Balance

If anyone knows what Magic: the Gathering is, and (probably even rarer), if anyone knows what "Combo Winter" was, then you can skip the next paragraph of what I'm about to talk about.

Nevermind if you don't know what the card game Magic is, but there was once a season of that game called "Combo Winter", in which the makers of this competitive card game made a huge mistake. They created incredibly imbalanced cards that basically said "you win the game". People began exaggerate during "Combo Winter" that pre-game was shuffling your deck, mid-game was the dice roll (to see who goes first), and end-game was shaking hands after the dice roll. Basically, whoever went first won. It was stupid. There was nothing about strategy, or anything like that. Everyone just copied the same decks and whoever went first in the game won.

This reminds me of the new format, the Automated Tournament-styled Snowball Fights. The game is essentially decided the moment both teams load in. If your team's color is RED, you win. If it's BLUE, you lose. Pretty simple. Why? Let's look at the imbalances.

1. If time runs out with neither team reaching 10 points, the RED team automatically wins. Even if the red team has 0 points and the blue team has 9.
2. Both teams have virtually identical sides of the map.
3. The RED team gets an incredibly powerful skill (Avalanche), which is an AOE cripple, while the BLUE team gets a practically useless skill (Yellow Snow). Other than these differences, the rest of the skill bars are identical.

Ceteris paribus.

Basically, if you are RED, you win, since you get a better skill and a completely imbalanced tiebreaker that places you at an almost unsurmountable advantage, unless you are extremely terrible at the game.

So tell me, ArenaNet, how did you turn a (seemingly) good idea into something that is so terribly executed? Perhaps the difference lies in care of your product. When will you realize that it's not so much quantity, but rather the quality that will attract others?

Basically, stop sucking, balance your game and don't even release things that are obvious crap. Do it right or don't do it at all.

They think you are wrong.

so gotta agree with your arguement, technically its giving the avalanche team a free snare while opposite team gets jack
________
BLONDE GIRLFRIEND

Rather off topic there upier.

As a Grenth lover, I must say that Dwayna's side has a very big advantage.

As a Lore lover, I have to say that the advantage (at least with the tiebreaker) for normal snowball fight is common place. For the ATS, it should get checked, but for normal fights, the advantage fits in with lore.

Why does it fit in with the lore? Simple.

If Grenth does not spread enough misery, he loses. If there are enough people happy for Wintersday, Grenth will lose his quarrel with Dwayna. As such, Grenth needs to pull a complete victory in order to win, "half-assing" doesn't work with this.

While not fair to my fellow Grenth followers and myself, it makes sense.

Why?
We are currently dealing with a game where the devs not only think that "fun" is a substitute for "balance" they actually have the balls to say it.
Is Snowball high-end PvP?
No?
Well, then - hopefully you are having "fun".

Because the form of balance is different in these two cases.

For Shadow Form, balance is linked to farming, which is then linked to the economy and grind. Some people like grind (who knows why) so in order to keep that fan-base, Anet didn't kill Shadow Form. But they had to do something for the "economy" - which they are finally seeming to care about since after the M.O.X. quests were added.

For Snowball Arena, balance is linked to being fair. As such, only those who get the luck of being on Dwayna's side will be happy, but that is random and once they go onto Grenth's side, they won't be as happy. Due to this, both sides need to be balanced to each other, no advantages.

Why do you think they buffed the siege turtles in FA?

While both cases are balance, the reasons for how to balance and why it needs to be balanced are different.

O gee, look at who's already addressing this issue.

Snowball ATS is what a lot of people have been wanting for a long time.

But not the Snowball ATS that ANet gave us.

Aspy is much more fun then it was pre-turtles buff.
It's still not balanced.

yeah, because God forbid we have fun during wintersday.

they should make it so if time runs out, blue gets the win if red gets avalanche. only fair imo. it never runs out of time though so meh.

Easy to answer: Lack of care, attention and effort.