Why Jade Quarry is good

Im sure everyone who plays AB know that the wait time is like hell.
I usually wait about 10 min if I'm lucky and up to 30 min if I'm not. I also see alot of players who just give up and leave which leaves my party having to wait all over again.

As everyone know, Jade Quarry is like a ghost town. BUT! I got a group for both sides going for awhile today and I got ALOT of factions. Theres was virtually NO WAIT TIME! so I did a little research

AB:
~15 (wait time) + ~20 (play time) = ~1500 faction ( location bonus, win/lose included )
42.8 factions per minute

Jade Quarry:
~15 (play time) = ~ 750 faction ( slab bonus, win/lose included )
50 factions per minute

Jade Quarry is a nice alternative for ABers . Theres little down time so you get to play more rather than waiting. The factions per minute is slightly more than AB. The only problem is keeping it going. It died in about 2 hours but the time I played I received far greater factions (and FUN) compared to AB.

I really hope anet will bring Jade Quarry back.

Meanwhile, any guild groups that has ~16 players on can farm easy and fun factions by doing this.

Now go factor in Fort Aspenwood and you'll understand... well, I have yet to understand why many people choose FA over JQ...

There are two ways Jade Quarry is coming back:

Another Aspenwood/Quarry weekend
Add Quarry to the AB map rotation.

its gonna take a hell of a lot on player's part to bring players back. Its like the rank thing in HA, inorder for it to be popular players need a reward, one that they can get fast in ab at least your guaranteed a match while here your not, but to receive that you need players but they dont come until their sure that they get a reward, which in turn require players to participate. See what im saying?

Wait, wait... But if you're Kurzick...

HFFF:
~:50 (run time) + ~:15 (load/re-load time) = 400 faction.
~400 factions per minute.

Setting aside the obvious and disregarding that Luxons have a FFF method too...

Jade Quarry is a fun place to go. However, it is often underpopulated, only offers slightly more faction than FA, usually has one side dominate due to an influx of mappers, is farther out and seems to be harder to find than FA, etc.

If ANet were to just stir up a few changes to JQ as well as boost the faction to around 1.2-1.5 its current amount, it could be able to stir up enough momentum to get a consistent playerbase.

- Boosts faction to Aspenwood as well, so as soon as the weekend ends, people trickle away from JQ until it goes back to a standstill.
- lol.

I thought nobody played JQ because Kurzicks always won.

AB doesn't take ~15 minutes waiting time, you're just really unlucky. At the worst, my waiting time was 5 minuites a game, and that was during double faction and the map was at Kanyon. So right off the bat you were wrong, consult people before making such a post.

Also, alot of people play AB are just in for the killing, I have played JQ a bit and imo there isn't SO much killing involved than AB, since the area is much, much smaller.

Last thing, in general opinion, AB is the BEST place(aside from fff) for factions and for some people balth faction farm.

So if you want Anet to bring Jade Quarry back, I have 3 simple solutions for you:

1) Either bring lots of friends and keep them playing JQ for hours on end.
2) Try to pay people to play JQ with you.
3) Send 10k complaint letters to Anet until they somehow make people play JQ(not gonna happen though).
But I think option 1 is the most viable of the three.

Which is pretty funny notion because map is symetrical. And hilarious if you take FA "ballance" into account.

Anyhow, Solution is to consolidate FA and JQ and to single system and just rotate theese two maps in both outposts.

JQ is a ghost town cus kurzicks almost always beat the luxons there...

There is not a 15 minute wait time to play in AB all the time. I've been able to play a battle and almost immediately after it's over getting into another one. I don't even recall the last time I had to wait 15 minutes. My average wait times are around 5 minutes when it's really busy. I did my own survey in a hours time and got waaaayy more faction playing AB than ever playing Quarry. If you're going to do comparisons then you need to add the time it took you to get two full groups up to even play the Quarry and unless you have a large guild group or another guild it takes a pretty long time before you can even start.

Yeah, lets not.
The maps are to insanely different for that to work.

Basically the math is only correct if there actually is no wait time for JQ. However, usually there will be nobody there. Making the time you have to wait very long. You base your whole math on an unlucky AB time with a VERY lucky JQ run. Math never works well with luck and this is no exception.

Yup. Since in Fort Aspenwood Luxons attack and Kurzicks defend, and GW is balance so attack has more chances to overpower defense, Jade Quarry is more balanced, while.

In FA, Luxons can finish the fight anytime they can kill one NPC, while Luxons have ALL the time in the world until the very end.
Kuzicks can't make anything to stop the match before the weapon is ready. They can speed up its process, but if they do so then they would leave the doors open for the enemy.

Luxons just have to attack, attack and attack. Kill NPCs and then kill more NPCs.

Kurzicks have to kill NPCs, pick pieces of amber, walk with them to a place, and give them to an NPC, and repeat again.

So it's like trying to build a sand castle while keeping a bunch of kids with buckets away.
Luxons would be pretty stupid if they preferred a battleground where they are in equal footage as Kurzicks, so they avoid JQ.

As they are right now, there seems to be only solution:
- Make each one of them work at a time.

For example, one week one, then one week another, or in alternate hours, or merging both statings so you may join either of them, or something like that.

Another solution would be to give Luxons an use for Amber in FA, and a way for Kurzicks to kill the Luxons, like by taking all three spawning points from them.

JQ is a ghost town because it isn't worth it. If the rewards were good enough people would play it. ANet could fix it with a miniscule tweak, but instead the chose to let it die.

And OP forgot to factor in the wait time for JQ, which is approximately 6 months!

You are aware that the way the map is designed it pretty much renders half the classes in GW useless for the Luxon side?

Only for Kurzicks on Kurzick advantaged maps.

I usually just get a Luxon guest at that point.

I'm going to side with Upier on this one. MithranArkanere doesn't sound like he's played Aspenwood enough on both sides (I still <3 it tho, even in its failures).

Also JQ is a ghost town because the Kurzicks used to exploit a glitch in the spawn that allowed them to get out of the starting area before the match began. That led to nobody wanting to play, which meant it was known for being empty, and the glitch was fixed too late to stop popular trending.

This kinda wraps around to this point: There are actually a million small, logical reasons why everyone is in a Kurzick guild than "let'sallbegoths", and that's the reason the AB wait times are so long.

I played in both sides with all professions, and about the 80% of the time Luxons won.
I also recall that 100% of the time I was an Elementalist in the Luxon side, Luxons won.

Aditionally, most of the time, when Luxons won less than 15 minutes have passed, and when Kurzicks won more than 20 minutes have passed.

It0s faster for Luxons because all they have to do is concentrate in one task: Advance!. While Kurzicks must spread and concentrate in multiple ones: Kill, go forward, go back, repair, defend...

I heard tooting your own horn on game websites gets stuff balanced.

But most luxon players use fire elementalists on Fort Aspenwood, Which make short work of the gate defenders and the kurzick ritualists at the amber mines and they are almost impossible to kill if they retreat to where the turtles 4 luxon warriors are.

More then half the battles I've lost on fort Aspenwood on the kurzicks side is when 2 or more fire nukers get to the green gate, which is a common occurance because it takes the kurzick team longer to pick-up amber and run to the NPC's behind the green gate than it does a for a fire nuker to take out one gate by their self.

Then you have to consider that players running Amber practically shuts down their offense and it end up with the Luxons having more players actually attacking.

I like how monks and rits are conveniently forgotten in this, but okay. ?_?

Remember that if you nerf the weaker side even more, less of them will play, and we all lose. All I see is people complaining that they got beat by Luxons at Fort Aspenwood, which is pretty akin to letting Lux win at Ancestral Lands.

No, they don't.

make aspenwood and quarry also available from the GH (put it on that alliance battle guy, "i wish to go fight at the jade quarry/fort aspenwood)
best way to do that is close the gates at aspenwood/quarry and put a gatekeeper at them so PvE chars can access aspenwood/quarry like normal and go through the GH if they unlocked the outpost on their char
and PvP chars can't go out aspenwood/quarry cuz of the gatekeeper
just a suggestion

It could also cost a variable amount of something to enter.
So when one of them is visited too much the price would rise, while the other would go down.

Might be just me, but can't you already enter those places by talking to those guys in the Great Temple of Balthazar?

I think it's the glitch thing that primarily made it a ghost town in the first place, but the thing is, I just don't find it as fun as the fort. The caps are very very well defended, in FA you can just cowboy around and as long as you're focused on the gates you win(even on the kurz side, just learn to heal npcs and have a couple amber runners and you're good). In JQ, you have to have certain roles or you're boned, you need healers to ride the carriers, each point has 4-6 npcs, if you try and solo them you get rolled. Not only that, it's like a labyrinth with all the stairs, portals and doors. Maybe if they let you form up parties for it, but as it is it requires to much coordination for a random team to muster. Last time I was there, noone attacked the enemy carriers, they kamikaze the guard points to no avail(they were taken right back), they failed at the mines.... it was just a miserable time...

^not true at all, though FA does heavily favor Nukers with enchant stripping.

Memser: standard caster shut down to take down healers, enchant removal to take out bonders, FC nukers, and [Unnatural signet] or [Spiritual Pain] to take out the mine clensers, as well as AI abusing hexes.

Ranger: Splinter barrage/volley, standard BA, cripshot to take out runners, pets make effective tanks for gate NPCs(sic them then snipe while they attack the pet), Also trappers on the portals, spirit spam to hurt healing efforts(EoE, NR, Tranq, predator's, primal echoes, all hurts the kurz more then the lux)

Necromancer: Corpse Control, limitless bodies for MMs, have an ally die at a gate and [well of profane] it, the best enchant stripping options(lingering curse buried deep will kill the npcs very fast) AI abusing hexes.

Paragon: you can help prot the turtles, spike npcs very well, Holy Spear hurts the mines and kurz MMs.

Ritualist: [Weapon of warding] on the turtles makes them less susceptible to interrupts, keeping turtles alives greatly speeds up the invasion, as well as keeping your allies up, spirits and channeling can help you take back cap points.

Monk: Ride the turtles, you can hide inside them and let carriers defense protect you while you heal it and let it do it's work. Guardian to keep rangers off it, RC or DH to keep it clean and a few spike heals to make it last.

Ele: the super class here, E/N with rend or gaze can punch a gate down on it's own, with any of their speeds boots might get lucky and chase a runner in and get a shot at AoE on the gatekeepers.

The melee classes are tricky but very workable, A: you have to be able to deal with blocking, or kill/interrupt displacement and ward against melee, not hard. B: The reckless haste hexes from the necroes, a pre-veil or purge sig, good teammates or any one of many counter measures makes this not so hard(you can also let the lux wars take the first wave of hexes) C: Unsteady ground, just wand or spear the kurz eles, wait for them to hit you with unsteady, then move, simple.

Derv: with banishing strike they can 1 shot a mine, can tank and run into the green gate well, spike npcs en masse and hard, have the enchant removal and hex management needed to survive.

War: Not easy, but adrenal based attacks with a pre veil or purge sig do well, as will a W/Rt with splinter and an aoe melee attack. A deep wound attack and a heavy hit to spike with a speed boost to sneak in an open gate and you're good to go.

Assassin: after Ele necro and mes, probably the most desirable class to assault the fort. They have speed, excellent AoE and unblockable attacks, enchant busting, they can shadow step and sneak through a lot of damage to get in green, self heals and self cleaning, just slap on holy veil and go.

...

are you luxon?
because -
Large number of kurzicks = have to wait for match
Small number of luxons = don't have to wait at all

Don't have to kill a turtle (or interrupt it) to shut it down. A flatbow through the ranger deck just below the portal (either side) will draw turtle aggro without even needing the shot to hit, and it will continue to shoot at the wall below the ranger until he moves or someone kills him, leaving him free to still peg people trying to get to the inner gate. Just another one of those glitches.

not that i know of
it's only open for PvE only chars

You mean to tell me you've been trying to force PvE characters that deep into Factions every time you want to play a new build at Aspenwood?

You could always just roll up a PvP character and talk to the Kurzick/Luxon NPCs at Great Temple of Balthazar.

My take on FA is that Kurzick run anything they bloody well want while Luxons have to adapt/delete their Dervish/Warrior/Assassin or use a ranged character/caster (read up on what skills the Kurzick npc Necros, Eles and Rits have before you make an assumption that both sides can run normal builds on any class without adaptation ie unblockability). Personally I run a Me/E most of the time with Gale/Grasping Earth to snare runners just as they aggro the Luxon Warriors.

More infuriating is when Kurzick have had a particularly bad losing streak and 2-4 people switch to their Monks/Ritualists and use the blasted meta WoH-Patient to spamheal Gunther. Perhaps making adding in teams with a restriction of no more than 3 of a class would be a good thing along with upping the incentives for winning.

JQ I think is the more balanced and more interesting of the two. It offers more roles ie Snaring and Degen because the map isn't as restricting and smart maneuvering can bypass them. It could use better incentives and possibly organized team-play.

oooh sorry yes now i see on the wiki you can already access it
but it's not really clear now isn't it?
but no, i dont force chars deep into factions ^^
i never played FA or quarry
i once played aspenwood when i was mapping and it was fun tho

Based on this I can tell you don't really do FA much.
You realize that half the time Luxon side is dead because they know that Kurzicks win MOST of the time there right?

But OT. I would really only like to see JQ revived so I can map it .
Other than that its just a small version of AB. Running around a mpa just trying to cap a shrine to me is not much fun and we don't need 2 versions of it.

I think FA gates need an auto respawn or make both sides run amber. Amber for gates and NPC spawns and amber for turtle spawns.

The reason why things work is because Kurzicks play bad - not because they were good.
I'd LOVE to see your classes that require a line of sight to do ANYTHING vs a bunch of Kurzick that heal and protect the ele (and themselves!) while they hide behind a closed door making them completely and utterly unreachable for anyone that can't cast at full range through obstacles.
FA is the PvP version of Kunny. The monks behind the closed doors (protecting the ele) might as well be floating up in the air.

One copy of Rend Enchantments is all a stalled Luxon team really needs to get through any monk interference at the gates. Or just kill one NPC (there are 3, pick the one without all the shiny monk enchantment rings around it) and use Well of the Profane. Voila, dead gate, unless your entire team can't outdamage a spamming healbot. These aren't GvG quality monks you're going against here, it really shouldn't be that hard to overwhelm them. Of course, this goes down the tubes when you get matched against a Kurz team with 5 healers or something absurd like that, but on the flip side, a kurz team with no healers vs a heavy damage output lux team has basically no chance.

To everyone who thinks that one team has an advantage in JQ: bull. There used to be an exploit that could be used to get out of the starting area before a match using necrotic traversal, which ended up giving a huge advantage to the kurzicks, but it's long since been fixed. The map is far, far more equal and dependent on the skill of the two teams (and knowledge of the map) than FA is. That said, I enjoy FA because I like assaulting / defending large fortifications, and it's the closest thing to a large-scale battle that GW has. AB doesn't count, since the best way to play that is to basically avoid "battle" entirely.

Exactly - you win because the opposing team is playing bad.
But this doesn't mean that what you are using is good.

In the "5 healer" situation, the skill of the two teams is irrelevant. You can have a very good luxon team, but you're probably not going to be able to outdamage 5 monks no matter what you do. Chalking it up to "luxons are playing bad" doesn't work.

Also, said situation is so rare that it's just unfair to generalize the results of every game as determined in that manner.

Ohh I didn't say "Luxons are bad".
I said that people who choose classes that are at a disadvantage on the Luxon side win because the Kurzicks play bad.
And you showed the imbalance of the map very nicely.
If you have "5 healers" it's pretty much going to be impossible for the Luxons to win.
Which means if the Kurzicks actually started playing the way they are supposed to (I mean the point of their existence there IS to defend!) there would pretty much be no way for the Luxons to win.
I'd say that's a very nice sign of the game being unbalanced.

You are basing your analysis of the playing field on how it's played by bad players. Now it's true that pretty much bad players only play there - but good games should be balanced on the people that actually know what they are doing.

But with AB you get Balthazar factions so you can unlock skills for your hero .. so with AB you get factions at the end.. i think AB would be a better option to do.. I should do AB IMO

In regards to ranged characters(paragon and ranger) they're honestly better at taking out the cap points and dealing with mine cappers then the gates, but you can still get one behind the gates if you're fast enough(especially rangers, they have the speed and armor to get in there, and it's fun to watch monks cussing out amber runners...) You just have to tweak your build to the situation. You can camp in the field with nat stride and pin down, owning people as they pop out the porters(hide further back from the base so they can't see you), and hit em when they come out. But if you intend to assault the gate, you need enchant stack busting.

As said, all you have to do, and all any character should have to do on the luxon side is take rend, expunge, gaze or any of the enchant stack rippers, then pressure the gate NPC. It doesn't matter how many monks you have woh/patient/infusing it, without prots it will die to the turtles siege, spike or pressure. Listed for the "whahahahahaaaawhoosh" sound they make, then strip the enchants right when it goes "BOOSH" and hit with your best spike skills. They have to refresh the enchants, and eventually they run out of juice. Same deal with the inner npcs, focus on the gatekeepers first, and this is where your melee shines, have them harass any healers, let nukers blast the npcs while stripping and they'll fall over.

In regards to the "5 healer" draws(which I've never had the fortune to have on either side...), that only gets borked when you get to gunther(they focus all their energy and skills on 1 guy), and doing what I outlined will still kill him(harass, spread pressure on more then 1 guy and/or take the prots of that guy). They won't have the offense to push you out, kill turtles, keep cap points. If they can't keep him enchanted, they will burn out their energy with red bar goes up skills.

Now see this is which the quarry isn't as popular, we're here yakking about tactics, what little nuance is broken or can be exploited in FA, JQ doesn't have this, people haven't played it enough to figure it out, so they don't play it enough to figure it out, and that cycle continues.