Making Alliance Battles Competitive

Right now there are a lot of problems with Alliance Battles and in my opinion Alliance Battles have always had the potential to be as competitive as Guild Battles. Here are a few of the things I think have to come into effect in order Alliance Battles to get rid of the leech plague and step into the competitive world.

1. Change Team Formation
Alliance Battles are supposed to be 12 vs. 12. With the current team creation system you aren’t fighting 12 vs. 12; you are forced to fight in three separate groups without knowing the whereabouts or the condition of your allies. Not only does this not make sense, but it completely renders the sense of “team play” useless and throws tactics out the window. The first thing that must be accomplished in order for Alliance Battles to become competitive is for the teams to be switched back to 12 vs. 12 including a party bar with all 12 players. This allows the creator of the team to have full control over who they allow into the groups which in turn will eliminate leechers to some extent. This also allows everybody in the group to know the health and condition of the other teammates and will allow the group to split better and call tactics better as the compass will now be able to be seen by everybody.

2. Give More Support
Hero Battles have had their day, now it should be Alliance Battles turn. This starts with ladder. You are telling me that “competitive missions” have their own ladder and Alliance Battles do not. On this ladder guilds should be ranked by the amount of alliance faction they spend in general, not just towards their alliance. Note that the town holding system would remain in place and that faction spent is not increased in any way in you spend it. The guilds would then be ranked by the total amount of alliance faction they donated and this would culminate in the same thing that Hero Battles and Guild Battles have: a monthly tournament. I will now go into my detailed attempt at a Alliance Battle monthly tournament format:

At the end of each month the top 32 teams from each faction would be put into a swiss style tournament similar to the Guild Battle and Hero Battle tournaments. The only difference in this being that you would have to make sure that Kurzick Guilds only faced Luxon Guilds. These matches would all be played on the neutral map zone. After the 6 rounds were finished the top 6 from each faction would move on to another set of swiss rounds. Each team would face every other team from the other faction. The first matches would be played on the neutral map zone. The next rounds maps would be chosen by whichever faction had the most wins with the losing faction getting their map (ex: kurzicks won 4 of the matches so the next round would be played on Etnaran Keys). If the wins on each side are equal the map would be the neutral zone again. After those 6 rounds the top Kurzick Guild would face the top Luxon guild on each of the 5 maps with a “Best of 5” scenario. The winning guild and top guilds would get prizes similar to Hero Battle and Guild Battle tournaments with Kurzick/Luxon faction taking the place of reward points: possibly 250,000 Kurzick/Luxon faction to each player on the winning guild.

3. Change Faction Earned
In order to eliminate the options of teams Fast Faction Farming their way into the top 32 you can do either of two things. The first option would be to increase the amount of faction gained from Alliance Battles. I would do this dramatically. I would revert the faction gained by the losing team to how it used to be before the recent update and double the faction earned by the winning team. This means the losing team would get ~1,000 faction and the winning team ~3,000. This allows a good team to gain more faction than they would Fast Faction Farming which in itself is an exploit of the game. The other option you have is to limit the amount of faction gained on quest rewards. This limits the amount of FFFing that happens but also severely harms players attempting to Befriend the Kurzicks or Luxons. This is, in my opinion, the worse option. Another change that has to be made is to change the amount of Balthazar Faction gained. Even the recent changes you still get a very small amount of Balthazar faction in comparison to other places. I would suggest a change to about 1,000 faction to the winning team and 500 to the losing team.

Summary: I think these changes would go a long way to eliminate the downsides of Alliance Battles and greatly increase the competitive aspects. Alliance Battles would stress tactics, teamwork, and team and player movement. It would give players a reason to play Alliance Battles. I don’t know maybe the Luxons will still mob, but at least it will be more coordinated

I have been looking around and it seems that the idea of a 12 man party is unpopular because of exploits people could make. I would like to point out that this is unreasonable because in order to win against a decent team you need to be capping many different shrines across the map and you would not be in ranger for many of the skills that target all party members.

Won't get rid of leechers, as they can just join another group once the leader kicks them after the match. No need to make a 12 person party bar, but being able to choose who you join with would be good for coordination. AB is meant to be a casual type of PvP for people to unwind their day and have fun killing some stuff. Most players of AB don't understand the heavy tactics involved behind it.

The ladder should not be based on whoever played the most. The "top ranked" groups would all be players who farmed their way 24/7, while discouraging small but very smart and tactical guilds (read: GvG guilds). This would promote mass recruiting, even if everyone isn't that great. If you want a system, it'd have to be based on a win-loss system, not a "total amount of wins" system, as you're suggesting. As it stands, the "monthly tournaments" would be just full of idiots who have no clue what they're doing but because they have 1000-member alliance groups they were able to earn more faction than your typical smaller 300-member alliance group.

Even so, your ladder supports large alliances who are able to do AB and FFF a lot. Say they are able to field 5 teams and only one wins, they get 48 players x 1000 faction + 12 players x 3000 faction = 84000 faction earned. A good guild fields just 2 teams that both win, getting 24 players x 3000 faction = 72000 faction. Clearly the second guild/alliance should be better, but they'll be ranked lower on the ladder.

Anet never really planned to make AB competitive. That's the biggest difference between that and GvG/HB. Though I guess increasing faction earned would be nice

No to number 1, alter team formation. Because
1) it will not be fair to players who do not belong to a "big guild" who are big on faction farming or AB, and it will become another place where players simply cannot get a group to join in the fun and play.

If you aim to get rid of leechers by altering the team formation, I suggest alternatives: after (reasonable amount of time) of inactivities on the part of the leecher, the leader of the group (actually a notice will be give to all players would be better, hahaha) something that goes like "do you want to kick this leechers option" and you can kick them. If and when a leecher is kick from an alliance battle this way, negative points will be added. Said player will not be able to join another battle until the next day. Negative points gathered will follow the players account, once a substantial amount of leeching negative points is reach their name will be show in red in the game. If they continue to do so, gold will be deducted from their account, so on and so forth. The only way to get rid of the "bad records" is that they fight in Alliance Battle by earning the same amount in time they leeched of Faction points.

No to number 2 as well, same reason, Because
1) it will not be fair to players who do not belong to a "big guild" who are big on faction farming or alliance battle, and it will become another place where players simply cannot get a group to join in the fun and play.


Yes please number 3!.

It would only take 12 people to create a full alliance team, and creating a 12 person group would sure not kill PUG groups. Funny you mention "fun" because seems most people who AB dont think the current format is fun at all.

I can't see how creating a ladder and tournament system gets rid of PUG groups and lessens the fun of people who arent participating in the ladder or the tournament. It would just be there.

While that change was mainly to promote tactics as opposed to eliminating leechers, a system such as that could be implemented as well. I dont see any way to be able to choose your whole group without creating a 12 person group. We have a place for peolpe to unwind and kill stuff: PvE. If you prefer humans: Random Arena. I find it ironic and true that most people who play AB dont understand the heavy tactics, and doesnt that seem just...wrong? It is very obvious fromt he way it was built that it was meant to be for tactics and it has completely lost that meaning.


I dont think a win-loss system should be put in place as it would completely rule out PUG groups and non-guild/alliance groups which would be bad. A total amount of wins system could be wrong. A possible solution would be the total amount of faction spent for the top 12 people in an alliance. Definately not the best solution but I'm open to suggestions.