Curse

InfernalSuffering · Jul 18, 2007, 03:07 AM // 03:07

Right now there are a lot of problems with Alliance Battles and in my opinion Alliance Battles have always had the potential to be as competitive as Guild Battles. Here are a few of the things I think have to come into effect in order Alliance Battles to get rid of the leech plague and step into the competitive world.

1. Change Team Formation
Alliance Battles are supposed to be 12 vs. 12. With the current team creation system you aren’t fighting 12 vs. 12; you are forced to fight in three separate groups without knowing the whereabouts or the condition of your allies. Not only does this not make sense, but it completely renders the sense of “team play” useless and throws tactics out the window. The first thing that must be accomplished in order for Alliance Battles to become competitive is for the teams to be switched back to 12 vs. 12 including a party bar with all 12 players. This allows the creator of the team to have full control over who they allow into the groups which in turn will eliminate leechers to some extent. This also allows everybody in the group to know the health and condition of the other teammates and will allow the group to split better and call tactics better as the compass will now be able to be seen by everybody.

2. Give More Support
Hero Battles have had their day, now it should be Alliance Battles turn. This starts with ladder. You are telling me that “competitive missions” have their own ladder and Alliance Battles do not. On this ladder guilds could be ranked by the total amount of faction spent, not just towards the alliance, by the top 12 spenders. Note that the town holding system would remain in place and that faction spent is not increased in any way in you spend it. The guilds would then be ranked by the total amount of alliance faction they donated and this would culminate in the same thing that Hero Battles and Guild Battles have: a monthly tournament. I will now go into my detailed attempt at a Alliance Battle monthly tournament format:

At the end of each month the top 32 teams from each faction would be put into a swiss style tournament similar to the Guild Battle and Hero Battle tournaments. The only difference in this being that you would have to make sure that Kurzick Guilds only faced Luxon Guilds. These matches would all be played on the neutral map zone. After the 6 rounds were finished the top 6 from each faction would move on to another set of swiss rounds. Each team would face every other team from the other faction. The first matches would be played on the neutral map zone. The next rounds maps would be chosen by whichever faction had the most wins with the losing faction getting their map (ex: kurzicks won 4 of the matches so the next round would be played on Etnaran Keys). If the wins on each side are equal the map would be the neutral zone again. After those 6 rounds the top Kurzick Guild would face the top Luxon guild on each of the 5 maps with a “Best of 5” scenario. The winning guild and top guilds would get prizes similar to Hero Battle and Guild Battle tournaments with Kurzick/Luxon faction taking the place of reward points: possibly 250,000 Kurzick/Luxon faction to each player on the winning guild.

3. Change Faction Earned
In order to eliminate the options of teams Fast Faction Farming their way into the top 32 you can do either of two things. The first option would be to increase the amount of faction gained from Alliance Battles. I would do this dramatically. I would revert the faction gained by the losing team to how it used to be before the recent update and double the faction earned by the winning team. This means the losing team would get ~1,000 faction and the winning team ~3,000. This allows a good team to gain more faction than they would Fast Faction Farming which in itself is an exploit of the game. The other option you have is to limit the amount of faction gained on quest rewards. This limits the amount of FFFing that happens but also severely harms players attempting to Befriend the Kurzicks or Luxons. This is, in my opinion, the worse option. Another change that has to be made is to change the amount of Balthazar Faction gained. Even the recent changes you still get a very small amount of Balthazar faction in comparison to other places. I would suggest a change to about 1,000 faction to the winning team and 500 to the losing team.

Summary: I think these changes would go a long way to eliminate the downsides of Alliance Battles and greatly increase the competitive aspects. Alliance Battles would stress tactics, teamwork, and team and player movement. It would give players a reason to play Alliance Battles. I don’t know maybe the Luxons will still mob, but at least it will be more coordinated

ll goose unit ll · Aug 09, 2007, 04:12 AM // 04:12

i like every idea except the 12v12. in theory it would be great, but it would take away the 'fun' part of ABing for a lot of people since they wouldnt be able to run whatever they usually would since 11 other people would probably rather have a sf nuker than your own inovative build.. then again, i guess its nessesary for more competitive play?

and about the leachers.. i dont see how this will solve it at all :/. Someone would remain active until the countdown started, then they can leave and go play on their 360 or something. the only real way to solve leachers in my opinion is to add code to kick/deduct faction from people who are afk from a match for moe than 5 minutes or so. To stop people leaving mid game when their side is losing, also add a bonus faction boost for people who make a turn around from a 100 point gap or something.

other wise i like the idea..

Bloodied Blade · Aug 10, 2007, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Alliance Battles are unpopular because the rewards from them are useless, 4 versus 4 isn't nearly as exciting as 8v8, and you can't coordinate your entire team or prevent afkers.

On top of all that, it doesn't take any skill to AB...you can outplay 12 people by using 4. AB lost all possible chance to be good when they made it so that you needed X amount of faction just to do missions by owning a town.

It's called Guild Wars, not Alliance Boredom.

The 12v12 wouldn't really work, as it's difficult to coordinate 8, and 11 SF with a paragon would destroy everything.

Hero Battles in my opinion shouldn't have had a tournament, as it's easy to take a cookie-cutter build into HvH and win.

Changing faction earned wouldn't do anything...anyone who's actually done a good amount of pvp doesn't need faction for skills, and luxxon/kurzick faction is pointless anyway for everything except shiny armor...and you don't need to AB for that.