Syncing in Snowball Arenas

Not rly. Look:
People are mostly syncing RA because
1. They want farm glads very easy, so they grab some friend or friends, and sync RA
2. You have a friend that you want to play with, and you dont have enough people to TA, you want to play pvp just with your friend. Sync RA
3. 4 people that are too bad to TA, sync RA.

I dont think that reworking the system would be VERY hard, but there are another ways to destroy syncing.
a) making some kind of punishment, if you are in a team with your friend (idk, guild, friendlist). This punishment can be for example no balth + harder way to get glads, or dont get glads at all. IDK srsly
b) as for 2, if you want to play with your friend, create another area 2vs2, sealed deck, maybe with hero, that was shown in PAX, Izzy said sth about it, and IT IS possible to create such a thing in ACTUAL game. That should be attractive, that if you want to play pvp with friend, you go there, and not to RA.
c) adding next option to report system called 'sycing'. With this option, you can report also person in another team. Each 'syncing report' gives you 10 dishonour points. Go go 1 hour "pvp ban" for syncing. That would help a lot.

Okay, so I exaggerated. Yes, I win with random people. Every now and then I'll find a group with one other present-capper, which is usually enough to get me two-three games or so. This is still with two teammates that are doing nothing. We quickly lose to a team where two people are making an effort and the other two simply suck a little less. A rare occurrence will happen, and I'll find a team with two other people, total three, that actually try. We'll win 4-5 games before someone has to leave for dinner, and then we're back to a 2-try team. I really wouldn't mind if both teams were actually trying, and we had good battles. The ones where we managed to sync against each other were the most high-spirited.

Well, glad you decided not to troll, except you just did, and I don't need your pity. I'm on the right track. I know what I'm doing and where I'm going, but I'm going to have to teach myself a lot of stuff to get there. The colleges sure won't. (I talked to a few devs from various games at PAX, and they all agreed that while the general concepts would still apply, I WILL have to teach myself the specifics of a language that's actually used in real life.)

Except I don't lose every game, I lose games for hours at a time. Yes, it has happened. 3 teammates who don't try for hours at a time. Perforated with the occasional decent team, sure. Then it's right back to more of the same. I can't often carry the whole freaking team by myself, though I try anyways. There's a reason they have teams, not solo players - it requires teamwork. If the entire opposing team isn't doing anything, or only one person trying to stop me? I can make my team win on my own.

150 games won in 4 days is 37.5 games per day on average. Assuming 5 minutes per game, which includes pregame / postgame, that's 187.5 minutes per day. 60 minutes an hour, so you win for 3.1 hours a day on average. Playing for 3 hours a day on average? It's not physically possible. You have to win every game uncontested to do that. So, either you're lying, hoping nobody will check the math, or you're exaggerating, to what extent I do not know.

No it wouldn't. I just provided a small piece of code that could be slipped into the existing system with little to no difficulty and would fix the problem completely.

Sure. But I don't often have the hours required to play until I get a good team, and THEN go on a win streak. I can sync with friends, play for those three hours and have fun, then leave.

Yes, people can learn from those who are better than them. It's how I got so good. I found people who used sneaky tricks in battles to outwit their opponents, and adopted them. I made a few up too, though I may not be the first to make them up. The thing is, I don't want to carry a bunch of noobs who aren't trying to improve themselves - they just want to throw snow at the other players. That's fine by me. They can go have fun losing - by themselves.

In NuDE, we don't often leave at the beginning. It happens to us more often than we do it to others. And remember, we can't do it more than once an hour now without our gaming getting restricted. We do it a lot less often for extra security.

We do leave at the end, and often. It's because we have another sync starting, and we have enough experience to know that our team won't last long - we have better chances with more of our buddies. Don't worry - the team we leave at the end will get another teammate for the next battle.

Also, when I join a team where I'm the only one trying, and I'm playing with randoms? I leave even when I don't have anyone to sync with. I'd rather have a different random team than my current team. I have better chances with a different random team whom I don't even know yet, than a team of 3 people I know won't try.

And, we can still recruit people while syncing. Just this event we got one, if not two new people. We fight against them, see that they have skill (and we can see it better because we're trying to outplay them, and having a hard time), and invite them to come sync with us. A few battles later, we invite them to join.

8v8 isn't really fun in my opinion. In order to have a chance at winning, you have to be on vent, have 8 really great players, and be willing to endure a lot of yelling over vent, hair-pulling, name-calling, and cussing. It's not all hunky-dory have-fun good-time. The people who play that are competitive to an extreme that I don't want to go to. Sorry.

No, we don't need vent, though some other sync groups use it. We have a guild teamspeak server, but we don't log in often, and not during snowball. We don't need it. It's pretty simple to sync any number of people in with just a GW chat channel that works at least most of the time. I'm not gonna reveal our trick, though. We figured it out. So can you if you want.

Yes, the line is linear. I like to think of it as the "Snowball Arena ride at Disneyland". You have a thousand random people entering the line for this ride at random intervals. Then, 8 of us, in a group, line up for the ride all at once. Sometimes people slip in between us, sometimes part of our group gets cut off when the ride fills up, and the rest have to get in the next "car" for a different battle. It really isn't a "Random Arena", but more of a "No-Team Queued Arena", and the name is misleading.

It's a nice idea, staggering the team slots like that, but with 8 people syncing we'd just get 4 of us vs 4 of us, and then the better 4 of us would win an go on to beat all the random teams, so that's sort of like digging your own grave there. Completely random listings aren't hard at all, and are the only way to really eliminate syncing.

Well this has turned into a fun little flame over night*dumps dip on Xan's head*

Its probably been posted a multitude of times in this thread already but i dont feel like wasting time reading pointless banter, But life isnt fair. And ive been in 40-50 match winning streaks, and people seem to have the idea that if you sync you win. On my longer streaks ive rarely fought the same people more than 3 times, and this of course happens around one or two am in the morning when the player base isnt as big. There are alot more random parties than there are sync parties, so if you lose to us once big deal. Enter another game an youll most likely be fighting a random party.

Sorry if we spoil your win streak but this isnt costume brawl and the points per win are the same throughout the streak. Ill agree that syncing in RA is a problem but this is snowball fighting, it comes around once a year and all we want to do is have fun. There are other options to get gamer points if you just cant stand us syncers in the snowball arena. And yes we do lose, ive only had one streak where we quit because we were tired. and during peak hours of play time we generally end up alone in a random team. People seem to think theres always a full team of four of us running around, and during this event its only happened once. Generally youll find maybe two or three at most of us on one team with some random. You generally need four competent people on a team to win, yes ive won with three but even sync'd we can still lose if our 4th is an idiot an wants to write his name in the snow.

And Mangione with your comment of calling us poor souls with our chance of winning is syncing. Tell me if you take 4 crappy players an stick them on one team what do you get. A team full of crappy players, so if your calling us a team full of crappy players then you sir must be an excellent player /grovel. But if thats the case then why are you losing to us. We can win alone in a random team, but we dont have any fun dealing with idiots. And to be honest in a random team either one person leaves or the 4th person doesnt load till the match is almost over or they dont load at all.

And thats my dime an two nickles.

Oh, and lets stop with the trying to see whos syntax is bigger honestly, just because xan wrote a code doesnt mean we need to start poking it full of holes. This is the internet, everyone can build a super computer, everyone is fluent in each programming language, we discovered a cure for cancer and how to end world hunger but decided we'd rather flame things for the betterment of man kind.

you are prob one of those stupid people that use /dance * to get the timing down. It is funny seeing syncers explain to others what to do over local chat.

Actually no, we rarely even communicate in chat, the secret is my squiggly line drawing ability and my PING button

it's not /dance*

it's secret but i can't say it or i'l break the code ya know and some people will prob be angry

The same system is used for various PvE missions and such as well, so it would actually be a large change. Although knowing ANET, who apparently CANNOT POSSIBLY increase the Party Search text limit AT ALL EVER BECAUSE THE PROGRAMMING IS TOO COMPLICATED, this is probably a humongous task.

It seems I have touched some nerve.
I apologize if that's the case, I am not a native English speaker and some words in my language have a different weight than in yours, so something that is not offensive in my language comes off as offensive in yours.
It was not meant to be offensive.

I am sorry to hear that. But I don't find so many bad players.
Maybe my experience in this matter is different than yours because we play at different times.

Another player mentioned "noob hours", a time when there are more inexperienced players than others. Maybe the times I log in are outside of the "noob hours", I don't know.

Maybe you are out of luck getting a lot of bad players, or I am lucky to get good players.

I understand, and you are right in this.
But if the team is bad I try to give directions.
If someone else gives me directions I put aside my pride and follow his directions.
At least I try to play even with player less experienced than me.
Even teaching something to new guys can be fun.
If no one follows directions and people aren't listening to advices, then it is time for me to /resign, or leave.

You are "assuming". Too bad your assoumptions are flawed.

Here's the math. First present comes after 15 seconds the match begins, and others are out after 30 seconds each. So at 2:45 after the match begins, 5 presents have been released on the field. Counting the 15 seconds pre-game and 15 postgame, a team can win a match 5-0 in 4 minutes (counting everything).
Often, with all the leavers and /resigners it takes less.

Before writing my answer to you I entered the arenas and took a note of an hour of my games:
1) 1 player in enemy team doesn't load. We win 5-0. 4 mins.
2) 1 player leaves after we are 3-1. We win. 4 mins.
3) 1 player doesn't connect, another one leaves. Remaining 2 /resign. Less than 1 minute.
4) Match ends 4-5. Long struggle. Almost 6 mins.
5) On my team, 1 doesn't load, another 1 leaves. We /resign. Less than 1 minute.
6) New match. We win 5-2. About 5 mins.
7) Another win 5-1. Less than 5 mins.
8) Two guys beaten in match #6 & #7 leave. Others /resign. Just a couple of minutes.
9) Same guy met in #6,#7,#8 leaves. 5-0, 4 minutes.
10) We win 5-1. Less than 5 minutes.
11) We win 5-0 again. Less than 4 minutes.
12) 5-3. Something more than 5 minutes.
13) 1 bot in enemy team. 1 leaves. We win 5-0 in less than 4 minutes.
14) 5-1. About 4 minutes.
15) We lose 3-5. One of us disconnects and reconnects when it is too late. 5 minutes.
16) Awful team. At 0-3 I leave. Less than 2 minutes.
17) Other team starts argument. They argue among themselves. We win. 4 minutes.

After 1 hour: 13 wins 4 losses.

Then I took a break. After that:

18) 2 guys in team start argument and stop playing. I leave. Less than 2 minutes.
19) Good team. We win 5-0. Less than 4 minutes.
20) Win 5-0 again (one is skillz r4 and another r3, they know what to do). Same.
21) 5-0 again. Same timing.
22) 5-1. 4 mins.
23) 2-0: 1 enemy doesn't load, 1 leaves, rest /resign. 2 minutes.
24) 5-1. 4 mins.
25) 1 enemy leaves at 2-0. We win 5-0. 4 minutes.
26) 5-1. 4 mins.
27) 2 leave at start, rest /resign. Less than 2 minutes.
28) 5-0. 4 mins. One of my team must go.
29) 5-3. Replacement is not so good. Takes 6 minutes.
30) 3-5. Replacement guy disconnects. 5 mins.
31) Bad team. 1 leecher. I leave. <2mins.
32) Bad team. They wander around and don't listen. I leave. 2 mins.
33) I screw up. I do a mistake and we lose 3-5. 6 minutes.

After another hour: 11 wins 5 losses.

So in 2 hours that's a total of 33 matches, with 24 wins and 9 losses.

That seems a pretty good ratio to me.
What do you expect? To win every single match?

On Sunday I was lucky and got a streak of 27 consecutive wins. Waaay less than 3 hours.

You can do the math yourself and see that is physically possible to do what I said.
Before calling someone else a liar, you should pay more attention to your assumptions.


Sure, I am an excellent player, thank you for recognizing that <grin>. /playful_comment_off

Seriously, if I find 3 crappy players in my team I tell them "attack the present carrier" or "use avalanche to slow them down", I give them advices and if they try and screw up I'll tell them "good job anyway, you'll get better at this". If they lose I /resign. And if we are losing after 2 minutes at 0-3 or 1-3 and they just wander around and don't listen, I simply leave.

That's just 2 minutes.

I have never stated that I am losing to you and your buddies.
Please, try to read the messages you are answering to, before "assuming" like your friend did.
I've never met you and your team in the arenas, probably we play at different times.
Check my previuos post. I wrote clearly that I don't care at all if you sync.
Your friend Xaniera said that syncing was the way to score victories, because otherwise every single match would have a defeat as a result, I am not experiencing this.
I simpy find the need to sync quite sad.

I have to say I don't really see a point to this. It is a random draw, if people try to synch to get into SA, let them. They still have a random chance of getting paired up with their friends, or getting paired up with a complete group of strangers. Now yes, I do see the point if people try to synch in, they don't get their team, and they quit to try getting their team again. But from what I've read this is just an argument about SA synching in general, and not about people quitting and crippling a team because of it (correct me if I'm wrong?). Given a choice between playing with random strangers and people that I consider friends during a festival, I would opt for the latter.

And I think it's also prudent to mention that this is Snow Ball Arena, not Random arena. In RA I can sort of see the point becuase, if you're lucky enough to get teamed up with your guildmates in the first place, you could use some sort of team based build. But it's Snow Ball Arena. Your build is fixed, so there's no way that it really gives you an advantage. Yes, I suppose proper communication is helpful, but.. how? You can tell people to target that guy over there instead of control clicking him? That's not really anything more than a random team would start to do after 2-3 runs together anyway.

Also, how do we know that the grouping is based on some sort of line order? I would assume random means random, so when the timer hits 0:00 everyone gets assigned a number and then is randomly placed in the active games starting at that point?

As for syncing: its a lame excuse: "i sync, cuz i got paired with noobs all the time". Thats just a pure (un)luck.

qft

Anyone defending syncing are probably syncers themselves rofl.

The fact that it works at all is based on the line-ness of the system. If everyone were assigned a random number, then everyone entering at the same time wouldn't work, and nobody would be syncing. Because it gets a list of players in sequence, and then builds teams sequentially, if you have at least 7 people from the same guild in a row, you are guaranteed to have 4 of them all on the same team.


In response to all that: Okay. I'm glad I can have an intelligent conversation with at least someone on here. I probably assumed you were just another complainer like the rest, and responded as such.

Those kinds of times are just not what I'm seeing, except for the good team sometimes winning in 4 minutes or less (which is what we see syncing). Even if my team wins 5-0, it often takes more than four minutes because some of the presents blow up instead of picking up nicely. In fact, one or two of the matches it took 4 minutes just to get the first present, because the first 5 or 6 presents were all fakes. I realize the chances of that are low, around 3% for 5 in a row, 1% for 6, but it has happened.

It may very well be the "noob hours", but we don't get a lot of opponents resigning, either. Sometimes teams that are down to 2 people left won't even resign if we ask them and tell them how.

And, about teaching players, sure, I'm willing. The problem is that so many people won't listen, I've stopped. If one of them comes in and says "hey, I'm not doing very well, can someone show me how to do good?" HEY - I'm all over that, I'll teach him every trick I know in 15 minutes. Short of making a typing macro to go over all the rules and tricks to win in team chat before the start of every match, I don't have the patience to type it in every battle. The problem is, an overwhelming majority of the people I meet just don't care, they're happy to fiddle around and do nothing until they sneak in on three great players who can win for them for an hour.

That's also how a lot of leechers got huge gamer titles (as high as rank 5, that I know of) by joining and sitting at the spawn. They're betting on their team being able to take out the other team without them, which happens a little less than half the time. It works at all hours of the day, though, so you can set it up to auto-enter and leave it. The /report->Leecher system has sort of helped it... A little. There's one guy we've encountered that really does sit around writing his name in the snow, or just about, and then at the end of the game says "laggy...". We can't prove anything, of course, but he rarely even crosses over the river line, and never touches a present. He might as well be a leecher.

Again, I think that comes down to the "noob hours", that you've been lucky enough to avoid. What times do you play?
/playful comment
I'd like in on some of that good random action.
Pleeaaase? What times do you play? /beg!
/end playful comment


To others, nope, no /dance * either.

/blinks at azilon
Why, exactly, do I have an oozing puddle of cheese dip on my head?


And, I have to agree with the statement on frequency - You don't see us very often, and when you do, if you get beat, big deal. Might've been some other random team. If you'd like, we can all go join random guilds and organize syncs anyways, you'd never know that we were all from the same coalition of friends. We can even take on random names like "Underwear Man", "Leet Nub Sauce", and "Dip Buddy".

If you don't like getting beat by us repeatedly, wait sixty seconds after exiting the battle before joining again. That guarantees that we'll already be fighting another group by the time you get in. (Thirty seconds is enough most of the time, but not if our timer restarts.)


Edit: As of now, I'm forming a new guild to add to our alliance, RuDE. No focus on PvE or PvP, just massive 20-man syncs every holiday event. Anyone wanna join?

j/k!

Yeah, I've seen this happen a lot of times. In my games yesterday night, it happened that even if they were losing 3-0, then 4-0, the enemy team, even if outnumbered due to a leaver, stood the whole match. (See #9, #13, for example). I stayed in a 3vs4 even if one of ours got lag and disconnected (#15).

But usually an opposing team isn't a big trouble when outnumbered.

When I see my team is losing I ask my teammates to /resign to save our time and the time of other players in the opposing team. I discovered that some players believe that there is some sort of penalty in resigning from a game, like they won't be able to enter a subsequent match or something along the lines of that. Some don't listen or don't believe you if you tell them they are wrong. Some players get mad at them for this behaviour and begin to shout at them things like "noobs" and such. The thing I do is telling them "Do you think I would /resign if it was something that prevented me from joining another match or gave me some penalty?". Sometimes this works better than any name calling.



I don't know exactly what times the other poster was referring to when he spoke of "noob hours".
During the holidays I played before lunch at 12:00/13:30 (my time = GMT+1), then after lunch 14:30/16:00 (again count this time as GMT+1).
I have the impression, backed up by no data, that I find more unexperienced players after lunch than before, it is just an impression, I may be wrong (maybe kids that are allowed to play only a couple of hours after lunch before doing homework? I'm just guessing...).
The matches mentioned in my previous post were from 22:00 to 00:00 (GMT+1) (When I posted was 00:35 here while the forum time was 5:35 AM).

P.S. - I am taking a vacation to celebrate the end of the year with my gf. Train leaves in a couple of hours and I'll be back on next monday, so I won't be able to answer again before that day. See you next week.

Oh yeah, the NuDe guys..I've played against them once. Had 14 wins before one of our guys left and was replaced by a level 8 newb who stood around spamming snowball. Good fight though.

On that topic if anyone wants to sync pm me. I'm not fantastic but I'm not that bad either.

On a side note, for the guys here who think we are syncing all the time, see this:
gw109.jpg

This was with a "random" team with the following people: Alice Co Oper (me), Dan Goes iddqd, Ronald Mc Ninja and Steph Le Pelerin. And before anyone complains, I've got their permission to post this... and their names.

I've brushed out the two other players because Dan and Ronald left at 100 wins. In the end me and Pelerin have gotten to 106, but we went to bed right after.

Tbh I have been on more random teams than I've been on synced ones. The people who are complaining here are the following:
1. People who always lose because they are 'bad'.
2. QQ'ers.
3. People who like to troll and moan about everything.
3. People who are bored and have to much time on their hands.

Besides this i'm pretty shure 99.9 % of the replyers in this thread have never played against us...

Oh and I can provide more screenhots up to 86+ wins with random teams..

I had a long answer, but I decided not to give you the satisfaction.

1. You're insulting the other side of discussion. This means you are simply trolling.
2. The fact you can endure more than 50 cons games in RA makes me sad.
3. The fact that you created an account only to reply to this thread and defend your pr0 guild makes me even a sadder panda.

You sir are the troll here,
Please point me to the part where I'm insulting. I pointed out that if you always lose a snowball battle, that it is your own damn fault.
You amuse me with your replys, keep going on ... . You're like the kind of people that blame their loss on their teammates and the opponent.

And open for once your eyelids, this wasn't RA but SA.
I play this game for fun, that's why I can endure 50+ wins. And open your eyelids again, I joined a couple of days ago because I wanted to post something in the screenshot section of this forum, clearly it was pure coincidence, so your arguments fails again.

Anyways your own post points out how a sad person you are. Maybe that a couple of snowball games can cheer you up?
<3

-How is he defending his pr0 guild then? posting he can win with pugs isn't defending his guild lulz

-and if some people love to play SA arena and love to get alot consec win who cares

Anddddddddd

Beginner of thread said /qq meaning it's a QQ thread


posted by Kamatsu in an other thread:

QQ is forbidden so this thread should be closed

Thanks for the explanation on the 8v8, sounds like it would be extremly stressfull and not fun at all. I can definitely see your point of view. Sound like you're enjoying the game and in the end that is really what matters.

I took a break from the Rift Warden quests and spent some prime time hours in SA last night in English District and I can see why the frustration. Typically spend my time in International, quieter and more mature there. I was unaware of how bad it had gotten, spent a majority of the time either minus players or directing people to the avatar, really loved the guy that dropped the present back in the starting room. that was really funny. Kept instructions to a minimum, some caught on some didn't. That guy took the next present to the avatar, only later to take a present to the wrong avatar in the following game, got him turned around fortunately.

Went back to International and noticed a marked improvement. Your mileage may vary. Ran into many of the same players repeatedly with different guild tags. Got beat down 3 games in a row then finally broke em up, only to have our team get broken up 5 games later. 2 more zkeys when it was all said and done! More enjoyable experience there than English disticts.

Not sure why anyone would justify syncing with "I always get noobs." Unless it's an arms race or something, and you're resorting to syncing because you keep facing other syncing teams, you should actually be facing random teams with just as many noobs as you get. In fact, there should usually be even more noobs on the other team (after all, your team will always have you at least, so you have 3 slots that can be noob opposed to the other team having 4). Well, unless you're also a noob, in which case you would statistically get more noobs on your team than the other for the same reason (less slots on your team for a good player).

Trying to justify his guild's syncing is defending his pr0 guild. Sorry you can't see something so obvious.

show me a sentence that tells that he's defending his guild then

he says that he and others can win alot without syncing. While others say that because of the syncing they can't win

the pic proves the opposite. You don't need to sync to win.

Oh and too many sync teams kicking you out of the arena then go to english,american dis less syncers there cause it's more crowded there ya know


I know.


*waiting for mods to close*

You have shown that sentense yourself. Right now. He defended his guild by saying they don't need syncing.

But then again, if you don't need stereoids, why do you take them?

but even then you're mad at someone if he says that they don't always sync?

pathetic lol your funny

and btw i don't take or need steriods, dunno but it seems you are taking them seeing the way you are reacting

It's a problem they can deal with but choose not to because it's not considered a big enough problem despite countless threads on multiple fan forums over 3+ years. When you consider fan forums only represent a small percentage of the player base, it goes to show the possible extent to which this practice griefs people.

A new thread with 6 pages and I bet they still won't do anything. So the moral of the story is that two wrongs make a right and you should go ahead and abuse it while Anet concentrate on banning people for having 'smeg' in their name.

QFT

P.S. Abedeus, you really should drop your analogies - they aren't helping your arguments... at all

Why do people really have to sync. Its a snowball fight, I mean cmon its just supposed to be for kicks and giggles, let everyone else have fun.

for someone who likes to label other players as noobs, might I remind you that, when a group of 4 players lost, all 4 players immediately becomes noobs in each other's mind, lol, if you only think the other 3 players are noobs ... how come when this other 3 players when they team up with one other player who are more willing to play with Random players, now without you, who think all other are noobs in their team, could go on and wins streaks of battle?

Not really. If I lose in RA with my Monk (which is dirt easy to play in RA), usually I find 2 people that are bad and one that has a decent build. Because in RA usually skillbars decide who wins, skill not so much.

^^ see, that's the problem, no one ever thinks its their problem that the group is not winning, its always the other 3 players who you or I have no idea if they are good or bad at playing the game. maybe if you monk even better then you think you've been doing , you could bring "3 noobs, definition undefine" to victory.

Its exactly the same as in HA, if a group fail to gain 10% morale boost, it must be the new guy that's at fault, where in fact, this is a personal experience, some "pro" HA players trigger the timer while the leader is explaning and then the new guy gets kick for pinging that the timer has been triggered.

Its random arena, no one even give random player or themselves a chance to get accustom to each other's play style, immediately /rage quit, or point fingers and call every one noobs then proceed to sync spoiling the game for even more players, when found out that they are unable to win without syncing, they use "because everyone else are a noob" as an excuse...

this is what syncher reminds me of. and at the very least, Cartman took the trouble to pretend he's disable, where syncher still think they are good and clever in cheating the system.

It is simple.
you can not make up rules without applying them.
If the rule is that synching is not allowed, action should be taken against those that synch.
This has not happend since GW was released, and synching has been around for the same amount of time.

rule -/- force to apply the rule = not very powerful

Another option is making synching impossible, but that maybe impossible.

Unless something changes the way ANet governs synching, it is here to stay.

Any more petty arguments over specific groups rather than the issue itself will cause this thread to end.

Noone wants to be stuck with some idiot PUG who runs around in circles doing nothing. Sync or not, don't complain about it. You can do it yourself to and beat other syncers out there. You guys take a fun event and manage to find ways to bitch about it whether it's about syncing or QQing about not getting a silly Polar Bear. You guys are forgetting what the event and game is truly about.

One way I define noob-ism / pro-ism in snowball is:

1. When I can take on all of the guys who think they're really good (except a few) in a 1-on-1 and win, I'm pretty sure I'm pro. If someone can beat me, he's pro too.
2. When 2 can beat me, they're at the very least good.
3. When 1 can almost hold your own against me, he's pretty pro.
4. When it takes 3 minimum to steal a present from me, I doubt they're very good.
5. When I can beat all 4 on the opposite team single-handedly, they all suck and are noobs.
6. If all the guys that are pretty good can thoroughly beat someone, and that someone can thoroughly beat me, I suck (yes, I consider myself going straight to "suck") and I need to improve, fast. (This is how I got good - recognizing that I suck by extremely high standards, and then rising to meet / exceed those standards - by watching the really good players instead of griping about them.)

The people I sync with are, for the most part, in the 1st category - either I can barely beat them or they can barely beat me, and either of us can take on numerous other nooby players and win - unless those players are good themselves.

For example, most people I can just go and whack, steal a present from, and run it up with little to no trouble. It goes back and forth more times with more skill on the other guy's part. (Or more help for him from his team.) On the other hand, Hearts (from NuDE) and I can fight over a single present for 3 minutes nonstop. Snow forts, blinding snow, double/triple hidden rock cancels before an actual H.R. cast, throwing snow, dropping Avalanches, mega snowballs, snow down the shirt and ice breaker all come into play. Usually the one of us on Dwayna's side wins, which is no big surprise - everyone knows they have an advantage. Occasionally the winner is the one who started with more health and therefore had to use snowcone earlier. The real Leeloo just spanks me blind, unless she disconnects - which has been happening a lot lately.

One might also note that if people complain too much about the really good players, which are ON their team about as often as they are against them, those good players might all leave snowball completely because of all the complaining. Then SA will be reduced to 4 noobs vs 4 noobs, with winning a random chance happening. And yes - it will be random. But there will be no such thing as a "good team" - just "a team that won this time, and may or may not win the next." That means few to no winning streaks - anything past 6 in a row has less than a 1% chance of occuring.

We've brought along countless random people in our syncs - especially the ones where we get 3 NuDEs and go for a long while. Some of them didn't even deserve the points and candy cane shards they got, they were so bad, and impervious to even the most generous and helpful pieces of advice. You didn't see us posting threads about how evil the noobs are, though. And, some of them were good, and contributed to the positive play environment and team effort. Thank you to all of those people.



AND, if you think we don't deserve to be winning? Have a look at the botters. We just got a 3-man sync with a bot, whose name contained the letters H, O, O, and Y (not in that order). You'd know him if you saw him. He always, first off, runs out of the gate, and waits. Then he randomly moves around a little, never moving very far at a time, or throws a snowball at the nearest target. Never anything else. He's not ever late to a battle - his connection ALWAYS works fine when loading the map. About a minute in, he'll comment "laggy", or "really bad lag here", or something to that effect. He doesn't talk otherwise. You could tell him what an awesome job he's doing, or call him names I dare not utter here, and he won't say anything. As far as we can tell, he's on 24 hours a day. All snowball event long. And the events before it. Wanna know how many battles he wins, and how many points he gets doing that?

Look up the points required for iddqd Skillz, (rank 8) and you tell me.

By the way - that 3-man sync with this dude? We disbanded after the first match. We won 5-1, with one useless player, against decent opponents, and dumped him so fast we were into another battle before he even hit the ground. Ideally, we would have dumped him before the match started, but then we'd get dishonor points, the leecher system isn't robust enough to remove him from our team. All we could do is let him have 10 points, all report him for leeching, and try again. It's the only way to really deal with leechers.

Oh, and he's on someone else's team way more often than he's on ours.

In related news, most GW players are knobs and feel compelled to cheat so as to ruin everyone else's fun for a stack of digital icons.

As a reference, note all the people trying to justify cheating with "b-b-but it should be MY WAY OR NO WAY WWWAAAAHHHH!" in this thread.

The easiest solution is to just not play, sadly, because the devs don't really care and ANET doesn't have the money to fix it even if they did care.

great, another syncing QQ thread.

syncing is not cheating.

Well put Xaniera.

From what I have seen posted here this seems to be main reason for syncing. Does the ability to sync have unintended benefits? Guess we need to ask the question:

You will not exploit any bug in Guild Wars and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Guild Wars. Bugs should be promptly reported via "Ask a Question" at
http://support.guildwars.com

waiting on the reply.......

Damn girl, that's one hell of a strong argument you're providing there!

Whats needed is a non-random version of the SA just like a RA/TA then people who want to play in teams can.

oh wait.... people still feel the need to stack the odd in their favour in the name of "fun"

The possibility to sync is NOT a bug, the A-net developers chose NOT to use the randomize function,... If you see a bug here, you need to rent a basic "how to program course", before spouting nonsense!