How to Rebalance the Arenas for the less fortunate among us

Normally, at my home, I have an amazing gaming desktop which can play Guild Wars like a dream. During the beta events, I also tried playing Guild Wars on my laptop and found it was too laggy to play, because of my laptops specs (I have cable), because my laptop only has 256 MB of RAM. Other than that, my laptop is fine.

I went on a short vacation over the summer, and brought my laptop with me and decided to reinstall Guild Wars on it to give it another try. I was shocked, but it worked. The only thing was I had to wait a while after it had loaded up, or else it would be too choppy and laggy to move. This was on Cable. When I went on vacation, we only had dial-up. Another suprise: Guild Wars can actually run on dial-up! And quite well. The only problem with Dial-up is that it took too long to open an area.

Now, this may be fine for PVE, but in the random arenas in PVP, which is where I usually earn faction, I find it's near impossible to win!

When I click enter mission, and the countdown goes to zero, it'll have a long loading time, even on cable, and take a long time to actually pop up the game where my party is waiting, and even longer to play the game without it being choppy--about 17 seconds after the game starts. In this time, of course, my party doesn't think to wait for their teammate and rushes off to go die.

I think that rather than having a countdown timer to the begin of the game, each player should be put in their team's base (Like it is now) and be faced with a "READY" button. Only when all 4 players have pushed ready will the game begin. This way even if someone like me who has to use Dial-up AND a less-than-spectacular computer can play in the arenas too.

Now, while in the team base, the other team should not be able to be viewed. Many people are going to say in response to this things like "People won't click the button on purpose just to screw up the game" but in that case, you can just leave and rejoin. it shouldn't happen often. Also, other people are going to argue that you shouldn't have to wait for people with minimum specs to start playing, but I think that the wait times will NOT be that big--something like what, 10 extra seconds? Oh, dear me! I have to wait 10 seconds! But the thing is, if you wait those 10 seconds, then everyone can play and show off their true skill, and not be put at a disadvantage because the game is moving too fast for them.

If people are saying that they make less faction per hour because of this, maybe the faction rates of the arenas could be slightly increased, but I think that's something that shouldn't matter as much as everyone being able to enjoy the PVP content in Guild Wars.

Thank you for reading,

Mariodood

NO one shares my opinions about this topic? Is it too large to read? I can summarize it..

SUMMARY: Instead of having a countdown till the game begins, all 4 players have to push ready to start the game.

No. It would just be abused. Instead of a ready button, the countdown should start when all players have entered the game.

Yeah. Guaranteed there's gonna be some jackass idiot who enters and doesn't push ready just to piss everyone off.

There really is no way to have it conform to the extremely laggy people. One of my guildmates has a crappy computer and despite the fact he enters the game, he's stuck on the loadup screen for another half a minute. He's there, but he's not.
Maybe have a minute countdown timer instead of 10 seconds? Give the parties additional time to debate their tactics.
It would definately slow down the line-up though. To a mere crawl on some days.

Really, if your computer can't handle the game, you shouldn't be playing PvP. Sorry but that's the bottom line, no way around it.

Yep, cant punish the group because a few people cant run pvp.

Really, if your computer can't handle the game, you shouldn't be playing PvP. Sorry but that's the bottom line, no way around it.

But my point is that a bad computer and even dial-up users CAN handle the game, we just take slightly longer to load than others. There should be some way so everyone can be ready and then start the battle.

Your computer has to be pritty bad to not play this game. I play it on full graphics settings flawlessly (well close enough, lags here and there) and I have a 6 year old 700 mhz celeron not even 100 fsb! Now i know the processor isnt everything, but my graphics card isnt all that either, it is a $50 PCI (no AGP when it was built, cheak your mother board for graphics card slot) mx400 card 128 mb its only a $30 card now. as for RAM 2 sticks of PC100 SDRAM 256 (hard to find now, chances are you have DDR RAM, but cheak your mother board) got em for $30. Doesnt take much to have this game run well. If you still cant run the game after those few upgrades try a new HD chances are you might be running an ATA-33 or ATA-66 at 5000 RPM hard drive. Get an ATA-100 or ATA-133 (133 is standard these days although they have ATA-150 out, cheak your motherboard most will take 133) at 7200 RPM. Just a few cheap suggestions for those who need more gaming power, if all else fails format your hard drive or get some heavy duty cleaning done, just back up everything first and also try to defrag the HD. Although if your playing on 56k non of these will help.. and im sorry. Why pay $10 - $20 for dialup when you can probly get DSL for $30 (thats what is cost me for verizon DSL).

Ok forget what I said about 56k, it works just fine. Its your computer try what I suggested above, your probly are loaded with spyware and viruses too, try cleaning/formating your HD first.

Just a note on computers...I use 56k Dial-Up, and I rarely have any problems. It doesn't even take a long time for the maps to load. Say in random arena for example, I hit Enter Mission. Takes about 20 or so seconds (that's the timer counting down) to find enough players I guess.Then afterwards, takes about 5 seconds for the map to load and there I am with everyone else. Not sure what's wrong on your end..

As to the button, I agree when I say it's a bad idea. Some people would like to be jerks and not even press it. Just sit there until everyone leaves. I lik ethe idea of the timer only counting down when everyone who'll be playing that map has entered.