Curse

Ken Dei · May 12, 2006, 12:18 AM // 00:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

I don't get your issue with splitting. The way it works now, splitting up a team of twelve comes naturally - you split as three groups of four, each of which is already organized.

He means getting cut off from YOUR little squad of 4, I hope that clarifies.

And if you just run around following random squads on the field, you need to work on your tactics.

If you had a choice of running off with a random group, and thus being alive and mildly useful, or charging through 6 enemies to get back to yours, and dying, which would you choose? If you chose the latter, you have no business speaking about tactics.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe your lack of captures and your 100 point trail might have been what made you lose, and not this silly little incident you spoke of? I'd also question your use of a "solo build" in an environment consisting of built teams.

In your pretty obvious attempt to be a total jackass for no reason did you even read the example?

Of course the f-ing lack of captures and 100 pt deficit was the reason we lost, that was the bloody REASON I deviated from the pointless mass scramble in the center of the map.

If you'd read the damn thing instead of looking for a cheap opportunity to be a retard you'd have gotten that, I made it clear enough. And this happens a lot which is WHY I run a solo build.

True. This is why I don't think that full-team communication is critical for this mode to work. Just keep an eye on what's captured and what's going on around you. Chances are, you don't need communication to get the jist of what your team needs to do next.

That's a very niave and useless way to think about this. Seriously, not everyone pays attention, and not everyone is trained. Having more experience players giving orders can mean the difference between victory and defeat. That's the truth, because that's how a lot of battles in FPE were won. Some vet player got pissed at people running around like chickens and started barking orders and drawing on the mini map. Now THAT worked.

Frankly, I don't care if you read this or respond. You, are obviously a short-sighted moron, and in my mind a lost cause. My replies are simply for the purpose to debunk and explain the flaws in your lame counter-arguements and misunderstandings.

Oh and Loch, if your name is based on that of the philosopher, you shame it by association.

mrdbeau · May 12, 2006, 12:39 AM // 00:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

1) Heal party and orders have range larger than radar radius; two people can easily cover most of the battle grounds.

If it's larger than radar, it isn't much. I did PLENTY of E/mo heal party spamming on Friday. After a few hours of doing it and usually hitting roughly half the group, I gave up on it and went back to regular monking. Four people could probably cover all of the shrines; 2, not even close.

Quote:

2) Ignoring the fact that you wouldn't use IWAY, warriors are the most robust (strong, durable) characters in the game. They can run faster, they can snare, they can heal, and they can put out a very large amount of damage in a very short time. You can outright kill targets before they even get a spell off on you if you reach them unnoticed.

So why exactly do warriors become useless when they split up? If your small group of whatever meets a small group of warriors, you usually get owned unless you're heavily anti-warrior or you just run, because you need all the support you can get to work those warriors' health down before they tear you a new one. Warriors are very strong in small encounters, no doubt about it.

Heck, it's like that even now. Warriors in AB are all over the place. I play a warrior and I just run around deciding who dies next. Lone targets are especially juicy because once you get close to them, they're dead.

I didn't say warriors were weak. I said "Having a bunch of IWAYers running around is NOT going to help you cap objective points unless they split up, at which point they would become useless and die in a very undignified manner." Warriors are not going to be capping shrines by themselves. They die. If someone faces a war on the open field, then yeah, they should run. If they run to a rez shrine, they should laugh while the war dies. I was not speaking about warriors killing other people 1v1 on the open field, I'm talking about warriors capping shrines. They don't, at least not by themselves.

Quote:

3) First, heal party is one skill. Meaning you have 7 other skills to throw at the opposing team. You make it sound like these "support chars" just sit there all day spamming heal party, drinking tea and eating crumpets. Water snares, anyone? If you get snared in the vicinity of warriors, kiss your candy arse goodbye. Hell, they even made a new "extinguish" skill that's a weaker, non-elite version of martyr. Good luck with blinds and cripples.

In regards to necros, blood is not only the orders line, it also happens to be the direct damage line.

So, you could argue about how this setup isn't exactly super, or you could've played in the FPE and noticed that nearly every battle happened to have at least one e/mo and usually lots of warriors. I ran orders a few times, and when I happened to score a warrior-heavy team, a steamrolling ensued.

This setup isn't even remotely super, nor was the FPE any more full of "typical builds" than ABs are now. In fact, you just said warriors are all over AB now. I doubt we'd see a huge increase in warriors if the format was changed back, and in fact, things you have said suggest we would actually see fewer warriors. At least if the FPE setup was brought back, we might see some eles, some necs, whatever else. Being a monk right now is absolutely pointless. No one should EVER bring a monk into AB. Do you really want that? You want ABs to be restricted to basically 2 or 3 professions?

I also find it interesting that you complain about lack of organization right below, but your teams in FPE were organized enough to stay in range of your orders, your E/mo heal party spammer, your martyr monk, and so on. Everyone was just running around in a group of 12? Because I found that running around in a big group was not usually the most effective method. Of course, that's alleviated now, I suppose...

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Being able to talk to random teammates is nothing too special. I can't even remember a time where a random teammate followed any kind of orders. Drawing on the map can help, but I wouldn't bet on people following orders even half the time. I'd rather have a balanced game where you're not forced to be one of only a handful of viable builds.

Well, your experience with parties was much different from mine during the FPE. I was frequently near a shrine and able to get some support from a war or ranger to help me take the NPCs down and cap it. Perhaps I was simply stuck with good groups or something, but I would say at least half of the groups I played with during FPE were quite good about communicating with one another.

So, we can keep it now and have useless monks and virtually overpowered warriors (your words), or we can switch it back and have eles, monks, warriors, rangers, necros, and so on that are all useful in ABs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

I don't get your issue with splitting. The way it works now, splitting up a team of twelve comes naturally - you split as three groups of four, each of which is already organized.

And if you just run around following random squads on the field, you need to work on your tactics.

Loch, I don't suppose I need to mention that you don't always rez in the same spot as the rest of your 4, don't always die the same time as the other 4, or even need to be in a group of 4. 2 people can easily cap one shrine; you don't need 4 to do it. Frequently, a friend and I joined up together and capped shrines while the rest of our party faced off with the opposing team in the middle of the map or at some shrine. The point is, you do not always need to be running around in a group of 4. Sometimes it is much better to break off with just one or two other people and have everyone else doing something else. With the FPE system, it was easy to "organize on the fly" like that. Now, impossible.

Gilriel · May 12, 2006, 01:07 AM // 01:07

I just got a crazy idea: make the party size 6. The other 6 would be allies, the trade would be replaced with a "alliance team" channel, and the 1 minute timer would still exist. If you entered without a full party, a team would randomly get assembled, and an in-game system would prevent any party deemed "crappy", i.e. 6 warriors and ensure things that are balanced, like at least 2 monks on the alliance team, and at least 1 warrior. The 6 member praty would enhance whole team enchantments to make them have a point. What do you think of this system?

Eviance · May 12, 2006, 01:18 AM // 01:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sientir

Sad as that may be, it does restrict it somewhat. Not everyone is that determined, thankfully.

Actually if anyone bothered to notice the last day of the FPE there was very minimal leavers. I still in the current ABs see as many leavers as the first day of the FPE.

I think it boils down to this

First day or two of the FPE: people were curious and confused or freaked out when they saw it was a 12man list.

Now with current ones: They either don't like the play style, they don't like that they are losing, so on and so forth. (Unfortunately these leavers won't change.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gilriel

I just got a crazy idea: make the party size 6. The other 6 would be allies, the trade would be replaced with a "alliance team" channel, and the 1 minute timer would still exist. If you entered without a full party, a team would randomly get assembled, and an in-game system would prevent any party deemed "crappy", i.e. 6 warriors and ensure things that are balanced, like at least 2 monks on the alliance team, and at least 1 warrior. The 6 member praty would enhance whole team enchantments to make them have a point. What do you think of this system?

I think that makes for too much chance for guilds to meet up and tests builds and utterly block out the random people.... Takes long enough to get a 4man group together - a six man would just be craziness

Void Assassin · May 12, 2006, 01:44 AM // 01:44

No matter how much conversation or anger.
Lol. . . Anet's not gonna change anything.

Red Locust · May 12, 2006, 01:48 AM // 01:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrdbeau

If it's larger than radar, it isn't much. I did PLENTY of E/mo heal party spamming on Friday. After a few hours of doing it and usually hitting roughly half the group, I gave up on it and went back to regular monking. Four people could probably cover all of the shrines; 2, not even close.

I'm not talking about covering all shrines, I'm talking about covering the majority of your team, which tends to be centralized and not off to the farthest extremes. If you by yourself can cover half the team with heal party, add another heal party e/mo and voila, you've got the whole team covered most of the time. I don't care if an NPC in the far corner of the map isn't getting covered.

Quote:

I didn't say warriors were weak. I said "Having a bunch of IWAYers running around is NOT going to help you cap objective points unless they split up, at which point they would become useless and die in a very undignified manner." Warriors are not going to be capping shrines by themselves. They die. If someone faces a war on the open field, then yeah, they should run. If they run to a rez shrine, they should laugh while the war dies. I was not speaking about warriors killing other people 1v1 on the open field, I'm talking about warriors capping shrines. They don't, at least not by themselves.

Huh? Explain, please. You can easily cap a shrine with two warriors. You can do it with one warrior, but as with any other character, it takes too much time to be worth it. If you have heal party spam, you'd have a pretty hard time trying to die to the NPCs. Small groups of warriors + heal party will own small groups of something else. In large groups, warriors + heal party + orders will still destroy groups of something else, and if they don't they can just split up and destroy them that way. With the relative disorganization of AB's, you can't do much about that. Hell, organized parties in HA get rolled by IWAY if they let a few critical mistakes slip, imagine random groups of 4.

Quote:

This setup isn't even remotely super, nor was the FPE any more full of "typical builds" than ABs are now. In fact, you just said warriors are all over AB now. I doubt we'd see a huge increase in warriors if the format was changed back, and in fact, things you have said suggest we would actually see fewer warriors. At least if the FPE setup was brought back, we might see some eles, some necs, whatever else. Being a monk right now is absolutely pointless. No one should EVER bring a monk into AB. Do you really want that? You want ABs to be restricted to basically 2 or 3 professions?

So, we can keep it now and have useless monks and virtually overpowered warriors (your words), or we can switch it back and have eles, monks, warriors, rangers, necros, and so on that are all useful in ABs.

What the hell? Warriors are common in AB because they are good. If you could use skills that augment their strengths (e.g OoP) and minimize their weaknesses (e.g heal party, extinguish), guess what, you end up with an even better team, one which everyone will tend to favour. The more organized you make something, the more people will tend to go for the build that gives the best chances of winning. There's a reason why in random arenas you see all kinds of weird builds, while in GvG you see mostly the same old stuff over and over again. You make a lot of statements with nothing to back them up. How do you come to the conclusion that more organization = more diversity?

Quote:

I also find it interesting that you complain about lack of organization right below, but your teams in FPE were organized enough to stay in range of your orders, your E/mo heal party spammer, your martyr monk, and so on. Everyone was just running around in a group of 12? Because I found that running around in a big group was not usually the most effective method. Of course, that's alleviated now, I suppose...

Orders and heal party require the holding down of ALT, finding the place where you can cover the most allies, and repeatedly slamming the heal party / orders key. You don't need a masters degree in communication to do that.

Quote:

Well, your experience with parties was much different from mine during the FPE. I was frequently near a shrine and able to get some support from a war or ranger to help me take the NPCs down and cap it. Perhaps I was simply stuck with good groups or something, but I would say at least half of the groups I played with during FPE were quite good about communicating with one another.

Good for you. For me, between the target call spam of 11 other people and the chat of teammates, I couldn't get a single thing across in typing. I did and still do get the help of allies, but that doesn't require teamchat, just common sense and decent skill to realize that two people can take an enemy point easier than one. Like I already said, I'd rather have some sort of balanced gameplay.

Kyp Halcyon · May 12, 2006, 01:56 AM // 01:56

in those 4v4 and 6v6 matches that it usually boils down to at a shrine, u are generally in pretty close quarters with the rest of your party, and theres a few very nice divine favor skills ppl often overlook

Thallandor · May 12, 2006, 03:44 AM // 03:44

Yep best trick ever from Anet

show something in a preview to attract buyers then "Fix" it to make players feel frustrated after the purchase.

What the #$@%^ i am gonna cancel my subcri.... wait a minute they already got every cent they will ever earn from you. Look whos laughing their way to the bank now.

Lucky for me i never like 12v12 anyways. Long live PvE YAY!

*starts playing Factions and encounter more locked gates and Fed Ex quest*

%$@%$&*^&$%

nooboguy · May 15, 2006, 09:41 AM // 09:41

I've played 12v12 in the fpe and I've been playing it now for a couple of weeks. These are my observations: as has been suggested in this thread, the 4 player teams do make things more manageable tactically, but the lack of communication and full party visibility is a real handicap. I've stopped playing 12v12 with my monk character because of the impracticality of healing anyone other than my immediate team. The solution for that problem (allies, full party chat) has already been suggested in this thread. I hope arenanet will listen and change it.

However, I also wish that Arenanet brought back the "instant action PUG" option as in the original FPE. Here's is my reasoning: the original 12v12 was chaotic and spontaneous. You could enter instantly, but you never knew what you got once you were in it. It was utterly rubbish tactically, but it was enthusiastically fun. For serious players it must have been a rather poor experience. But it was ideal for noobs like myself to have a quick shot of chaotic fun.

GW is actually many different games all under one roof. The original 12v12 was yet another type of game, different than the current 12v12. Not really one for the serious PVPers but still tremendous fun, even with the leavers. So here is my suggestion:

Keep the 4 man teams and improve communication, that will satisfy the needs of the tactical players. But also bring back a separate arena for random 12v12. It will not be everyone's cup of tea, and if not enough people enjoy the frenzy of it, it can always be eliminated. But I would bet that the great majority of players (who admittedly are not all that good) would find it the best and more accessible PVP experience.

Noobo

TheYellowKid · May 17, 2006, 11:40 AM // 11:40

out of curiosity has anet responded in anyway about the Alliance Battles, reason for change, anything they're doin to alleviate our concerns, if they will ever change it back etc??

chaos of the elemen · May 17, 2006, 12:30 PM // 12:30

i agree with the OP and wish that these issues were "corrected"

Zubey · May 17, 2006, 02:43 PM // 14:43

I don't think the "there were too many leavers" argument is valid. Towards the end of the FPE there weren't many leavers because the ones who were playing understood the format and knew they'd get rewarded even for a loss.

Uri Torngat · May 17, 2006, 03:19 PM // 15:19

I read most of this thread and also others in the same line, I do agree with many of the complaints brought up towards the 12 vs 12 battles, I do however see things differently on several aspects and have to say am surprised this seems to have gone either unnoticed or simply it’s something people don’t see as important enough.

Fist off, the *Alliance battles* themselves, like many I enjoyed the fpe version better, not what I expected or hoped for but better than it is now. Still having a random 12 man team is not an alliance battle to me if I can’t go into battle with my alliance. The best chance we had was trying to time hitting that enter battle button which is simply ridiculous.

Of course I understand the difficulty some players could have fielding a 12 man team or even 3 x 4, so of course a possibility to go in without a full 12 man group would have been needed. I’m thinking something like RA and TA would have worked, two areas for the needs of both groups, so alliances that are big or organised enough to field 12 players for *AB* would be able to play as they wish. Now they simply can’t which I find unacceptable and I don’t care how you put this, those are not Alliance battles but just larger RA areas.

Before anyone jumps on the reply button and starts telling me I haven’t read the thread, yes I have. I just don’t agree with the reasons for changing the format or the solutions to the problems they had.

In the case of skills like Aegis and Heal party, would they be overpowered? Would they make the battle that much longer? Probably, but yet do we take what can arguably be called the most important new aspect of Factions and change it to the point that they did because of a few skills that were originally balanced for 8 vs 8. Personally I would rather have them re-balance those skills if it as to come down to that, than what we are seeing now.

Quitters, well again do you punish all other players because you have a problem with quitters, add a penalty of some sort, like some have mentioned in this thread already and the problem would already be a lot less significant.

As it stands now, I see Factions as bringing two new things to the table and sadly I see those as very minor and even unneeded or wanted changes. The new alliance functions of GW have for one made it easier to get guests for GvG from within your alliance because of the chat. Yes it’s a nice little addition, but it isn’t the thing everyone was waiting for, especially considering that we have been waiting for over a year for those things.

On a more negative side, the only real alliance activity we can do is farm, farm and farm some more one dumb 8 minute quest that you run to obtain faction. Well ok this isn’t really an alliance thing since the quest can be run under 8 minutes with henches! What is the big goal behind this…controlling towns for elite content, again I can’t help but think this falls short of what people were expecting from the Factions release and pretty much guarantees that most of the GW players will have some level of trouble getting in to that content if not in a huge alliance.
I can’t help to think that if major changes aren’t done to several of the new Factions functionalities, we can expect a downward spiral in the player base. Maybe those changes are more complicated than we think of figure to be, in that case I think Anet as to step up to the plate and give us the exact time of day. Not something like we are use to getting, *we are working on it and it is coming soon*…famous last words, but an honest answer that actually does enlighten us on the present situation.

This should help take away some of the frustration, for now at least.

Eviance · May 17, 2006, 03:59 PM // 15:59

The only problem with having two arenas is this - the current ABs moves the lines.... So is one arena just going to be faction farming? (personally I would think the old AB/FPE system would be great for this since the more elitest type like the new way cause it supposedly calls for stratedgy >_> It only seems fair that what they like actually be important and I say this with both sarcasm and truth... >_<).

The reason for the bit of sarcasm is that several times I read in here by those "elitests" that manning the headless chicken team was impossible.... So does that make me and so many others that could are uber elitests who cut our own path and don't do the cookie cutter o_O? I just find it amusing is all.

But that is the problem if you make two AB arenas and probably why Anet has done so. And if they choose one system/arena to control the line over the other then you have more mad people... (personally I don't care... I have 10k faction to raise and I refuse to do it in the current AB system... however if they aren't punishing the faction farmers >_> ... of course that would be "unfair".)

I also want some sort of answer. Last I heard they were "working" on a means of communication but thats the last we heard. I won't be happy with just a line of communication, I want the roster back even if it is split between party and allies. I want to see what is left of my team dangit. ;_;

Loch · May 17, 2006, 05:32 PM // 17:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ken Dei

That's a very niave and useless way to think about this. Seriously, not everyone pays attention, and not everyone is trained.
Having more experience players giving orders can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

I'd say it's naive to think that you'll get good results by barking orders at a random group of 12. You'll have no idea who in fact will follow and who will stay. The current 4+4+4 setup makes team coordination manageable, since each team of four isn't cluttering up the same team channel and pinging/drawing on the same radar.

Quote:

Some vet player got pissed at people running around like chickens and started barking orders and drawing on the mini map. Now THAT worked.

You could do this with a four player team as well - just tell them to stick together and help complete the next objective. In fact, I believe that it's even easier to get predictable results by ordering around a team of four.

And if your team of four doesn't listen? It happens in pugs that I join sometimes, so the best I can do is suck it up and try harder in getting a better group.

Oh, and Ken, lay off the flat-out personal attacks; those don't add anything to your position at all.

Beat_Go_Stick · May 17, 2006, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

Heal party has a shorter range than maintained enchantments (IIRC). I was E/Mo being a ward maiden in the FPE (as well as other builds) and i can assure you, HP was NOT overpowered. Considering how much damage the AOE fire spells and traps were doing (with some help from the army of minions body blocking), it didnt really even out.

I think the most important issue Anet needs to address is LACK OF COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE SO CALLED TEAM OF 12.

During the FPE, before the battle started, we would assign people tasks. Sometimes we would change splits depending on the map (If the map was to our disadvantage, I usually asked more people in the middle to capture the middle points in a 8, 2, 2 split)

You cant even do this anymore. You cant call for help. You cant tell people to retreat. Quite frankly...i cant even tell when people from my side just quit!

-.o

Yeah, I love how you see someone disconnect and you just have to wonder who has a disadvantage....niiiiiiice idea

Obus · May 17, 2006, 06:42 PM // 18:42

Bring back the old system. That new rule ending match when +100points works good enough.

...bastards