Fort Aspenwood no longer balanced.

This is half-true (no, one Rend won't leave a window to kill an NPC. Two might. Pain of Disenchantment + Rend would.) However, more than that it isn't exactly a fair counterargument. The teams are what they are. If you say that "Luxons need to bring enchantment removal" I might just as easily say "Well, Kurzicks need to bring more monks."

The point I was making was that the format is horrible for the Luxons. As a monk, with a joke of a skill bar and around 400 hit points, I virtually couldn't be killed for ten straight games. I singlehandedly held off half a team. The points include:

* A healer on the Kurzick side can heal an NPC, without which the Luxons can not get into the fort, with zero risk for himself (if he knows how to do it.)

* A ranger can cap the amber shrines without even leaving the fort.

* If you die while defending Gunther, you resurrect with full HP and full energy and you will be back to defense (including running to Gunther) within ten seconds.

Arenanet needs to start implementing death penalty in FA, and the entire gate system needs to be reworked.

It's true.

Now this:



is why the luxons always lose. The leeching and botting is going through the roof.

Yes, I know the luxons generally have half a team of leechers on a weekday night, but there is nothing we can do about it. The reporting system is very forgiving to leechers and punishes you if you report leechers too often, instead. I have since stop reporting leechers because the system punishes me and stop me from enjoying my own game even though I tried to do the right thing. Therefore, I decided to just exploit it to earn kurz factions instead since that is the most profitable step for me to take under the current game design.

If you report a leecher and you dont have 1/3 of your team to report the same leecher (since about half of your team are leechers anyway), then you get the SAME dishonor point as the person you reported. Even if the leecher bot gained enough dishonor points to be banned from the next game, all it needs is to wait 10 mins and it will be able to leech again. As a human player, 10mins of ban would probably discourage you from coming back to play that day.

The only way I can see for lux to win is a stroke of bad luck for the kurz. For example, if the kurz team doesn't have any monks and the lux happens to be good then sure, lux can win.

Doesn't help that morale is at an all time low for the Luxon side.

And all kurzicks need to do is to STALL FOR TIME! My Ranger was stopped from killing a siege turtle by a luxon monk but I cant kill both the monk and the siege turtle. So this went back and forth for about 5 mins, then I won.

Kurzicks dont even need to make a single kill to win while luxons need to. I like to run around Guntha when I notice a stupid luxon wammo decides that killing me is more important. Obviously kurz won that match too.

Went in a couple of times on the Kurz side today and had a player on our own side putting up Edge of Extinction outside the green gate...

Luxon saboteurs, me thinks.

the luxons have a good advantage at aspenwood. the reason luxons lose is because their player base is crap not that the map is favoring kurzicks. if anything the map favors the luxons a bit more then the kurzicks.

wat

Believe me, if the map objectives were the other way around, it would be this same discussion but only the sides reversed.

Thing is, good players go to the side that is stronger. Why? Because they know which side is stronger and the take the advantage. From winner point of view, why not. Luxons have a lot of players who play Luxon side no matter what.. because their guild is Luxon perhaps. This means that quality on Luxon side can be lower.
Also, some players can go on luxon side for faction, and since they know how slim chances are of winning they just leech and not bother, or do C+space.

Occasionally, good players jump Luxon side for the fun of it, for challenge etc. Only then I believe, the Luxons can win. The average team of luxons cannot beat average team of Kurzicks, I highly doubt it.


But as I said, it's OK if map is slightly imbalanced, since Luxons can win in 5 min, so if it's somewhat imbalanced in Kurzick favor, it's still fair faction-wise, or reward-wise. But because of leechers and quitters it's totally imbalanced atm.


As I said in previous post - give me 8 active players on luxon side and I can do wonders. Well guess what, I went on luxon side again and told my team i will leech until they report me. So, 4 of them did report me (which is a lot for FA), and once I saw my team is good and active, I quickly joined em. We plowed through Kurzicks in 5 minutes. Literary, plowed. But by the amount of people who reported me I could easily see that my team consists of great players who do care about win, and who do want to win. And they really were great players.

I have NEVER EVER seen the turtle AI THIS retarded. I played a few matches and Aspenwood was simply terrible. Every match had at least 2 leechers - usually more - , bots, majority of healers and rangers on Kurzick side and even worse player behaviour than in the past.

Dear ANet. Can you please revert Aspenwood update, so that I could enjoy playing again?

Defense has alway been easier than offence. The problem before was it took so long for the kurzick weapon to finish building up that eventually the Luxons just grinded away and won, mabye 70% of the time.

Now things have changed, its easy to stall for 5 min. Heck two monks can sit behind the green gate and keep it up for 5min without much of any difficulty.

Sure as a Luxon you can still make good faction even with a loss, but to increase your faction cap you must WIN here. I have tried several times of the last few days with 0 luck on every attempt. Some times we had leechers and a few times just crap players. However even with good players the Kurzicks always had 2 good monks at least one mesmer that knew exactly what he/she was doing and some smart rangers.

The best I managed in all of those attempts was to get 6 people past the green gate and drop Gunthar's HP to about 60% but the clock ran out so it was yet another loss.

Pretty much my impression as well. Luxons mainly lose because of inactive players (ie leechers, bots, etc) and the unorganized nature of the map. A good luxon team can wipe the kurzicks in five minutes or less, and may pull off a win even with equally good opposition. But the odds of getting a good team when the draw is random are very slim indeed, especially with multiple components required.

The luxon side also seems to have a staggering amount of leechers and bots and less active players.


- Mana

1. Keep in mind that as a Luxon you are MUCH more dependent on your team then as a Kurzick. You load up a monk as a Kurzick and you're halfway to victory. As a Luxon - you're halfway to victory once the 8 random players on your team are actually good.
2. GW is designed for 2 to 3 monks to be able to keep a party of 8 alive. Aspy keeps the GW's REAL damage dealers behind closed doors AND with it's concept of killing NPCs you know exactly what target the enemy will go after.
Basically what this does is it pushes support characters into the damage role (which means that the party that should be bringing the best offense can not use that option!) and it brings the concept of aggro into PvP (just have the monk make a few steps back and he's safe while still being able to reach the target that EVERYONE is trying to kill).

I haven't been in Aspy in days and I used to consider it to be one of the best GW moments. It just doesn't work anymore.
It's a good thing I can now grind vanquishes - because that's more fun that Aspy.
Well ... in theory.
In reality - I don't do either. Both options are shit - vanquishing just stinks a bit less.

Traveller, your textmod makes it looks like one of the siege turtles and both commanders rage-quit. I wonder why...

make the gate break if 50%< of the npc:s defending it is killed, makes bonding a single npc useless and forces the kurzick team to actually fight its opponents

Are you kidding me? I lose plenty of times on the Kurz side to know that the Lux side CAN win and does win alot.

Just a note from the past**The Kurz side used to lose roughly 80% of the time and not a soul complaint now, when its somehow easier to win on the Kurz side ppl started to complain loud and clear.

Because back in the days people played it for fun.
Now they play it to win.


Still, what we have seen in the past was a sign that the map was always imbalanced. That should have been fixed and gotten rid of rather then replacing it with a new imbalance.

"Greetings, brave Luxons, on this glorious day! Today we shall bring down the heinous weapon of Master Architecht Gunther - although it strangely seems to me that we've all been here before lots of times, call it deja vu or whatnot...

But to arms! Talk to me, Orange Commander, so I can send out the mighty turtle and warrior team to battle ... erm, Omg Pwn U, please refrain from drawing genitalia to the minimap, for it's meant for tactical purposes only ... yes, I believe you will pwn Kurdicks, as you so cleverly said, that's what we're all here for...

as I was saying, please talk to me... um.. why are you all running towards the fort? Only by talking to me can you send out the turtle ...

XX Naruto XX, is that Meteor Shower you are using? Surely it would be more feasible in the skill selection of a primary Elementalist... I don't mean to criticize, after all, I only have 5 skills of my own... "

Aurora Swiftarrow: OMG UR ALL NOOBS
*Aurora Swiftarrow has left the game*

"Erm, I agree that our current situation leaves something to be desired for, but if we just pull together... oh, speaking of that, Sirs Laff de Gumlane and Might Dwiller, I see you haven't moved an inch all through the battle, but I'm sure you'll join us any moment now..."

"No one still hasn't talked to me about the turtle team.. well, at least the purple side is engaging in battle ... but it seems they have met their match - a single ranger is keeping the whole team at bay between the inner and outer gates. I wish the warriors could do something else than just stand there, but alas, that's how we have always done it... um, Me Crush U, is that Mending you're using?

Okay, that's it! Günther, you can keep your GO RED ENGINE battle! I'm off to Jade Quarry!"

I've played a fair number of games on Luxon side there about 2 weeks ago and had about 50/50 success rate. Perhaps slightly less.
But when I look at how people play there on Luxon side I'm not surprised that they fail a lot. It's not like you can load any build and expect to win in Aspenwood. The area requires some tactics and because of the layout you might not be able to use your favorite build. If you play a couple of times you know the main problem areas. Counter them, it's not impossible. And as allways in random groups, you need some luck with the rest of the team.

For some time now, I wonder why I must kill 3 NPC to make a gate fall.
Are they leaning against it, so it doesn't fall to pieces?

Why not make the gates attackable? They gain more health and armor, but are obviously not healable, etc. The only way the repair them is by running amber.

Since the decrease of the round time I feel that Kurzicks just ignore running amber completely (but attack the Luxon commanders more frequently, I rarely saw that before).

Further consideration:

Should a gate be repairable once it is destroyed?
This would come with a massive amount of health of course, so it doesn't get crushed by a simple Flare

p.s. Yes I play on both sides. This is not a lame excuse for loosing as a Luxon. My personal expierence is, that the win/loss ratio is balanced.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone at Anet actually plays in any of these areas that they try to balance. They screwed up Aspenwood so badly I can't believe they have entered that mission since Factions was released. This last update succeeded in inviting hordes of leechers and bots to Aspenwood. Thanks Anet, I do so enjoy a lopsided boring battle and the stone silence of bots and leechers. Lost a battle on the Kurzick side last night while we had 4 monks and couldn't for the life of me figure out why with 4 monks, Gunther was going down so easily. Oh wait, thats right..... 2 of the monks were bots randomly spamming cheap heals around. Botting is getting worse on both sides. On the rest of the matches I played the Luxons couldn't even scratch the Green gate, not because the Kurzicks played spectaculary well but more because they simply did not have the time needed to at least have a shot.

Here is all they needed to do for Aspenwood in the last update: Increase faction rewards so its comparable to other faction gaining methods (they succeeded in this, although the decrease in time for completing Gunther's weapon was totally unnecessary). Make it so that more simultaneous matches can occur (Yes I know Gaile once posted that there was no limit but that was a crok. Check out Aspenwood at prime time now and you will see loads of people on both sides waiting for a match and not being able to get one until a prior match finishes).

Unfortunately, Anet chose to decrease the overall match time, thus making this arena enticing for the bots and leechers and they have arrived full force. Kinda hard to report them too, when the bulk of your team is made up of them

There was never a shortage of Kurzick players before even though that side was a bit more difficult to win with. Why you ask? Because playing a slightly handicapped side is a lot of fun and nobody was complaining that the Luxon side could earn faction at a faster rate (assuming wins). All people wanted was for it to be a bit more worth it faction wise.

Kurzicks can leech and bot and still win while the Luxon side needs 6-8 good players in order to have a chance at winning.

How is this balanced again?

Yeah, I'll just stick to vanquishing then TYVM.

Taking down the gates really isnt the problem.

The problem is trying to kill Gunthar when he has 4 monks healing him and 6 other players defending him. Not to mention by the time you reach him you have at most 3 minutes with a good team to take him down. Most teams get past the green gate with only 1 minute left on the clock.

It is winnable as a Luxon, I managed to get a win on sunday. However it seams that only happens when the Kurzicks make several mistakes and the Luxons are perfect.

Actually it's very winnable on the luxon side if you have the right builds. Disenchants and interupts are your friends on the luxon side. The problem is getting the luxon players to bring disenchants. There are so many fools playing wiki builds they don't really care if they win or lose they are only interested in the 1 v 1 matches they get and calling each other names. It's actually pretty balanced and really pretty easy to win as a luxon player, but, if you fools don't want to bring disenchants and interupts don't blame it on the game time or balance. It's all because you luxons as a whole don't want to actually win. You've got to talk it up in general chat and try to get those others to bring at least one interupt and/or one disenchant. I bring two myself when I play luxon side and if I have a ranger or mesmer with interupts we do a pretty good job getting to gunther. Just accept that you suk as a player and most players on the luxon side suck and don't know what builds to bring. Maybe someday you'll learn.

Well, having done some more extensive playtesting, I can win one out of about every four battles on the luxon side playing Rt/N - basically just hugging either turtle, healing and casting well of the profane as needed. In addition there are also some seemingly very close games, where we make it to Gunther but fail to kill him. More coordination and/or a team that knows how to disenchant in those situations would also improve the ratio.

Losses are usually because we don't draw another healer to tend the other turtle (or because the ones that are there flat out ignore the turtles), because we lack non-LoS based pressure. In one game we drew myself, a monk (who tended the other turtle) and six eles. The kurzicks simply got steamrolled, despite having a couple monks healing and at least two fairly decent rangers to boot. And then of course there is a fair share of the losses that must be attributed to leechers and/or bots.

I will agree that the fact that losses are so frequent on the luxon side is partially due to the reduction of the timer length. But that's just part of the picture. Although the amount of turtle squadrons you have time to bring to the front is reduced, if you tend the ones you have and make them count, you can get through. So many luxon teams don't do this, and it's basically the number one thing you need to do to have a shot at winning. But to be fair, that's just as often because of a bad draw rather than bad play on their part.


- Mana

So you're saying that when the Kurz. play for real, they got more skills than Lux do? Haha, I don't mind you saying that but really, people keep on saying oh this oh that, but they NEVER, once said what did they do. They always think its the leechers'/bots' fault that they lost, but what did they do? A coordinated team of 5 can win FA easily.(I had a game where the Kurz meter was at 35%ish and the Lux. was already attacking Master Architect, the Kurz with just TWO monks, won the match) Stop complain of what others do, face it, we can't clean the world of leeches/bots, if you wanna have fun, play to have fun. But if you're to play to win.....become better or get lost, as simple as that.

**I see alot of ppl saying the update, but what's so bad about the update? That you can finally,finally,finally,finally,finally get some decent amount of factions? I lold that.

No, we can't eliminate the leechers but Anet could add some serious penalties to increase the risk:reward ratio for them.

As for the issue of gates: what if the gates were made of bars instead of solid? Being able to Dshot the WoH after a Rend would make life easier and make Rangers more viable over Dom Mesmers for Luxon.

As for winning: I have won against a 4 monk Kurzick team before the update, I had a really good team without any leechers and it was extremely satisfying. Record win before the update was 3:20 against a team and one time there was a -15 second win when the entire opposing team quit before the match began.

Which do you think brought the most satisfaction? The win against the 4 monk team because it was the hardest and possibly the closest match. But that was because our team didn't make any mistakes. Would I like to do it again? No, because the odds of getting a eight good players who will play are in the gutter and the turtles probably would be exploited.

I don't play because I want Faction, I like a challenge regardless of what side I am on. But what I don't like is having to play a Dom mesmer constantly to the best of my abilities to compensate for a reduced timer, multiple monks and random retards on a Luxon team. On the other hand it is relatively easy to win with just about any build on Kurzick as the objective is comparatively simple, opposing npc melee hate is nonexistant and your own npc's carry enough melee hate to survive the onslaught of Defy Pain whammo's.

Perhaps a FA Hardmode would be in order? Siege turtle attacks take 1/2 less time, npc's would carry 8 skills and have 600 health and DP would occur on dying players. And the only entrance would be after beating 10-20 consecutive Zaishen elite teams with flawless.

Your a sick person... I like it /signed on this but it wont happen, since its PvP and all.

Yeah, the Kurzick side probably has better players.
But not in the way you think.
People aren't more skilled because they play on the Kurzick side. They play the Kurzick side because they are more skilled.

When you have people playing to win - they will use every chance to win. And currently that means playing on the Kurzick side because it allows them to abuse the bugs or have less chance of failing because of the importance of certain classes.

If the map was balanced - players who'd want to win would play on both sides. But currently, choosing the right side actually means you have a better chance of winning. So people do that.
When I want to win as a Luxon - I vanquish Luxon areas.

We won by abusing the bugs...?? Wow I never know I won on the the Kurz. side because I exploited bugs the whole time! Amazing indeed!!

Explain how the map is unbalanced, not just "oh you know what? the map is unbalanced 'cause I lose all the time on Lux. side", ALOT more people play FA now, so the skill level can be a factor as well.

And what's next? That people can squeeze through these bars? NO, if you wanna play ranger, you gotta obey the rules, arrows =/= spells. If you want to go pure interrupt, well, make a pvp mesmer, they aren't that hard to make/to play, in FA 'nyways.

No, atm if I want to play a ranger I play Cripshot on Kurz and get to make a viable difference stalling the other team as opposed to rending and praying that the turtle and team damage can finish off that blasted ele npc. Until ya get past the first two gates the only thing Rangers are useful for are snaring runners which does jack until the gates are down. Kurzick on the other hand have abundant high ground including a couple of sweet spots from which to take mines or stall/interrupt turtles without any risk to themselves.

As for mesmer it seems that every time I do play as one, I get anywhere from 2-4 monks. 2 monks are fun, a third keeping them clean makes things complicated and a Rit or 4th monk makes life hell. Playing Mesmer is a niche role; you've got Shame which is rather situational, Diversion which is awesome, PBlock which is great, Pleak is meh at FA, and Blackout is decent. So to keep those healers out you've got 3-4 skills to create a window of at most 3-4 seconds and that's assuming the monks haven't been screaming at their Mesmer/Ranger to stop you (and that the monks are retards without 40/40 sets). As for other roles, that's just about it for mesmers, it takes forever to take a mine with Empathy and Dom mesmers don't really have a snare (although I sometimes do use Gale). My solution: play ranger on Kurzick.

Cripshots are never meant to be offensive, they are meant only as support characters. So right off you're playing the wrong class the wrong way.For Cripshots, their functions is as follows:
-cause overall degen across the enemy team with Apply Posion
-cause snaring over the enemy team using Cripshot
-asist in spikes by dshot the monk
-do support damage to help your team pressure mid-liners/back-liners
you can use them defensively as to snare incoming melee or "offensively" by crippling+posioning the target your team is attacking.

And btw, the Kurz. rangers on the high ground between the 1st and 2nd gate can easily be driven out by having 1-2 eles hug the wall then just spam attacks on them. (don't tell me the the Lux. side are on a Elementalist recession, cause they're not)

Pretty obvious roles. And stalling by playing defensively and snaring/disrupting eles that would otherwise take down Green isn't a viable role? The goal of the game as Kurzick is to kill time by any means that works. And eles do jack against 100 armor against elemental damage with +8 from a shield if necessary (reduces to damage to 45%). If they want to focus their AoE attacks on me, by all means let them, I shall move over a few feet, wave and proceed to keep doing my thing on the wall. They should be focusing their attacks on npc's, not me and should probably send a necro or warrior after me. You are right in saying that eles are probably the greatest threat as Luxons but not primarily to players. (Shatterstone can be troublesome, as can Air but who uses Attunements with enchant strips so common now?)

The simple fact that there are bugs that can and do get abused should be a sign to fix them.
If you aren't abusing them - well then, you are just dumb.

The Luxon side is supposed top be offensive and it's supposed to kill things. In GW - casters are meant to support. The way the map is designed - the guys that should play offense, simply do not work. Which means that casters are forced into the offensive role - and they aren't really good at it.
2 to 3 monks should be able to keep a party of 8 alive. Now let's put that monk behind a wall, so that the true damage dealers can no reach him, which also enables him to make a few steps back if he gets bored of being harassed by casters, and let's make the monk know EXACTLY who the foes will attack. And keep in mind - the options used against that NPC are subpar. Because the good ones do not work.

That means you are using eles on classes that are the most resistant to ele damage - and that means you aren't killing the npcs or the monks behind the doors. And after the ranger dies - the monk should be able to protect/outheal the damage caused towards the NPC and then the ranger will be back again.
And then you go after the ranger again, right?
And how do you plan on getting into the castle?


You need to disable those guys. Killing means that they come back with full energy and full hp and no negative "conditions" on them. You stick a bunch of hexes and conditions on them making them useless - removing them out of the game, but without killing them. Ohh and keep in mind - you need to be able to disable those guys while still bring options that will kill.
Oh and since this is a random arena - you don't have someone healing you ass.
Man, it's a good thing we have 8 skill-slots for that!





EDIT:
Khmm, how about if the objectives would be modified?
Currently there is the issue that in order to win - the Luxons must "win".
And in order for the Kurzicks to win - they must not lose.
Which in result means that the Kurzicks just drag the battle out. And that is why something like an 8-man monk team is pretty much the optimal team you can get. Compared to a 4-4 balanced team that is optimal for the Luxons. What new objectives would do is force the Kurzicks to take a more active role.
That concept was already in the game when running amber made sense. Now, with the shorter time frame, running amber is pretty much a waste of time because you can just easily wait it out.
Basically - you want to force the guys to come out of their castle in order to win.
Otherwise - the match ends in a draw.

A class in meant to be whatever you can make of it. Casters are not support characters by definition, they're very capable of dealing high amounts of damage given the correct skills. Playing a damage-based caster certainly isn't the inherent disadvantage you're trying to make it sound like. You lose some advantages, and others are gained, but that's the case with all classes.

Nor are warriors damage dealers by definition. They may have the highest DPS, but there are so many counters to disable warriors it's not even funny, they have poor self healing, and in a random format you can't guarantee having monks around to keep you clean.

It's a case of rock/paper/scissors. That's GW in a nutshell, all maps favor some classes and skills over others to some degree. If the tool you have doesn't work, it's time to dig deeper into the toolbox.

You have 64 skill slots for that. Or 32 if you want the other half of your team on the other gate.

What's that you say? Your teammates didn't bring their share of the skills required? Need that scissor but got nothing but rocks? That's too bad, but that's a problem with the players, not the map. Or just a case of bad luck given the random format (which I suppose you could call a map problem).


- Mana

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?p=4218741
http://eu.plaync.com/eu/images/podca...-_Saturday.mp3
"For GW1 we've kinda pushed a lot of casters into a support role and we're probably going to do that in the balance."

Actually given the random format of the game - getting a team where the roles complement each other is good luck. You can't enter a random 8v8 battle and expect to get roles that will work with each other. That are just to many options for that.
Whereas on the Kurzick side - going in as a monk means you only need the other team members to get in the way of the Luxons. You don't need them to fill any special roles. The monk on the Kurzick side isn't worth 1/8 of the team. That's best seen if you get some 3 or 4 monks and they ALONE can keep the Luxons outside of the green gate - and the rest of the team doesn't need to do anything!

Support characters don't have to be defensive all of the time. Snares are meant to be versatile in the sense of defensive and offensive. That is just like saying that a Shatterstone Elementalist is Water Elementalist played wrong because Water Magic is a skill line based around snaring and physical nullification.

Since that issue was first raised by Ensign fire eles have been buffed quite a few times. No, they still don't deal as much damage as a frontliner over time, but their AoE spells are quite nice for blasting through gates with the npcs bunched together, and they also carry a good amount of pressure - which is enough for what's required at FA.

Warriors may not be the best choice for the job at hand, but the fact that that's the case doesn't constitute a game imbalance - it's just the nature of the beast. Don't give up, adapt!

Agreed. Luxons need more specific components to win. That's what the reduction of the timer length effectively messed around with.


- Mana

Luxons might win if they would stop running their gimmick shit and stupid builds.

This week alone i've seen

Eles hard casting meteor shower.no [glyph of swiftness] or [assassins promise] in sight

E/A with [shadow form] and what looked like some gimped chaos planes solo build

R/W with pet and [gash][sever artery]

W/R with [troll unguent] + [distracting shot]

W/Mo with [bane signet][healing breeze][word of healing]

W/E with [fire storm][meteor shower]

N/D with [mystic regeneration][crippling sweep][aura of the lich]


Yes I know FA is random teams,but surely something could be done to at least have some sort of balance even then.I lost count of how many teams i've been in comprising of 5 rangers 2 rits and mm with monks in the outposts yet rarely seen(even when there are monks,they're usually pretty terrible)

The Kurzicks get to use the best possible option for the job - and not only that- the best option receives a bonus! The monks can hide behind a wall making them unreachable and they know exactly what target the enemy will attack.
The Luxons on the other hand can not use the best options for the job and they can only hit the piñata that the Kurzicks put out for them.
It doesn't matter that the options aren't bad. What matters is that one can not use the best ones. And that comes back to bite the Luxons in the ass once you start having better players on the Kurzick side!
If you aren't using the best option - there is no way that you can hope in beating the better players using the best options.