Curse

Red · Apr 29, 2006, 09:18 AM // 09:18

Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that the change to the Team Arenas--how you can no longer enter with less than a full 4/4 party--has been applied to Alliance Battles. You can no longer enter with a party less than a full 4/4.

Actually, now that I think about it, it seems that Alliance Battles ARE THE SAME as Team Arenas in terms of interacting. While Alliance Battles were a hectic and joyous ride into the depths of insanity... they have now been reduced from 12 v 12 to 4+4+4 v 4+4+4 in the most technical sense. Each individual party of 4 can only talk amongst themselves in team chat, and must resort to public local chat to speak to their allied fighters.

From the point of view of the player, this might as well be 4 + 8 henchies v 12.

Guild Wars... didn't we just have a talk about this, about you going behind my back and changing things without talking to me first? So far, everyone I have talked to LOVED the huge character of the alliance battles; but now they have lost much of their former charm. We -liked- being able to shift groups at will in game. As one of the rare monks in Alliance Battles during the preview event, I enjoyed hopping from group to group.

Now, however, I can only truly coordinate my actions with the other three party members. As a monk, attempting to heal non-party members is very difficult. Instead of having the life bars of all 12 players at my fingertips, I'm having to make a mad attempt to click on each of the fellow fighters, as if they were common minions of an MM or NPCs like the Dwarven Soldiers in Snack Dance.

Guild Wars, please return the much-loved 12v12 setup. 4+4+4 vs. 4+4+4 really doesn't cut it; if I wanted to be forced to strategize with only three others instead of 11, I'd go to Team Arenas!

Godspeed,
Daniel Highwind [MEEP]
~ Redly ~

Joel Van · Apr 29, 2006, 10:13 AM // 10:13

...Can't you use "allience" chat to talk to all 12 of your party members?

KaPe · Apr 29, 2006, 10:34 AM // 10:34

It was mentioned before the release that it will be like that, don't sound so surprised.

=HT=Ingram · Apr 29, 2006, 11:04 AM // 11:04

no alliance chat talks to your allaince. meaning your guildies and allied guildies. not the allied people in the party screen for this PvP battle...

And no KaPe it wasn't in this way. yes we all knew that we would have to form groups of 4 to go into battle with and be matched up with 8 others randomly. BUT not seeing them at all on the party screen was NEVER fore mentioned. And its NOT the way it was in the previous Preview or beta testing.

What needs to happen is the following.

The primary 4 are on top. A new tab for pets needs to be made and thats your second tab. and a 3rd tab for allies needs made. thats the remaining 8 allied party members on the party screen...

Spot reserverd for Concept mock up later this weekend. to better explain this design change. Once you see what I'm proposing it will be obvious...

TheYellowKid · Apr 29, 2006, 12:53 PM // 12:53

thats a shame.. i havent had a chance to play the alliance battles so didnt kno about the change.. seems a bit lacking if u cant chat to them and cant see them, it looks like a good idea in concept got changed to a mediocre one..

when i get to actually play ill see if that statement still holds true!

Sidra · Apr 29, 2006, 12:57 PM // 12:57

I was really looking forward to the old one... damn. What BS.

Vaga · Apr 29, 2006, 01:15 PM // 13:15

It's just like being in a split squad, it works out fine. The minimum party size is good also, stops people from just clicking enter mission and deciding to quit straight away.

Mysterial · Apr 29, 2006, 01:18 PM // 13:18

Why did they add hotkeys for players 9-12 if they were going to change it so you didn't have 12 party members?

Obus · Apr 29, 2006, 01:20 PM // 13:20

this is big bs! make it the way it was, leavers or not

Loch · Apr 29, 2006, 07:52 PM // 19:52

1) Forcing players to make a group helps weed out leavers to an extent. It's not foolproof, but it tests that the players have at least SOME degree of commitment.
2) Random 12v12 chaos completely missed the point of the whole mode - to capture the map. Separate 4-man squads helps players focus as a squad and capture the map, since that's how the successful teams won. Fighting as a mob in the middle did nothing for your team when a squad of 4 ran around capturing everything.

12v12 random chaos isn't exactly quality PvP.

A User Name · Apr 29, 2006, 09:04 PM // 21:04

Yes, maybe 12v12 chaos isn't the top notch quality PvP, but it sure was FUN! With leavers i can see why this was impletmented but it doesnt really solve the problem. With "leavers" they can then just get their jerk friends together and now the team is down to 8. So it will be interesting to see if Anet just made things better or a whole lot worst and a heck of a lot less fun. I mean seeing all 12 health bars was awesome, and being able to heal them as well. I'm sorry Anet i usually agree with your solutions as needed even though i dont like them sometimes, but here you did way more damage than good.

Red · Apr 29, 2006, 10:52 PM // 22:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loch

1) Forcing players to make a group helps weed out leavers to an extent. It's not foolproof, but it tests that the players have at least SOME degree of commitment.
2) Random 12v12 chaos completely missed the point of the whole mode - to capture the map. Separate 4-man squads helps players focus as a squad and capture the map, since that's how the successful teams won. Fighting as a mob in the middle did nothing for your team when a squad of 4 ran around capturing everything.

12v12 random chaos isn't exactly quality PvP.

1) Yes, I can see why they did this. It's a little annoying, but it makes sense.

2) This, however... this is idiotic. The 12v12 was FUN; and moreover, have you played the Alliance battles yet? During the battles I played, the Luxons won mostly--and they didn't do it by splitting into squads. Rather, they'd barrel through our squads together. I guess what I'm MOST upset about is that, as a monk, I find my usefulness severly decreased. I can not effective help the other 8 people on my side, but must instead pray that I can find, and click on, health bars amidst all the PCs and spell animations.

However, the lack of 12-man communication absolutely sucks. How can I tell the other 8 people on my team "the Luxons are coming for our dragon shrine!" or "hey, let's sneak attack the undefended attack shrines!" without using local chat, which the Luxons can see?

Just... no. They need to let us all use the team channel--perhaps they could register the other 8 people as allies, like NPCs and pets? This would keep Aegis and Heal Party from being the stupid-strong spells they were in the preview (since they only affect party members and not allies), but I could still see my alliance members.

And, if they're gonna advertise this as 12v12, then I want to be able to, say, follow the minion master around for a while, then run with two warriors, then back up some eles. Bouncing between squads made 12v12 awesome... but now, only having 3 other people on your party screen is restrictive and, as I said, no different than Team Arenas.

Loch · Apr 29, 2006, 10:57 PM // 22:57

Quote:

However, the lack of 12-man communication absolutely sucks. How can I tell the other 8 people on my team "the Luxons are coming for our dragon shrine!" or "hey, let's sneak attack the undefended attack shrines!" without using local chat, which the Luxons can see?

Good point, having full-team communication would only benefit the mode. I'd vote for that.

Kieren · Apr 29, 2006, 11:09 PM // 23:09

I totally agree that the latest changes have killed the FUN of what alliance battles used to be.

I finally managed to wrangle up a group of 3 other adventurous guildies last night, and it sucked majorly trying to organize with the rest of the team. All of us were on teamspeak, but with other 8 just random people we couldn't talk to at all, we were unable to help heal, or talk to them to find out where they needed quick focused help.

Yes i can see the reasons for this, but consider that if you have dedicated group of 4 trying to heal party all the time, that leaves them 8v12, and heal party won't affect the npcs getting killed by the other team anyways.

and leavers, well, now they can just lie to get into a group, or co-ordinate. A simple lock-out fix of like 15-20 minutes would be perfect for those that drop mid-battle.

More than anything though, I'm saddened to see random people unable to join, because it really tied over for the PvE crowd. So many fellow guildies were pumped up over the ABs because now they actually had a chance to have some fun in PvP, and not deal with ultra organized highly competitive teams.

Yes the battles were chaotic, but they were AWESOME, and when you did get them organized, rolling through 12 other players and owning the map was spectacular.

I sure hope Anet changes the system around, or else I hate to see the 12v12 arenas die off and the so urged "mixing of pve and pvp" disappear.

we have team arenas and HoH and GvG for a reason, alliance battles don't need to turn into that as well.

Yezah · Apr 29, 2006, 11:17 PM // 23:17

ANet you have ruined the aspect of Factions I was most looking forward to.

In the preview weekend I had so much fun playing in the 12v12 that it brought back my interest in Guild Wars (I had been away from the game for a long time), it used to good laugh teaming up with different people throughout the game and venturing off, but now it just feels secluded and awkward not being able to talk to your teammates. You need to be able to say to be people, 'us 4 will hold this area, you try to take the outer shrines', and to be able to see their health bars so you know if an area is likely to fall so you can back it up.

To sum it up: Used to be fun and exciting, now it feels like sad Team Arena.

Why oh why did you change it? Please change it back.

GUILD WARS IS A TEAM GAME YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO TALK TO AND SEE YOUR ALLIES.

defrule · Apr 29, 2006, 11:24 PM // 23:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yezah

GUILD WARS IS A TEAM GAME YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO TALK TO AND SEE YOUR ALLIES.

QFT

I totally agree with Yezah's post.

R A C · Apr 30, 2006, 02:23 AM // 02:23

Iwas gonna post my opinion in here, but then I read Yezah's post. Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

Void Assassin · Apr 30, 2006, 02:31 AM // 02:31

I agree.
Horrible.
They killed a fine system.
It was great before, they messed it up.
I'm like uber pissed.

Peewee · Apr 30, 2006, 02:46 AM // 02:46

I am soo with u on this Redly. I think that being forced to make a team of 4 to start with is a nice way of making sure that each 3 teams of 4 are at least a little organised. However, it does slow down actually getting into alliance battles, and whats more it reduces the get in and go style play of before.

But, the biggest, and most unwelcome change is the reduction in Party window size. When playing an alliance battle today it felt like 4v4, not the magnificently chaotic affair of 12v12.

I can see why this was done. Spells which affect all Party Members, and were designed around a maximum of 8 players became overpowered in 12v12. Heal Party is one obvious point. In addition, it was hard getting 4 people to follow you.

However, the disadvantages are huge:
1)Monks find it hard to heal members of other teams
2)Its hard, nigh on impossible to distinguish the amount of people u have backing u up
3)Its hard to determine where other parties are
4)Its impossible to talk to other parties and co-ordinate efforts
5)Its impossible to do anything other than a 4,4,4 split (on some maps a 6,6 split gives a clear advantage)
6)You dont know which side people are quitting from, unless they quit from your team.

Essentially, i can see no advantage, no reason for reducing the party window to four, apart from to effectively nerf party target spells. The solution, i think, is to have one Party window divided into 3 parts. Let Team chat be able to talk to all Party members, let the other Party Members be targetable, but, crucially, make it so that Party Target spells only affect the sub division.

Another alternative is to make Party Targetting spells affect the 8 nearest allys, rather then everybody in its range.

If these changes cannot be made then i would still far prefer the original setup last seen in FPE.

If this 4,4,4, makeup is kept i beleive the whole beauty of the Alliance battle is lost. Instead, it feels like a rather more hectic Team Arena match, when it clearly isnt. I dont want another TA, i want hectic, chaotic, but most importantly, epic alliance battles

Change it back!!!

Loch · Apr 30, 2006, 03:49 AM // 03:49

Note: I've experienced Alliance Battles in the FPE, as a random player in a 12-man mob, and as part of a 4-player squad doing what it could to capture the map (which is what everyone has to do now, apparently).

I won't repeat anything I said, but I think people should think about why it was changed to 3 teams of 4 before you say the mode is unplayable. Try playing as a balanced, self-sustained squad of four. (Hint: bring a monk, a warrior with "Charge" to help you run around, and two other characters of your choice). Try running around capturing resource points. Try skirmishing against other squads. Try running away from larger mobs. You'll find more depth than the previous mindset of "ZOMG RANDOM CHAOS EVERYONE RUN TO THE MIDDLE AND BASH EACH OTHER SILLY!"

You know what? Even with this extra "depth", it's still not as hardcore a mode as Heroes' Ascent, so anybody can play it. Hell, maybe it's even less hardcore than Team Arenas, since you have 8 other teammates to help you out if you're not that good at skirmishes.

Of course, I still agree that there should be some way to communicate to the rest of the 12-player team. But I disagree that Guild Wars needs a 12v12 random chaos mode - even when playing as a 4-player team in FPE, the mode itself was much much more relaxed than Heroes' Ascent or Team Arenas.

It seems like ArenaNet wants Alliance battles to strike a balance between the tactical nature of built teams and the relaxed atmosphere that comes from random teams, so that casual PvP'ers will be interested while not offering just a larger-scale Random Arenas.