The AB maps never change - admin help needed

agreed with above. however, the simple fix is to fix the balancing bugs (as in, kurzicks being naturally better in an arena), so there will be equal numbers on both sides again.

remember, AB doesn't particularly need a lot of players, just enough to form up 12 people on each side for the games to continue.

Why not have your Alliance gather enough people (plus a few stragglers) to instaneously enter an AB battle and have a decided advantage on the ability to win? The long waits argument is something that's entirely within the control of the Kurzick side.

I would have thought that long waiting times on the Kurzick side was due to a relative lack of Luxon players.

that's no longer the case. at peak times, it's typically the other way around, even on kurzick maps.

So why then is the waiting times 10 minutes as kurzick and 2 minutes as luxon?

That's how it was last time I played and that's how it's always been.

Two implicit assumptions:

1) The alliance contains twelve people that want to AB on the Kurzick side at any given time.
2) A request sent to the alliance will return players that are not made of fail.

Since AB is inefficient on home maps, it would seem likely that the hypothetical alliance group, if formed, would be unskilled. If there's one thing that is less fun than not being able to play, it is repeatedly losing alongside players that refuse to learn from their mistakes.

As many of the posters in this thread have noted, the AB line location is resides most frequently on the Kurz side because of the "lower quality Kurz players" are playing AB while the "higher quality kurz players" are busy in some form of FFF (DTSC being the most common).

So what other incentive is there to play AB instead of FFF? Well most people would think that the incentive would be to attract players by offering higher Kurz/Lux faction rewards. But that will ONLY attract the KURZ/LUX title HUNTERS in the "higher quality kurz players", not everyone else that avaids AB. So,to redirect the "competion" from FFF opportunities, I'd recommend a secondary incentive: JUST BUFF THE BALTH FACTION REWARDS IN AB. Many of the title huters are after zkeys anyway, might as well give an opportunity to earn them since it's defintely a SELLER's market for zkeys atm...

The long wait is on Kurzick end, so the more that join on Kurzick the longer we wait. And I have done Alliance groups of 4 even 8 and won. Though the effort to do this is typically not worth it. But the other factors I mentioned also weigh in on my decision to AB.

Jade Quarry waits are just as long if not longer, but I do not have to try to get a group together and the rewards are better.

I AB'd tonight for the first time in a month or two. Won a couple games then got destroyed the next few. I figured out why Kurzicks keep losing.

Luxons are bringing test GvG, HA, and TA builds to AB when the Kurzick side is typically a bunch of pugs with no synergistic builds. Mind Blast Distortion eles, Hammer warriors with vamp weapons, WoH Mo/W, and VoR and shutdown Mesmers are rampant on the Luxon side.

Honestly, kudos for Luxons on figuring out that this can destroy most Kurzick teams in a drawn out fight, but it is really not fun to play against. I hate GvG and HA and now that teams are bringing those builds to AB it's like mini HA and GvG battles in AB. Boring and not fun.

Luxons are treating AB like serious PvP or practice for HA and GvG, and it's no wonder most decent Kurzick players are playing elsewhere in FA or JQ, because with Luxons running those builds it's like bringing Debby Downer to a party, sucking all the fun out of it.

wouldn't the logical choice be to run the same builds, or bring whatever builds that can counter them?

personally, i enjoy the execution of builds more than running unique snowflake builds. maybe you just need a change of mindset.

I think that they should allow any map to come up regardless of the faction line, but with a low probability. That way each side can can have map vareity, but the faction line will still control where most of the games are played.

And come on... can all the Kurzicks be in that forest!? They could say that a rogue attack on [random map besides the current one] was just discovered/reported and you need to defend it! Or that Kurzick communications have been intercepted and they found out that a small group of them are going to attack [random map besides the current one]. These are simple and realistic ideas. I think this would be a cool change.

More ideas: they would need to remove the loading screen image as to not spoil which map you would be getting before it starts. And to expand on my idea of random maps, it could be like this. (I'm bad at numbers tweaking, so maybe ignore those. I need examples). Highest number is where you are. < and > show the probability of other locations.

Saltspray: 2.5 < 5 < 85 > 5 > 2.5
K/L (using grenz): 9.5 < 70 > 9.5 > 7 > 4
K/L (using ancestral): 73 > 10 > 8 > 5 > 4

That was the whole allure of Alliance Battles. It was PvP but not really PvP, it lacked the seriousness of GvG and HA, almost like casual PvP. People could group up with random people and still win, or you could bring an Alliance group together and have a loose fit of builds that typically consisted of a shrine capper and a healer and then whatever. You used to run up against similar groups, but not anymore really.

Of course you can try to make counter builds, but I can do that in HA and GvG if I really wanted to. And it's assuming you can convince your Alliance mates to run builds that they don't want to run or take the game serious.

I know many good kurzick players, but they all do JQ. You are pretty stupid if you do not play JQ as a kurzick. Higher rewards, if you play well, you can pretty much win the game, in AB you can't and many more obvious reasons.

since when did builds become "serious"? they are just builds. only players can be serious, builds cannot be. by that, i mean players can either choose to play seriously, or play more casually. builds are just a bunch of skills strung together, hopefully in a coherent and synergistic manner.

a build can't make you play "serious". you control that yourself.

i guess, he means serious in the way of making sense. i don't count a ranger/ele spamming flare in ra or a vor monk/mesmer in fa towards serious builds.

as a kurzick who just wants to bridge the gap between coming home from work/doing important stuff and waiting for gvg, i often play some fa. it's a joke in comparison to gvg, but sometimes the fights are pretty exciting and even if you lose you still get like 1,2k faction as a reward.

also, i do like fa more than jq and ab because of its defense missions- and more player killing-oriented nature. the waiting times are ok and the numbers of leechers and leavers have been pretty low at european peaks in the last months.


removing other formats of allegiance battles in general wouldn't solve the problem. increasing the reward for losing would help (either balth-wise or faction-wise) and definately reworking some of the ab maps to get some variety into ab.

although fa and jq are considered a joke in the pvp community, as a player you still "feel" the presence of your opponent. in ab you can ignore that presence, whilst you can't in fa or jq.

Builds that are tweaked and tested in HA and GvG, that are watched on Observer mode, and then implemented in AB. Builds that took considerable effort to come up with, to eek that last bit of damage or shutdown capability, I am pretty sure I can say that the build is 'serious'.

only if those people actually created those builds specifically for AB. if they just copy it off of obs mode, then it doesn't take any effort, and therefore isn't "serious" by your own definition.

serious is an attitude. there's no such thing as "serious" builds; only good builds and bad builds. "serious" should only be used to describe the player. a "serious" player constantly strives to improve, to eek out that extra bit of advantage. a "serious" player can even make a mending wammo dangerous. a "casual" player won't do any of that. you can give such a player the best build in the world, and he still won't be as dangerous.

it's all in the attitude. if you cannot compete with the "serious" players, don't blame your build. blame your attitude.

This still needs admin/dev help. The map is Ancestral 70% of the time and Grenz 30% of the time...

Are there any devs or maybe Regina present on this forum for comment? Thanks.

Simply put: JQ is a far better option. Every luxon who plays there is either mentally retarded, a bot, or (rarely) just plain bad at Guild Wars. Meaning it's pretty much guaranteed wins (barring the rare occasions when we get an equally bad team on the Kurzick time, which happens about once every five matches or so, and still offers a good chance of winning).

JQ is, presently, an excellent way of getting Kurzick faction. Thus we're not bothering with AB

I can state for a fact that Kurzick armour is more popular. Not just because it's seen far more often (barely anyone wears luxon armour, whereas Kurzick armour is one of the most popular armour lines) but also because the cost of Amber at an RMT is distinctly higher, and has been for years.

It's just that FA/JQ are far better choices. I'm luxon, and when I do play some pvp for some faction, I do FA. I win most of the time, and even if I lose it's better then AB.

But, I mostly stick to MQSC for my faction needs.