Curse

Valerria · May 01, 2006, 03:16 PM // 15:16

They should use the TA system for filling teams. Random joins will be used to fill in the open spots together with formed parties. Deliminate the team list so each party is together yet all are visible like the above.

Loch · May 01, 2006, 09:47 PM // 21:47

Quote:

Random joins will be used to fill in the open spots together with formed parties. Deliminate the team list so each party is together yet all are visible like the above.

Um, the idea of having random joins is exactly what the FPE AB's had. ArenaNet's trying to get rid of this randomness so people might stay the whole match and play the mode properly, remember? With random people it'll just go back to the way it was - a bunch of random scrubs running around the chaos while one or two guild groups do all the capturing for the whole team.

I think the message is obvious - ArenaNet wants the mode to be played semi-tactically and not like a random cluster****.

One last thing: If you can't even commit to building a 4-player team, strongly reconsider playing PvP. The game does NOT need any more Random Arenas.

=HT=Ingram · May 01, 2006, 10:23 PM // 22:23

Oh I don't think leavers were an element of Randomness. It was the fact that you could go to BOTH alliance battles sides easily. Now your Alliance leader has to switch to get the NPC to change in the guild hall. So no more switching sides to screw everyone up. I never thought the random function of join when you have 2 people was a problem in FPE. If anything it was jerks that didn't like not being able to form entire 12 party team themselves so they could discriminate against other players.

However I see no problem with allowing them to form up their 4 party system and go at it. A good successful team in FPE with allaince battles Had good communication with all allied players. PERIOD. And even that is messed up cause you can not team chat with the entire allied party. I have resorted to Broadcasting out TS in Public all chat once the battle begins to keep communication lines open.

But we should be able to bypass the Continual discrimination in the PvP part of the game and have a random selection for the other groups as well. This is suppose to bring more people into PvP remember not discriminate MORE then already is. You already discriminate Heroes Ascent to Death.

Loch · May 02, 2006, 05:04 AM // 05:04

Quote:

But we should be able to bypass the Continual discrimination in the PvP part of the game and have a random selection for the other groups as well. This is suppose to bring more people into PvP remember not discriminate MORE then already is.

What the hell are you talking about? How is gathering three other people together hard at all? Stop being a whiner and actually try joining a group - you'll be surprised at how quickly you can do it.

sir lockt · May 02, 2006, 07:27 AM // 07:27

I agree something is messed up pretty heavilly in 12vs12... its a shame, becaue the concept was nice!

First of all: The enormous overpowering force of Kurzick is nothing the dev can do something about. Its a choice of alliances, and I am pretty sure ppl will start to change sides, simply because its simpler in luxon to hold towns etc.

The alliance battles are now out of balance due to the 3 groups of 4: Each groups will need a monk to survive, making 25% of the characters in the game healing, while in perfect balance the character prof should be divided 12.5%. dont come with the argument that rits or sec profs can heal. In the fast moving enviroments of alliance battles, not walking spirits arent good enough.

The solution on communication and healing alliance members is already put forward by Ingram. I hope Anet is reading this topic and will reply on it, what their reasons behind the change are and hopefully they will give the suggestion of Ingram a well tought.

On the moment the "dead cities" in alliance battles are caused mainly (IMO) by guilds that arent alligned or ppl that are working on the story-line only. I think time will solve this. Hopefully Anet can solve the rest...

=HT=Ingram · May 03, 2006, 07:38 AM // 07:38

Just a memory

The True 12 vs 12 battlefield!!!!

bam23 · May 09, 2006, 04:35 AM // 04:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by =HT=Ingram

Just a memory

The True 12 vs 12 battlefield!!!!

Good times..

Dazzler · May 09, 2006, 06:54 AM // 06:54

Yes this sucks. I can no longer communicate with my entire team and as a monk it is friggin difficult to heal anyone but the 3 ppl in my party list. Makes the monk much less effective now. Please bring back the 12-person party list.

Loch · May 09, 2006, 05:06 PM // 17:06

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Makes the monk much less effective now.

How? I find that playing a boon-prot works excellently. I had no problem keeping myself and my three teammates alive.

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The alliance battles are now out of balance due to the 3 groups of 4: Each groups will need a monk to survive, making 25% of the characters in the game healing, while in perfect balance the character prof should be divided 12.5%.

Play Team Arenas. Play GvG. Tell me what you see the minimum number of monks that good teams use before spouting unsupported trash like this.

So you guys have a problem with players making normal teams instead of trash builds that take advantage of dumb players standing around in a cluster****?

JoDiamonds · May 09, 2006, 08:00 PM // 20:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

How? I find that playing a boon-prot works excellently. I had no problem keeping myself and my three teammates alive.

That's nice for you. Instead, a healer could be keeping more than just four people alive. It's a matter of preference. You apparently like it the way it is, but that doesn't make other people's opinions wrong. They're opinions. Some people like one thing while other's like another thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

Quote:

Originally Posted by sir lockt

The alliance battles are now out of balance due to the 3 groups of 4: Each groups will need a monk to survive, making 25% of the characters in the game healing, while in perfect balance the character prof should be divided 12.5%.

Play Team Arenas. Play GvG. Tell me what you see the minimum number of monks that good teams use before spouting unsupported trash like this.

Sir lockt stated what he'd like the game to support. You stated what the game currently supports. You aren't talking about the same thing.

Nearly any fool can sit and state what the game is currently like. And nearly any fool can sit and state what they'd like the game to be.

The difference is that the developers from ArenaNet already know what the game supports. They don't know what people like unless they speak up and say it. It is counterproductive to tell people to essentially tell people to not say what they like unless it's what the game already is, which is what it appears is being said here. Yes, the game is a window that helps tell us what the game designers like. But they are understanding people. They want to know what we like, too.

People, keep on saying what you like and dislike. Other people telling you that your opinions are less valuable for any reason don't know what they are talking about. Pointing out simple factual mistakes is reasonable (if someone has incorrect assumptions), because everyone makes mistakes. That doesn't make what they happen to like or dislike less valid.

Loch · May 09, 2006, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Um... so how is the standard "1 Monk per 4-player team" suddenly considered imbalanced? Did I miss something?

sir lockt · May 10, 2006, 04:19 AM // 04:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

Um... so how is the standard "1 Monk per 4-player team" suddenly considered imbalanced? Did I miss something?

No that is not what I meant.

One of the major complaints in GW is that monks should always be present in any team. You see the same in 12vs 12. every group of 4 takes 1 monk. (works fine... and as a monk I havent any problems with it...)

Nice thing about the FPE 12 vs 12 was that some monk skills had huge effects so 2 monks or some secondary HP/Aegis spammers could do a lot.

What you see now is that a lot of classes cannot find a team (I would like to expand this reasoning to the warrior class as well, which seems to become manditory).

When the groups stays split, you (Loch) are totally correct: you should run TA tactics and teams, but I believe something new, should bring also new tactics... and its a shame with a new exciting concept like this (i really like it, even as it is!) old-school tactics works best. (with the addition of a MM)

Loch · May 10, 2006, 03:29 PM // 15:29

No, old-school tactics will probably make you ineffective. Alliance battles are all about mobility - if you focus on simply killing what you can, you'll lose for sure. Good teams design their four player build with mobility in mind, so even though you may have the standard Warrior or two for damage and a Monk for healing and protting, playing as a four-player AB group is completely different from a TA group. You want new tactics and strategies for a new concept? People have been using new tactics and strategies. And I'm not even talking about minionmasters, which, in my opinion, aren't all they're cut out to be in AB.

Marcus Varrus · May 10, 2006, 04:03 PM // 16:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

ArenaNet's trying to get rid of this randomness so people might stay the whole match and play the mode properly, remember? With random people it'll just go back to the way it was - a bunch of random scrubs running around the chaos while one or two guild groups do all the capturing for the whole team.

I think the message is obvious - ArenaNet wants the mode to be played semi-tactically and not like a random cluster****.

One last thing: If you can't even commit to building a 4-player team, strongly reconsider playing PvP. The game does NOT need any more Random Arenas.

Loch while I agree in principal with some of your statements we do not know is this is ANet's intention or not. I believe they changed to the current setup (which does have flaws) too fast in an attempt to retify overpowered monk in the 12v12 setup.

forming 4-man teams prior to load-in does nothing to insure folks not dropping when the going gets rough but having three squads who cant easily talk with each does.

Sunai · May 10, 2006, 05:11 PM // 17:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

I think the message is obvious - ArenaNet wants the mode to be played semi-tactically and not like a random cluster****.

I would just like to point out that we could only play it for a couple days. It seems obvious that it would be a "random cluster****" with people logging into Guild Wars thinking, "Awesome, 12vs12 battles!" and then just jumping right in without needing to get a group. These people would then become one of the followers to someone who's only played two or three times before, and who's saying something like, "FOLLOW ME! WE NEED TO GET THE DRAGON!" because they're under the mistaken impression that flying dragon = win.

Some people, however, catch on faster than others. This is especially the case when you're playing with a guild group or other friends, since you're talking with them about it. These were typically the people who were capturing shrines while everyone else was in a big pile. Something else that needs to be taken into consideration is that not everyone has the same schedule. New people were flooding in all throughout the weekend, so there were always people who were following the guy that was talking about a dragon. Over time, the majority of players will start to realize that flying dragon != win, and the gameplay would move from being a "random cluster****" to being more tactical, without the need to try to force it down our throats and cripple communications. Which is counter-productive, right?

It wasn't going to happen overnight.

Loch · May 10, 2006, 05:17 PM // 17:17

Unless someone from ArenaNet states their intentions for sure, all we can do is analyze what exactly changed and use common sense to draw conclusions.

The two major changes were:

-Players must assemble a full team of four to enter the match
-The party window only shows your built team

From this, I drew the conclusion that ArenaNet wants players to play the match as three self-contained groups of four. Players are also forced to assemble a team, meaning that players are encourage to plan a little before they enter, and therefore, they probably won't play the match in a completely arbitrary way. This is all obvious surface-level reasoning, and it may not be completely true, but this is all we have to go on. At least it's a better conclusion than, "ArenaNet ****ed it up because they don't know what they're doing," since I'm assuming that ANet knows what they want the mode to be like.

As for Heal Party and Aegis, Party-wide effects are difficult to balance in 8vs8 alone, nevermind 12v12. Just calculate the returns of Heal Party and you'll see just how sick it really is (assume your HP heals 50 per party member, 400 HP for 8 players and 600HP for 12; nuts, isn't it). And Aegis? Protting twelve party members for only fifteen energy is absolutely crazy.

sir lockt · May 11, 2006, 07:02 AM // 07:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

No, old-school tactics will probably make you ineffective. Alliance battles are all about mobility - if you focus on simply killing what you can, you'll lose for sure. Good teams design their four player build with mobility in mind, so even though you may have the standard Warrior or two for damage and a Monk for healing and protting, playing as a four-player AB group is completely different from a TA group. You want new tactics and strategies for a new concept? People have been using new tactics and strategies. And I'm not even talking about minionmasters, which, in my opinion, aren't all they're cut out to be in AB.

Agree, but you must admit, 12 ppl teams have much much more ways of running new tactics and strategies. Of course you should build in the option for making 12 ppl teams instead of the FPE random access...

your point on overpowered Aegis and HP is good (but the opposing team has the same advantage...), so I am primarly not asking for 12 peeps random teams.

What could improve the AB's is the suggestion made of creating 8 allies in your party-bar. In this case every party member can assist in: healing, hex removal, condition removal and support enchanting...

Also some form of communication would be fine. Basically our guild addapted to the limitations of the 4 ppl team and created a fast raiding party of it. What happens often now is that we capture all the shrines while everybody else seems to believe 500 kills are easier to get then 500 points from shrines. With communication you might be able to fix this...(or create one big mess..

)

=HT=Ingram · May 11, 2006, 07:13 AM // 07:13

Yea basically we are taking a innovative team strategy and cutting it down to basic Team area strategies... And worse yet your supposed to be working with 2 more teams in this model yet you have no way to communicate with those allied team mates... So in an essence its nothing more then a slightly larger version of team arenas. And that was not what the 12v12 was all about. Though you could break up into squads and Possibility that was a winning strategy for a few, this was not the case in our experiences. 1 monk was all we needed (even back when aegis and heal party were ranged skills) for an entire 12 player team, and as such you had options to either break up into groups or attack as one. which was IN my opinion the best part of the 12vs12 player mode. the mass blitz that as possible. now, its not so much the case.

In the long run I think the players that enjoyed 12v12 in the FPE are rather disappointed by this change and have moved back to HoH and other options instead of wasting our time with a part of the game that has been basically DUMB down to the level of team arenas.

Heck even Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry are better alternatives then alliance battles atm... Even with its random teams... Cause at least there you are fighting on a full team, not a minisquad with no communication ability.

The key to winning in PvP is communication. and alliance battles has none. That is the problem 100%. No communication or ways to support other members of the allied force (can't even res non party members). If they would fix that one issue and nothing else, it would be worth playing again... But if they are going to fix something might as well go the full course and fix it right! That's just my opinion, if others don't agree, that's their right. Just as much as it is mine not to bother with it anymore.

JoDiamonds · May 11, 2006, 07:34 PM // 19:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

Unless someone from ArenaNet states their intentions for sure, all we can do is analyze what exactly changed and use common sense to draw conclusions.

Sure. And while that's mildy interesting a thought exercise (interpret the game as to the designer's intentions), it's not particularly relevant. Although I'm sure the people from ArenaNet who are reading these forums are amused. =)

Quote:

The two major changes were:

-Players must assemble a full team of four to enter the match
-The party window only shows your built team

From this, I drew the conclusion that ArenaNet wants players to play the match as three self-contained groups of four. Players are also forced to assemble a team, meaning that players are encourage to plan a little before they enter, and therefore, they probably won't play the match in a completely arbitrary way. This is all obvious surface-level reasoning, and it may not be completely true, but this is all we have to go on. At least it's a better conclusion than, "ArenaNet ****ed it up because they don't know what they're doing," since I'm assuming that ANet knows what they want the mode to be like.

Just because they know what they want doesn't mean they didn't screw up.

The goal for the game designers surely must be to make the game fun. Obviously, they are also trying to make money, blah blah blah, but the details here aren't keenly relevant to that, I suspect, except as much as making a fun game is a good way to make money.

The designers believed they had a formula for making a fun game. As luck happens, many players thought the half-implemented version from FPE was actually more fun than the designer's intent. Nothing wrong with that; no one is right all the time. But the designers should observe and learn and change it to make it fun.

The designers aren't unassailable gods (and I'm sure they laugh at that too, since game forums are mostly about assailing). It's not useful to interpret what their intent was on a micro scale. One some level, I'm sure they wanted semi-strategic, semi-chaotic battles of twelve players going against twelve players. They've certainly got that. It could just be better when it comes to details.

Quote:

As for Heal Party and Aegis, Party-wide effects are difficult to balance in 8vs8 alone, nevermind 12v12. Just calculate the returns of Heal Party and you'll see just how sick it really is (assume your HP heals 50 per party member, 400 HP for 8 players and 600HP for 12; nuts, isn't it). And Aegis? Protting twelve party members for only fifteen energy is absolutely crazy.

Sure. That seems fine. It's a real balance issue, so maybe you have to restrict those spells to groups of four or eight (which is obviously acceptable, since there are plenty of supported formats where Aegis can cover eight characters). You are right.