue with this idea is that it doesn't really promote the whole atmosphere of Luxon vs Kurzick and the battlefield changing due to your successes (which your invasion idea incorporates.) I just don't really care for more titles that may not reflect anything and prefer a shift towards flexible rating as an indication of skill.

poobert · May 25, 2007, 10:57 AM // 10:57

If there were special titles for it, I think it would just promote a HA attitude to creating teams. Unless you play often, there would be little chance of you getting a team.

Simply adding a very rare gold/jem reward for winning a match in the enemies fort map would probably solve most of the problems. For a rare prize people will automatically make AB more competitive. If you tacked on something like: Playing in your own teams fort map leads to reduced faction and experience, then it wont be long until people start looking for organised teams and the like.

------------

As for the original idea, isnt it just the same as AB only faster? Currently it takes alot of wins to push in to a different map, but you are suggesting that one win will push the map in the same direction? Other than that there is just new reward system, which I think is very desperatly needed. Why is there such a big reward for HA compared with AB when more people play AB?

Patccmoi · May 25, 2007, 01:51 PM // 13:51

Because HA win is limited and overall harder to achieve. Only 1 single team can win HA every 6 min, that's it. In AB, it wouldn't be capped. As many people as manage to make it to the other end could win, and this would lower rarity of items fast i think (not sure exactly how hard it would be to win it all repeatedly). HA wouldn't have 'awesome drops' if those drops were more frequent, because they would lose their rarity.

And in a sense, maybe you could say it's like AB but just faster, but the difference is that YOU'RE picking your full team and YOU'RE progressing the maps. In the current AB there's what, 5 matches going on at a time iirc? And no matter if you win them all despite the 8 others you have no control on, you might still not progress at all if the other teams playing are losing. And the line doesn't move that fast, you have no hope of going from your fort to the other team's fort inside an hour!

Here you would pick your full team and progress through maps on your own, essentially allowing people to fully enjoy AB and not be extremely dependant of what a bunch of other random people, in your game or in others, are doing. Being dependant on random people always kills any form of serious competition as all competitive players hate it and will never take it seriously.

And i wouldn't add ranks either. Sure there WILL be some elitism, that's just certain. You'd have people asking for HA rank, or Glad ranks, even if they'd be kinda meaningless, but there's no reason to really encourage it even more. It's just how people are, and no matter what you do to the game you can't change that. But if there's a good reward in the end even for PvErs, people will play it and if there's enough people playing it PuG won't be that hard to form. Keep in mind you don't have to find 12 people, which would be a real pain, but 4. So you form a team of 4, and you'd just 'link' with 2 other teams of 4. So a couple of friends can easily go there and just PuG teams. If you see a team sucks, just don't PuG them again. Imo it would form much faster than HA groups or the like, even if in the end you have many more people. And since the first few maps seriously advantage the 'home team', even so-so players will have a good chance not to get stomped right at the start which will encourage new players to play.

There could also be more reward than just the Fort to encourage people even more. For example you could have a treasure in every map of the other side (so every map you have a disadvantage in), increasing in value just like Treasures in PvE increase in value by zone. You get more plat, more chance of a rare drop, etc. Doing it this way would allow more players, and especially more casual players, to get a nice reward sometimes, which isn't the case when you look at HA. In HA, low ranked teams very rarely get anything except a little fame (though at least there's emote related) as if there's any decent team playing in there their chance to get to HoH and win it is incredibly small.

Syntonic · May 25, 2007, 05:57 PM // 17:57

Unfortunately, trying to keep the elitism out and trying to make any format competitive at the same time is more or less an exercise in futility - I wouldn't want to add things to encourage it but there really wouldn't be any reliable indication of skill level. Since people drop in and out of AB and there are only a handful of regulars that you can see consistently, you probably won't be able to remember every single bad player/teams you encounter during your time in Guild Wars.

Most people don't really want to waste their time in HA with total pugs (joining a HA guild after rX for example and rX being a requirement to join a HA guild) and GvG pugs are rather scarce as well (though that may be due to lack of a meeting place outside of the gamesurge channel). I don't like titles either (again, I'd like a rating system but if you are against any indicator of skill, then you should probably stick with the casual format) but I'm not sure blind pugging would be better even if you get to choose the pugs (which are just that, pugs that aren't set and rather hard to remember since it's a group of random people.) As it is, getting a single team member in the current AB aspect with a decent skill bar that supports your team is hard enough much less making sure that the other 8 people also have some decent skill bars before pugging with them. Even if they do change their skill bar, it doesn't mean they know all the timings/usage of it. And no, just because a format is competitive doesn't mean you'll automatically get better players. Take a look at the all fast casting ele spell mesmers in HA that get stomped in the first few rounds etc etc etc. I suppose in the end, you'll have to decide how competitive you want to make it. I think if you are going to make one side competitive and one side completely random, you might as well aim for extremes or simply make 1 AB area in the middle of the two.

Thomas.knbk · May 25, 2007, 07:54 PM // 19:54

I'm not sure if keeping elitism out of the arena is a good thing. This inherently means, from Anet's side, not supporting any feature to show who is better (or at least more experieced), like rank from HA and the ladder from GvG and HvH. The only type of PvP that doesn't have such a thing is TA (well, there's glad points but those can be earned in RA), and I've seen a lot of threads about how TA could benefit from a ladder system.
I was also struck by this line:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

so even so-so teams should manage to beat decent teams once in a while

I'm kind of surprised. You're saying that like it's a good thing. Giving bad players a chance to beat other bad players = good, making a game type in which bad players can beat good players = bad.

I do like the concept though. I would start playing again.

lacasner · May 25, 2007, 08:04 PM // 20:04

signed, ive been saying ideas similar to this for a while, really good adition to the game.

Div · May 26, 2007, 03:32 PM // 15:32

That'd actually be a really good implementation for AB and would definitely make it fun to play again. Regardless of whether or not there's a title system for it, there's going to be elitism, and if people want to get into good groups, they'd have to join certain guilds or have a good friends list. I wouldn't worry too much about the elitism this format would bring. Just admit it, even a lot of hardcore pve guilds are elitist and it's not limited to pvp. Rather, if it gets implemented, that'd be awesome!

vergerefosh · May 26, 2007, 04:02 PM // 16:02

/signed, sounds like a fun easy way to play, get some faction a lot easier and faster than FA (at about 650 if you win) or AB (1250 if win), without having to wait for ages to get into

Any money or weapons is just an additional bonus. Just being able to play easily and get some faction without having to spend 15 minutes waiting for 5 minutes or so playing is nice. The idea of increasing faction for more wins is good as well, as lets rack up Balth and whatever side you're on faction as well. Only one downside is, if racking up Kurz/Lux faction (If done in Factions) can only do for a limited time before filling up bar

Sounds good fun tho. Easy to get into, easy to play, easy to enjoy, and nice way to get some faction

Tingi · May 26, 2007, 05:33 PM // 17:33

I've always actually loved the general idea of AB. However, there isn't much of a competition with it unlike HA or GvG.

This idea is pretty good. I would love a propper AB ladder or something to oppen with a tourny.

HERO BATTLES SUCK

Patccmoi · May 26, 2007, 10:04 PM // 22:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

I'm not sure if keeping elitism out of the arena is a good thing. This inherently means, from Anet's side, not supporting any feature to show who is better (or at least more experieced), like rank from HA and the ladder from GvG and HvH. The only type of PvP that doesn't have such a thing is TA (well, there's glad points but those can be earned in RA), and I've seen a lot of threads about how TA could benefit from a ladder system.

That's fair enough. As i said, i DO expect elitism to settle in there. I guess that you might as well have a title related to it than people asking for others to have totally unrelated titles (i can easily picture R6+/Glad3+ group!). You could always just add an 'Invader' title that would be exclusive to the place. It's just a minor addition and would help people to sort groups.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

I'm kind of surprised. You're saying that like it's a good thing. Giving bad players a chance to beat other bad players = good, making a game type in which bad players can beat good players = bad.

But they can't beat them on an even field. They'd have a chance to beat them in the starting maps IF they don't play too bad (cause i won enough fort maps when i played AB to know that if the defending team isn't organized and you don't suck, it's quite easy to win it still).

The thing is, when people try to get into organized PvP, they have a long time of simply being stomped. Look at HA, no casual group has any ounce of chance atm. They're much better off doing heroway in there cause heroes will be the best people in their team (including themselves). This doesn't help people actually get into any form of organized PvP, it just discourages them cause the step is too high. People that've been playing the game for 2 years are so far ahead that fairly new PvPers have no chance to even get started (and no, you don't learn anything from being stomped, you learn something when you can at least realize what's happening before you lose). The chance for bad players to face other bad players is kinda too small atm, they just run into decent players too fast and lose.

By giving teams a significant match advantage in the first maps, you allow them to be a little worse than the other team (which is likely the case cause the teams from the other side that got to the fort won a good amount of games before that) while still actually having a chance to win. They have the chance to fight against better players and practice coordination on 'easy mode'. So they can practice and improve against better players without getting discouraged. And the good players will be conscious that they're at a map disadvantage so losing to worse players won't be as frustrating as if it's cause the other team has 4 heroes doing a perfect Discord spike for example.

It's not good if worse players can beat good players regularly on an even field cause it means something is wrong with the game. But i see nothing wrong with worse player having a map advantage at start (considering that's how AB is designed) allowing them to actually experience a somewhat organized PvP without getting discouraged. And they'd still have to not suck totally and learn to coordinate a bit in order to beat good teams at their fort cause teams getting there are likely well coordinated enough to beat a lot of new players.

bungusmaximus · May 27, 2007, 12:19 AM // 00:19

that's indeed a hell of a good post, I hope it works the same in reality if organized ab was the case. I personally don't touch stuff like HA because there's seldom a good team to play with and others are just too high ranked. I think that there's a lot of people that kind of like the challenge of being in a disadvantage anyway (I personally really enjoy etnaran keys, being kurzick, it's a map that requires hard work).

madman24749 · May 27, 2007, 12:27 AM // 00:27

I like this idea too

Please see this anet...

b-M-d · Jun 06, 2007, 09:04 AM // 09:04

The easiest way to do that (in my opinion) is to remove the AB outposts and just make AB accessible directly from Guild halls. So the 12 person groups will be composed entirely of Guildies, alliance folk and invited friends. The 12 person groups will function more like a squad from a single guild/alliance, and upon entering the battle, will be transported to where ever the frontline is.

The group of 12 but somehow still separated in 3 groups of four sounds kinda weird though with the 8 allies, may as well just make it a straight up group of 12. If the party was formed in the aforementioned GH, it would be more structured and alot more efficient then how things are now.

Here's what I think:

I think they should make AB more like RA with the different objectives.
Kill count - 1 point / kill (race to 150 -200)
Cap count - 1 point / cap (race to 30-50)
Last man standing - (only 2-5 resurrections per player) team wins by eliminating all of the enemy team
Normal AB (as it is right now)

If ab had more options it would be so much more fun, simply because you're not doing the same thing every battle

Series · Jun 06, 2007, 03:49 PM // 15:49

I had an idea just like this. It would be VERY cool... like a mini-pvp campaign! /signed times a billion. Add this in GW:EN or something plz anet!

b-M-d · Jun 07, 2007, 02:15 AM // 02:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Series

I had an idea just like this. It would be VERY cool... like a mini-pvp campaign! /signed times a billion. Add this in GW:EN or something plz anet!

I kind of doubt GW:EN will have anything of the sort since it is a true (non stand alone) expansion.

But in GW2 (with the many races, Humans, Charr, Norn, Asura, Dwarves and Sylvain) They could make some sort of faction-esque PvP battle type.

Whatever they do, I just hope they do it soon.

ll goose unit ll · Jun 07, 2007, 03:43 AM // 03:43

This looks good! However.. without a proper 'I am a pretty good player' emote or something, you will not get a very competitive arena type.. yes a nice prize at the end will get more people to come.. but what will probably happen is a few really good TA teams team up and end up creaming regular players..

To get past a RX spam, maby instead of an emote we would keep the old ab style, and if your character (yes character based system) got a certain number of wins in normal ab or certain number of kills WHATEVER, then he got moved to the 'invasion' type of ab. This would also be really cool for pve characters since they would 'move up the ladder' in their faction.. just not enough of that in factions :/. That way everyone in the invasion pvp type would be at least decent.