Curse

I Gut you Gut · Jul 20, 2008, 02:03 AM // 02:03

I really got into TA when bonus weekend was here, but now that it has ended, it seems that a lot of interest and skill in the arena has gone too.

Do you agree?

Dark Desicration · Jul 20, 2008, 02:26 AM // 02:26

took you long enough to figure that one out

the kurzick eater · Jul 20, 2008, 02:29 AM // 02:29

yell yeas. just like everything else, its all copy pasta invinci bullcrap on every team.

Magikarp · Jul 20, 2008, 02:29 AM // 02:29

unfortunately its true. that aspect of the game is almost as dead as Hero battles :/

Sun Fired Blank · Jul 20, 2008, 07:20 AM // 07:20

For the most part, you have the same regulars, you have the same overall population, and you have newer people breaking in every so often. It's not dead in that you have roughly the same amount of people in the format. It's dying in that almost every aspect of the format's balance are neglected and the present dynamics emphasize skills over skill, and this only discourages more and more older players; whether or not you have enough newer players entering the format is harder to judge, and whether those new players are a positive influence is definitely arguable.

The unfortunate fact is that any shifts to revive the format are very hard to catalyze for a handful of reasons:

1) There is fairly minimal incentive to improve the format; very few people actively participate in TA, and versus almost every other PvP format (GvG, HA, HB) you have nearly zero practical basis to fix anything.
2) There are no vocal advocates for the format; and if evidence is any indication for other formats, even having a vocal advocate would be unlikely to help significantly.
3) The "advocates" you have on Guru and Wiki are mostly inept, so any feedback that gets a response is unlikely to be constructive.
4) A handful of people are resistant of any positive change. You have the armchair theorycrafters that defend obviously broken options by preaching "easy" tactics for victory. You have the hardcore grinders that vehemently defend specific and obviously broken options then demand for other obviously broken options to be nerfed.

The very simple truth is that you have maybe ten people on Guru qualified to make any statement on; the vast majority of them are the active g7-g8s from the TA guilds ([DnF], [YaGG]) that admit everything is rather lame, and only a handful of them speak on a regular basis: Hundbert / Lindeman Monk, Barkeep / Squall Redblood, etc. You have a couple of armchair observers that are okay also, but you have many that are also quite bad.

So unfortunately we're stuck here for those reasons, and the post-mAT update is very unlikely to fix anything. A handful of TA nonsense is likely to get coincidental GvG-related nerfs, but you're unlikely to get any real fixes. And the huge number of unused elites they're updating is very concerning for me.

Hundbert · Jul 21, 2008, 12:59 AM // 00:59

You forgot Soul

I wish anet would step in and clean up ta a bit.
Put an end to the rao madness to start with then maybe delete signet of midnight from the game, remove pets from pvp and finally nerf foul feast.

It would be a whole new experience i tell you

Reflected. · Jul 21, 2008, 06:54 AM // 06:54

is this what ta has become!?!?!? this degenerate piece of shit.

I Gut you Gut · Jul 22, 2008, 01:03 AM // 01:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

2) There are no vocal advocates for the format; and if evidence is any indication for other formats, even having a vocal advocate would be unlikely to help significantly.

I agree, so how do we change this? I expect other TA advocates to give their own solution here, but heres my suggestion, knaw on this in the mean time

The first thing that comes to mind is money and prizes. Guru's GvG tournament seemed to be a hit, I bet we could see a similar result with TA if we had a good kitty and it was promoted well enough. However to that point, this would only "spike" interest, not keep it.

I like how you put it, even though I disagree completely. An emphasis on skills and not skill drives players away, so we've got to wrench aNet into this.

If would could get a Guru sponsored TA tournament, and in the process convince aNet that there is great interest in this style of play such that they do need to pay attention to it in the form of balance, we could draw in more people for a tournament and keep them here because aNet listened and did something about the skill imbalance.

The tough part about this is a skilled negociator, someone who could front money and convince both sides to go through with the proposed plan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

3) The "advocates" you have on Guru and Wiki are mostly inept, so any feedback that gets a response is unlikely to be constructive.

Thats boned and I hope to change that

The Blade From Hell · Jul 22, 2008, 02:37 AM // 02:37

Theres no point putting in prizes/money/rp or any incentitive to play TA. The more things you can win from TA the more lameways you will meet. I play with some of the better TAers atm and i know i made less glads in the double weekend than in a normal 2 days. Its hard for me to imagine what the average player who wanted to play balanced would do. Lets face it if you arent one of the best TAers with one of the best balanced teams you dont stand a fuking chance in this meta. Either anet fix this sometime soon or itll be the same 3 guilds dominating balanced with the rest farming with gay builds getting horny of the number written under than glad title.

the_deSKtructor · Jul 22, 2008, 06:42 AM // 06:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Blade From Hell

Theres no point putting in prizes/money/rp or any incentitive to play TA. The more things you can win from TA the more lameways you will meet. I play with some of the better TAers atm and i know i made less glads in the double weekend than in a normal 2 days. Its hard for me to imagine what the average player who wanted to play balanced would do. Lets face it if you arent one of the best TAers with one of the best balanced teams you dont stand a fuking chance in this meta. Either anet fix this sometime soon or itll be the same 3 guilds dominating balanced with the rest farming with gay builds getting horny of the number written under than glad title.

Even with the best TAers you really can't deal with all the gimmicks around in TA. Running balanced during the dual glad weekends ALWAYS resulted to be a failure (even tho in the past you had better chances to win some glads).

Sargeras · Jul 22, 2008, 08:55 PM // 20:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_deSKtructor

Even with the best TAers you really can't deal with all the gimmicks around in TA. Running balanced during the dual glad weekends ALWAYS resulted to be a failure

We ran balanced during dual glad we and i must say i am happy with our results.

GoalieLax · Jul 22, 2008, 09:57 PM // 21:57

TA is where people who need gimmicks to win go to play or others go to test out tuff for HA.

Hundbert · Jul 22, 2008, 10:52 PM // 22:52

I would go as far as saying YaGG farmed ta during double glad weekend

I myself ran balanced during that weekend, i didn't get as many glads as Sargeras but still quite alot.

Monk Gsb · Jul 22, 2008, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by I Gut you Gut

but now that it has ended, it seems that a lot of interest and skill in the arena has gone too.

You Sir, are on THE ball.

moko · Jul 23, 2008, 04:36 AM // 04:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sargeras

We ran balanced during dual glad we and i must say i am happy with our results.

what cat was trying to say was that balanced for people that are not used to playing balanced as a core team with lots of practise will fail.

i sure expect the dedicated TAers that are left to even rock through farm weekends -- they got enough practise to roll most gimmicks, it's no deal to them. however to the rest that actually wants fast glads without being in a TA guild or a good core team that's capable of running balanced it's not.

once the weekend is over at least more teams run balanced again, for the fun/slight challenge. but since there's so many gimmicks..it's not even fun anymore. so if they play, it's most likely some gimmick too. it's just a cycle (just like rank discrimination :P) which is rotating pretty fast due to too many gimmicks being around.

i for myself don't blame anyone anymore for playing a gimmick, if they don't have tons of experience with the same people..they have no chance anyways, and restarting is just too depressing. even RA is more fun that way.

anyways, /end rant. :P don't care about TA too much anymore.

Krill · Jul 23, 2008, 05:22 AM // 05:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoalieLax

TA is where people who need gimmicks to win go to play or others go to test out tuff for HA.

Yeah, never see gimmicks in HA and GvG so that makes perfect sense

I only got to play one day during the double last weekend but I saw a pretty even mix of balanced groups, gimmicks, spikes and clueless pugs. We had a couple good runs playing balanced and one really good run playing the dual thumper crap, all ended by dual SoM or better balanced teams which is pretty normal for us.

As for how to fix TA, can't say I play enough of it or am really good enough to be a real advocate for the format but here are some ideas:

1. Limit teams to 1 of each primary profession. Dual everything gone. Spikes gone. Doing this would probably cause a shitstorm but let's be realistic, there will never be enough skill balancing to make TA balanced again because it's the lowest priority and there's just too many skills to balance in too many formats. This might make TA attractive to players of other formats that are sick of gimmicks but still want to play guild wars.

2. Remove Crag from the rotation. It's an interesting twist but all too often you sit there playing the stare down game angling for superior position and then the first team to score wins if it's an even match. As the only map of it's type it's just not justified.

3. Add in a flag stand to every map (and take away the Obelisk Lightning). Holding the flag stand for two minutes should give your team a useful buff specifically implemented for TA like the Battle Cry for AB and HB. Not too ridiculous but enough for teams to consider flagging in an even match, and obviously no moral boost to recharge sigs. Since you can't dedicate a flagger in 4v4, you should get a ~20 second or so speed boost when you pick up the flag and capture the stand and the speed boost ends if you attack. This idea prob sounds really stupid but you know what, time for anet to just stir the ******* pot and see what happens. There's room to implement some strategy into TA other than just killing things fast.

Sargeras · Jul 23, 2008, 06:00 AM // 06:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by moko

what cat was trying to say was that balanced for people that are not used to playing balanced as a core team with lots of practise will fail.

That was what Jackie said and not cat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by moko

but since there's so many gimmicks..it's not even fun anymore. so if they play, it's most likely some gimmick too. it's just a cycle (just like rank discrimination :P) which is rotating pretty fast due to too many gimmicks being around.

Like in every other format. If there are builds by that players got ownd they will start copying. No matter if it's lame or not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arienrhode

1. Limit teams to 1 of each primary profession. Dual everything gone.

/signed I had same idea once.

moko · Jul 23, 2008, 06:22 AM // 06:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sargeras

Like in every other format. If there are builds by that players got ownd they will start copying. No matter if it's lame or not.

there's quite some differences though;

first, balance will fix issues in others formats rather than TA. in TA they keep stacking up. so you got build a to beat build b, then build c to beat build b, build d to beat build c, and build e can beat a and c and loses to be and whatnot. this just keeps stacking so you're at so many gimmicks now and a balance can't handle it anymore.

however, gvg can adapt way easier to things than TA can. there's the limit of 32 skills .. no real objectives except "LOLZ I CAN KEEL YOU KK

" there's no morale there's no splitting there's..nothing except timekills and they are..not very tactical due to low distance from priest -> middle of the map.

Quote:

That was what Jackie said and not cat.

jack mentioned it and cat repeated the same, just being over dramatic cause back when cat and me played TA on double glad there were builds like...destructive unnerfed, ritspike unnerfed, rao unnerfed, hexes unnerfed, a/mo unnerfed etc, at those points you had ZERO chance as balance (to "farm)..now it's not that bad anymore. (cat just doesn't know :P)

the_deSKtructor · Jul 23, 2008, 06:38 AM // 06:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sargeras

We ran balanced during dual glad we and i must say i am happy with our results.

I'm pretty sure you usually get better runs when not in the dual glad week-end. And also, as everybody else said already, the new TA balanced is a joke.

Sargeras · Jul 23, 2008, 09:10 AM // 09:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_deSKtructor

I'm pretty sure you usually get better runs when not in the dual glad week-end.

There is still a lil difference between "failure" and just getting good runs (instead of "better runs").
With my post i just wanted to say sth vs:

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_deSKtructor

Even with the best TAers you really can't deal with all the gimmicks around in TA.

Conclusion: If we are successful in gettin GPs at dual glad week-end, the best TAers will roxx at this week-end (with kinda balanced)