Alliance Battles(ab)

has anyone noticed how ab is very much a one sided arena?

i'm in a top luxon guild and to me ab seems to be grenz day in..day out..so is it just me and should these abs really be like this..ab should be made fair so 1 day it's etnaran keys..the next day grenz..

also luxon and kurzicks maps are apparently identical..then how come the kurz have a FFF quest yet the luxons don't.

just want to know what u think to this and is ab entirely fair in your opinions

I think it's divided temporally - the strong luxon contingents rarely face off against the strong kurzick contingents.

I'm also in a luxon guild, and we seem to have the most victories in the maps most skewed towards the kurzicks, which has to be because when we're in those maps, it's because only lousy kurzick players are ABing.

The line does swing over into the Jade Sea occasionally, so there are good kurzick guilds out there, but they don't seem to be up for more than an occasional rally.

Indeed, the battle line swung around a lot more back in the day... now it does seem to be at Grenz Frontier most of the time. There have been occasional Kurzick surges that pushed through Saltspray and up to Etnaran Keys, but Grenz is definitely the map I've played on most commonly as of late.

That said, I'm a Kurzick, and I PuG AB a lot... I would say I win about 3 in every 4 matches not kidding. Maybe it's just my awesome build The name's Weaponmaster Mudada (yes, my weapon mule), if anyone's seen me around.

Kurzicks usually outnumber luxons, so on average they have longer wait times to get into an AB. That probably discourages more serious players from trying, or else they go luxon just to play more often.

Still, I've fought out of the luxon home map often enough, it varies by what time of day you play.

What is the waiting like at Etnaran for Luxons? Because at Grenz we can be waiting an hour for a match on the Kurzick side.

Are you playing in home districts? Because it's way faster in international districts, usually about a 5 minute wait per match, 10 minutes at the most (EDIT: I just realised that was a bit over. Probably more like 2-3 minutes average, 5 minutes max). Of course, some people prefer to play with people from their home country/continent, but it would save you a lot of time

Deadwalk, I'm not that patient. If after 5-10 minutes we can't get in, I go do something else. But usually we have a match within 2-3 cycles of the timer.

EDIT: btw, my alliance is international, and we invariably fight in the international districts. I'm starting to recognize german chatspeak for "my team right".

ABs tend to be one sided because they are infested by terrible players. The side who gets a team of competent players usually wins.

There are bad players on both sides. It cancels itself out over time. Player skill doesn't explain why one side wins more often. IMO, the answer is in population size.

Before... Luxons used to lose way too often... and now, it seems like the tables have turned.

As of late, when I join an AB, if the Kurzick have a 100 point deficit, people start rage quitting, which is so boring for me, playing for the Luxon side.

Overall, I'm really happy of the succes the Luxon are seeing. I've talked about this with my guildies, we are all in different time zone but we have noted a certain winning streak for Luxons. Anyone else caught a wind of this?

Observations I made:

-When you are loading on a map where there is a big advantage your side:
It is crowded, which means long waiting times. Reason for this is: your side is on advantage, so many ppl on your side think it is easy wins. Many people on other side think it is too hard for them, so they do not choose to play AB. So for the side with big advantage, it is hard and almost impossible to find an opposing team. Generally, the players thinking they need advantage to win maps are 'noobs' or new players. Which means these battles are actually at an disadvantage. People that actually play when they know they are at an disadvantage (the opposing side in this case) are generally battle-seasoned warriors, who know that my certain strategies (and I do NOT mean DUMB invincibuilds like stoneflesh), they can win. These are generally tough opponents.

-The small advantage maps:
Same applies as in big advantage maps, only slightly less stronger effect. Though it is noticable that the Kurzick players in general outnumber Luxons, since the effect on Grenz is harder then on the Luxon countermap. Hence the less experienced co-players applies again to this map, as discribed above.

-The neutral map.
As it says, a neutral map. Both sides equal advantage, only because in general more Kurzick players relatively spoken, there is more Kurzick waiting time.

-The disavantage maps:
Opposite applies as described above in advantage maps.

I myself rather play in disadvantage maps, since it looks my wins in those teams are more often and my co-players are more seasoned, so understand things about builds, positioning, capping and stuff. Plus all that lousy waiting time.

It is possible to get a guest invite on a opposing alliance guild, to play alliance battles with them. This way, you can experience no waiting times, as on your own side you would have a long waiting time, because of your advantage map.

It depends on the time of day honestly. I say it's fairly evenly split between Etnaren and Grenz. I pefer playing Etnaren over Grenz honestly, much nicer place.

Symeon, I have never seen you play and I AB mostly when I play GW.

They should just balance the purposely-unbalanced maps, problem solved.

AB suffers from the same problem as the rest of the game. Not enough people playing the game in general. I think for people to be readily available to play any particular mission and/or pvp arena, we'd have to have an increase in population by about 5 times what we have now.

Not gonna happen.

When I AB, I see god maps and bad maps, I don't see how ppl tag some maps as "disadvantage" or "advantage". Its always 50-50, the one thing that determines the possibilities of winning, is skills.

the maps isn't too much of a problem tbh..more dependant on the teams..however the good kurzicks don't need to ab..they have FFF which luxons do not.. aren't the maps supposed to be identical?and isn't it abit strange and unfair to have a guild sitting on 51 million..

Hey carrot xD Nice seeing you lol.

Anyhoo...It's ALWAYS Grenz lately which is getting really boring. I'm in a top luxon guild too and so I AB quite often. That means I have to look at that same old depressing map all the time...

There are different levels of maps. Saltspray beach is completely fair. Grenz favours the Kurzicks slightly, and Etneran Keys favours the Luxons slightly. The Ancestral Lands favours the Kurzicks greatly because they have two shrines right in the middle of their base, and The Jade Quarry favours luxons in the same way so the levels work like this: Luxon 2-1-0-1-2 Kurzick (two being most favoured and 0 being fair)

It is because the kurzick faction is a large bandwagon, ive said it from the beginning. Everyone joins it because they think Kurzick side "is cooler." I personally have liked the luxon faction ever since the preview event but I have always been in a Kurzick guild (aside form when I jumped out of my guild for a while to join ROAR and the BkBd alliance cause of all the crap they were taking.

I personally don't see what is "cool" about trees made of stone. It's not goth if everyone's doing it anyway. But...the problem is that Luxons are obvously winning more if the map is almost always Grenz...

It depends when you're playing. We usually get in immediately but sometimes it takes an age when there's teams of 4 everywhere and you see "No opposing party has joined."

/agreed it really makes a difference to play during the day instead of early in the evening.
Forgot to mention that in my previous post. Still the main factor in times seems to be the fact if you are playing advantage or disadvantage, since the Luxons have little loading times when the map is Grenz at early in the evening in Europe.

the explanation I favour in addition to those suggested is that there are simply more seasoned luxon players ABing as their sole means of obtaining faction quickly than there are kurzick.
why would this be? those in the top alliances need to farm their faction's faction to retain a place in their guild. The fastest way to do this for kurzicks is by cheating a quest to quickly obtain the reward (yes I choose to call it cheating because the quest wasnt designed to be carried out in the way it is). For luxons the quickest way is through AB.
Hence there are more experienced luxon players playing more of the time, hence the luxons effectively have a permanent extra advantage, hence grenz is effectively the neutral area a lot of the time.