Recent Alliance Battle Issue

Hi there,

I just wanted to open up a discussion about the recent issues in Alliance Battles.

1.: Ritualists in AB areas (as well as in the !PvP! version of the Isle of the Nameless) use the PvE Spirits, what makes them extremly harder to cap than before (at least for non-caster professions) because a 24/7 lvl14 displacement just sucks.

2.: Mapchanges based on Win/Loose Ratio.

I bet this annoyes the shit out of every daily AB player. Due to the recent superiority of the Luxon side in AB matches, the maps for the last month or so were just "Grenzland" and "Ancestral Lands". Especially the latter one is very annoying. True it is balanced through the faction rewards you get, BUT having to play on deep Kurzick favor territory NEARLY 50% of the times gives only one result:
- Luxons are pissed about the map
- Luxons quit AB
- Kurzicks rush into AB because they have an easy map and are generally way bigger in numbers than Luxon
- Kurzick have eternal wait times (up to 30 x counter restarts, thats FIFTEEN minutes of waiting)
- Luxon have absolutely no fun in AB in because winning on Ancestral is hard work and not happy playing, and if you dont win you usally get steamrolled
- morale drops and even more Luxon quit AB
- the Kurzick queue waiting to tear apart luxons gets even longer
- and so on


So i suggest to introduce a fixed mapchange system that rotates through all 5 maps on a daily or maybe just weekly basis, so you have at least the option to play AB with even odds. I think factions-wise there would be no drawback for those seeking to max their Allegiance titles, since there still is PvE AND the Zaishen quests who can grant very large amounts of faction.


Please Discuss

I agree with everything in this post. Insta-cast spirits are such a pain in the ass! And more maps would be nice, too...

/signed

I'm so sick of being on Kurzick territory because they suck so much.

Believe it or not that's nearly 99% guarantee that the battle queue is full. The luxons are still AB'ing but the kurzicks are joining more and the battles are going on more frequently, and filling up the list.

While a few different maps for each level (deep kurz, mid kurz, mid lux, etc) would be good, from what Linsey told us about how long it takes to put maps and such together, I don't think it'd be worthwhile (don't AB that much though; I tend to only play if we're in Lux territory so theres a better chance of winning).

I stopped playing AB due to the long waiting times. I do not think issue nr 1 with rits is a problem. However I do agree on the map rotation issue. Indeed when playing on Ancetrals lands as Kurzick I spent like 20 min waiting and then played 3 times in a row the same luxon teams...

Read Posts before you answer. I was NOT takling about NEW maps. Just about USING the existing ones.

Im a kurzick player, and im honestly getting sick of playing on grenz and ancrestral Although i love playing on saltspray or etneran. Shame they hardly ever get there anymore

1: Ritualists in AB areas

I don't play melee enough in AB to really be annoyed by the Ritualist spirits, but I suppose you're right that it doesn't make sense for NPC's to use the PvE version of skills.

2: Mapchanges based on Win/Loose ratio

I won't go into your "step-by-step plan for disaster", but I wouldn't mind seeing the maps be put on an rotation by hours:

Ancestral Lands (3~4 hours) > Grenz Frontier (3~4 hours) > Saltspray Beach (3~4 hours) > Etnaran Keys (3~4 hours) > Kaanai Canyon (3~4 hours) > Etnaran Keys, etc.

(you left out one important step by the way: "good" Kurzicks abandoning AB all together, or switching sides, because of the "bad" Kurzicks that ruin their games)

I can totally understand fixing the Ritualists, because that's clearly a bug/oversight. I can't understand the map change feature though. Why would I be fighting on the Jade Sea if the territory border is pushed all the way past Tanglewood?

Shayne, the answer is that for the past month (if not longer) the AB maps Saltspray Beach, Etnaran Keys and Kaanai Canyon haven't seen the light of day, and people are sick of having to fight on the same maps over and over again.

That's why Samurai_Smartie suggests making the map changes (and thus border changes) based on a daily/weekly schedule.

The idea itself doesn't seem like it would change players' attitudes about the arena at all. You'd get the same kind of activity (high Kurzick waits, tough battles for Luxons) on those two maps when they come up, and similar activity on the other three maps. Plus, depending on how you hash the timeslots for each map, some players will complain that the map they want to play on is not available when they play.

Currently, the ones having tough battles on Grenz Frontier and Ancestral Lands seem to be the Kurzicks, due to their losses on these maps there haven't been any major changes of the maps in the direction of Kaanai Canyon.

The 5-map alliance battles have been effectively limitted to 2-map alliance battles as a result, which is the reason for the suggested "time schedule" change.

This is true, but the same thing is happening currently: Kurzick and Luxon players would like to see something else then the eternal Ancestral Lands and Grenz Frontier maps.

With the time schedule mechanism put in place to rotate the maps every 3 hours, for example, a full cycle completion would take 15 hours.

Keeping this cycle in mind, in 24 hours time, 1 and 3/5th of a cycle would be completed, the remaining 2/5th of the second cycle would be the start of the next day. Thus you wouldn't be playing on the same map as you did on the same time a day ago.

I can't remember another map other than Grenz or Ancestral for months and months...

And I play AB regularly.

/signed for the spirits

/notsigned for the map rotation

what would happen:

Luxon favored maps -> fewer kurz will play but because of the low count of lux they will have almost no wait time thus enabling AB for the full duration of xx hours

Kurzick favored maps -> all kurz will rush in wanting easy faction, fewer lux will play cus of this (because they can always wait for their favored map to come). Lux will have no wait time, kurz will have wait times ~30mins thus cutting the AB to yy hours instead of full xx (yy<xx )

it would be obviously luxon favored

keep it like it was - not the systems fault that kurz fail so much so the maps are not changing.
don't blame the mechanics for what players are responsible
if you don't like it get some lux players to swap to kurz to help out the map push

The spirits sound like they'd be an issue. Did the Deep for the first time in ages last night, and insta-Resto was brutal.

Your best bet to move the maps is to go start a thread on how to beat the Luxons in your own map, and get the word out in the community on better strategy. If you're getting housed because every other Kurzick team fails, the Luxon players shouldn't be punished for that.

While Luxons have always had an edge in AB, I think JQ/FA have worsened it lately. Smart kurzicks spend their time there, while smart luxons go with AB. So adjusting these modes could indirectly have an impact on AB.

- Balance Aspenwood some more. I'd rather force turtles to ignore players and only siege attack NPCs, and allow kurzicks to deliver amber even when the green gate NPCs are under attack. Make for alot less of those annoying "get nowhere" green gate mashes. Maybe slightly up the rez timer. A million other suggestions might work better.

- Fix the guard post at yellow quarry so it's in range of the kurzick carrier.

- Raise the rewards on AB some, it is totally outpaced by these two arenas. They are barely even during the double AB weekend!! We know they exist, we don't need excessive rewards to encourage us anymore.

Another approach would be to offer additional incentives for players/alliances/guilds to go luxon to balance the population better, evening out wait times and distributing skill levels in all modes. The best idea there has already been discussed alot, allowing faction types to be converted at a cost, flavored/justified as "spying." This offers the best flexibility because if the wait times are too long, people will accept the extra cost for playing for the other side instead of waiting.

I used to regularly ab but haven't in a while, so I haven't noticed the stagnant map. However, if lux are constantly being crushed shouldn't the map switch back to lux lands? That must mean lux are winning more often than not, which is why the map doesn't change. It is irritating coming into an ab weekend if it's constantly on the same 2 maps all weekend. Why can't they just rotate the maps back and forth on a regular basis, so every time a map change comes up it automatically switches to the next map in the rotation (like a pendulum) which will ensure that all maps get equal play and one side doesn't have a 15 minute wait time.

You dont really understand my approach here.
There are people, and i think theyre quite big in numbers, who take AB very seriously, just like TA or HA maybe.

Those player WILL AB no matter what map. So if its Kurzick or Luxon territory doesnt really matters to them, however what i aim for is giving them the chance to fight an AB with even odds. And i think with a time based Maprotation the bulk of AB will go on on Saltspray, because that is just the neutral Map and everyone can play there without having a reason to complain about anything (other than lvl 14 instacast Rit spirits with highground who tip the favor to the kurzick side yet again).

Just another quote:

And the non-failing Kurzick players as well!

Hold on while I swap to kurzick to play the same map I hate in hopes that the map gets pushed to Saltspray for an hour or two, such that by the time I'm burned out of AB I could play on a map I haven't seen in a while.

Really great idea, if it works then the maps are pushed back after I've been playing for a while. If it doesn't work (which it won't) I'm still playing the same maps, but on the wrong side!

I disagree with this for the sole fact that Luxons can win no matter what map it is. I'm Luxon and I win well over 90% of my AB's, and I prefer Kurzick maps because of the extra faction I get. So the map really never matters for Luxon players. We're gonna win no matter what so why would we not play when we can?

so you're saying if I'm taking AB srsly I should wait for an unfavorable map to me & play with the "pros", instead of playing it casually as it's supposed to be

ok - lux side is "fixed" no argue on that
and do the luxons ensure no wait time for the other side?

ok - look at the current situation in kurz maps:

there is a long wait time even with all the luxons who are forced to play those maps.

you think the map rotation would shorten the time in those maps? hell no
1 of 2 things would happen:
1 - the wait time would be same, which is a downer
2 - the wait times would be longer, which is even worse

Dude you really dont get it.
The current situation is NOT that wait times are so long because MANY people playing. Its the completely opposite, i have acess to both sides and i tell you its mainly 1 half filled district on Luxon Side and about 3 full districts on kurzick side.
So that means that about 40 Kurzick groups wait to get their share from like 8 Luxon groups.

Having fixed mapchanges to actually play other maps than grenz and ancestral would concentrate the bulk of players around the time where its Saltspray Beach, wile on Grenz & Ancestral it will be juts like now, Kurzick > Luxon, and on Etnaran Isles and Kaanai Canyon it will be Luxon > Kurzick.
So wait times will be generally reduced for the casual players and those who wish to have a challenge on Ancestral / Kaanai can still play there, of course with longer waits.