Curse

Myodato · Mar 28, 2006, 06:02 PM // 18:02

Please remember that this was a preview weekend. 50% of people playing suicidal assassins with skills randomly picked a few minutes before the fight is not going to give an accurate view of what it will be like for real. Firstly, Alliance Battles are not going to be filled with 12 random 2 day old chars, but most likely carefully co-ordinated 4 man teams. Think of it more as a new challenge for Team Arenas fans rather than the latest Wammo holiday resort.

As for leavers, it was definitely a problem over the weekend (mostly see above at this point), but with the whole faction vs faction thing, there is potential for the 'spy' abuse that was rumoured over the weekend. I can only hope that Anet puts in sufficient controls to keep out most of them. Perhaps a good solution would be for it to cost faction to enter, that way you have to stay to the end (win or lose) to at least stay even. It would also prevent people with no interest in earning faction for that Faction from entering (i.e. evil Luxon spies!)

Winx.ZN · Mar 28, 2006, 08:23 PM // 20:23

If your guild is allied with Kurzick then you should not be able to fight for luxon. If your characters has a certain percent (say 30%) more faction of one side or the other, then you should not be able to fight for the other side.

Reward those that stay. Tally up, in some way or another, how many disconnections happen during a match. (Player is in Keys - disconnected - Player has a total of 174 disconnects during matches over the last month).
This should affect the faction they do have, of whatever side they are allied with. Possibly even guild standing. Earning that standing is worth it and takes some time. I am sure that if guild leaders found out that 1337 Wammo is the one lowering their standing (Armies dont like deserters!) they would do something to fix that.

People who are allied to a certain side should have their names in a certain color. All Kurzick can be black, or all Luxon can be red. (Does not have to be THOSE colors) You will be able to identify people sitting in Saltspray as a high probability of quitting due to the color of their name.

Just throwing those out there. There needs to be a solution.

LaserLight · Mar 28, 2006, 10:21 PM // 22:21

From this thread, two things should be implemented, and one should not.

1.) Brokenkey's excellent honor system. What people fail to realize is that, even now, people who just lost an Alliance battle gain Allied Faction equal to the number of points their team had when they lost. One battle I was in was fought down to the wire; Kurzicks ended up winning, but I got 453 Faction of out the deal. Works for me, especially if that honor system is installed.

2.) Luxon names are Red, Kurzick names are Blue. This is based first on Guild allegiance and secondly on account Allied Faction history not current levels. Someone with a history of 200k Kurzick Faction and 2k Luxon Faction who has simply spent himself down to that 2k being higher than his current Kurzick Faction is fairly obviously a spy. And if he's just a guy switching sides naturally, he can join a Luxon Guild in order to balance out/work off his Faction history.

3.) No punishments. Reward those who stick it to the end and ignore those who do not. Leveling punishments against them would likely just be incentive to many - "I don't care if Anet slaps me, I fight for the Cause!" Ignoring them altogether negates this reverse psychology angsty-teen crap and instead focuses on what's truly important - the players who fight to the end even in a vicious snowballing mess of a match.

4.) (My idea) implement a no-points rule for suicides. Do not give the enemy points for any death which fits the profile of a suicide kill (more than 80% damage was self-inflicted, death happened in such-and-such a time frame). If a team suffers deaths from suicide spies, then I say it should not be held against them. Suicide Deaths Are Worth No Points.

One thing to note. There is nothing Anet can implement that can work perfectly. No matter what, there will be out-Faction spies trying to wreck the battles in hopes of winning the fight for their preferred side through deceit and treachery. There will be people who think they have better things to do than to finish a losing battle, holed up in their base and unable to even entertain the notion of victory.