Costume brawl 2010

I'm not against playing with friends. I don't know where you ever got that idea. However, I do believe that I'm in the same boat with ANet when I say that players being able to form groups in what is meant to be a random-style format is a problem.

If you want to play with your friends, I suggest you try TA AB, Codex, HA, or GvG. If you're still looking for a festival experience, look forward to the Snowball tournaments in a couple months. If you're stubborn and want to be able to make teams for Costume Brawl, you're shit outta luck. Too bad.

Also, I didn't realize that the four other teammates in your CB team don't qualify as "other people."

My sentiments exactly.

CB was the best format for me and I've been looking forward to it since they closed down last year's event. I just want to play with 2-3 of my friends in a format where both tactics and individual skill matters. CB was perfect for this. Easily accessible and lots of tactical depth. I would gladly PAY my lame gamer pts or gold to enjoy the format as I did last year.

Now the tactical aspect is sucked right out of it, an outright slugfest. I thought we had RA for that.

Pfft, just play anyway. If someone's calling you noob, they might be a PvE'er too, you know.

Some guy called me a noob last match because I suggested that we split when we started to get out-capped. Some people are just idiots. Don't worry about it.

If you enjoy it, enjoy it. I've already gotten a stack of ToT bags from the CB, and I'm still doing it (even though the shuffle thing is annoying).

Love the random teams. I don't have to worry about getting a hot streak when I don't have much time to play, and no cheating syncers.

I don't understand the complaints about the builds all being bad. It smells like fear of builds that aren't familiar, and everyone is on equal footing, so why give everyone the builds that have been arbitrarily chosen to be the "best" RA builds?

well, maybe because ta is deleted, AB can be played any time, same with ha and gvg except those are pretty horrible formats now, and codex is in the coffin?

and why exactly does ppl wanting to play the old cb have any relevance to snowball tournies???

because ppl complain about the new change, you tell them to f off? if thats how anet ran their business then lol....

I don't even want a full team though to sync. I just want to be able to play with like 1 or 2 friends. I could care less who or what skill level the rest of them are. I mean I suppose there are other people who are ruining it by syncing full teams to farm their gamer points or whatever, but.. I dunno.

*cry*

Just a quite similar rendition of my Wartower-Post to this Topic, because i wanted to share it w/ the whole community. And ofc i also rly hope you'll read it Regina and take it to heart:

First Reaction: Euphoric, overjoyed, delighted - finally no syncers anymore, finally a fair Costume Brawl....fine so far.

BUT this is only one aspect of this terrible Update, the obvious part and the only good thing coming w/ it.

Because if you are thinkin twice about it, what farther consequences, fallout will come along w/ this Update?
- Guild Wars always was a wonderful game, cauze of the social, tactical PvP.
Over rounds and rounds together in game you were becoming firm friends, having gorgeous conversations etc. etc. . Thus far to the social aspect. Now to the tactical: Before the Update, Teams rly were Teams. Not a motley crew of "mayflies". As time goes by players in teams could synchronise with each other, find always new, better elaborated tactics. They just could play in a dynamic, vitalised way, like it wasnt possible in any other Game.

But w/ the Update all this is gone. Just blown away as dust.
So i am asking you all why are you cB'in anymore? Every game is only like "hi"-"ggoogo"-"2-1-2"-"bb"-"Next Morons". Srsly, there is NOTHING of the inner-soul, the heart, the Spirit of PvP left, but the name. It's like playing alone, solo, w/ characterless henchmen/bots or identically a pure Offline-Single-Player-game.

And believe me as a single Player game Gw isnt nearly as gorgeous than as a multiplayer one. So after this fallout i only can quit the Event w/ a very, very sad head-shaking and change to a wonderful single Player Game, the good kind of Fallout: New Vegas.

At least i wanna apologize for the pretty bad english ( its really late here, and i nearly fallen asleep several times) and for the bad pun in the end.

PS: Results of 2 Hours CB'in after the Update:
~ 1-3 Rage-quits every 3rd round, ~ 1 Leecher every 5th round, bad and cruel insults, flames, etc. nearly every round. Thanks for spoiling the Halloween-Event (i nearly couldnt await till months) and my Faith in your great sense for phenomenally PvP, you've shown so far.

Lots of love
Exo

I'm not much of a PvPer (never done GvG, HA, TA, and usually avoid RA and AB -- I stick to JQ and FA, you know, the PvE ones) and have never done Costume Brawl before. I wanted to try last year but none of my friends were interested, and I thought I might be at a disadvantage going it alone.

This year's update for purely randomized teams lured me in, so I took a quick look at the wiki page, hopped on my elementalist, and jumped in.
I'm a noob. I didn't know what I was doing (the different shrines give advantages? Cool, I'll have to look that up). I won 5 consecutive games. No one called me names. I had fun. Ironically, the one I lost was the one where we had an "expert" drawing all over the radar. *shrug*

However, just because the teams are random, I'm not sure why an individual can't get a bonus for consecutive wins. Seems to me you deserve it more if you can get consecs with new people every time.

When you are done QQing, I would encourage you to come up with some kind of idea of addressing your concern that isn't "revert it" and has more reasoning than "because now it sucks" and put it here.

I like the idea of random teams every round, although it would be better that teams would not be able to sync in first place. I think the random teams are a workarount until the syncing is fixed (say... never?)

Btw: Which one is the new map?

thx for your offer, but ill have to kindly decline because gw is pretty much dumbed down to the point of being worthless, that it is pointless to make any sugesstions at all.

in addition, are you telling me that suggestions in sardelac will matter or be taken srsly by anet? thats some interesting news!

i myself am pretty much done with this game anyways, now that hb ta cb is all gone. pz

on ther contrary I had 8 consecutives and the last one where I lost was when the team didn't follow my drawings... sad...

and yes I like to call people idiots when they go 1v4 for the third time

there is a huge difference between losing 20-2, and losing 20-19 ya know? while losing to 20-2 is because the idiocity of the other players(teammates), losing to 20-19 is a very intensive play and the other team turned out to be better, I hope you can feel the difference

So that his post ends up in your domain and you get to exercise "mod authoritay" and feel all righteous and powerful? Pretty much ensuring that Anet won't ever take a glimpse at his concerns? Unlike sardelac those gurumembers with their names in red actually read this part of the forum.

Besides this thread mainly serves a purpose of letting people vent some steam, for surely no one believes Anet will actually make any big changes to GW1 at this point.

Why is the ranger bar always so good? I try to play something else, but every year I fall back to my ranger, as A.net keeps giving us natural stride, troll, pindown, and savage shot.

Those skills plus a preparation + any damage dealing elite just makes this too easy

I'm disappointed with the new random format. Certainly the old way had its problems, but I don't feel that this is really an improvement.

The old version:

Benefits:
-don't have to retrain team each time you enter
-feels more like a team effort

Drawbacks:
-syncing-actually not that bad because there are so many people playing
-raging and griefing

The new version:

Benefits:
-no syncing

Drawbacks:
-each map is more about luck than anything else
-actually get more bad teams, since if you didn't get one on your first match, you have a chance to get one on the next
-raging and griefing

So from my analysis, we sacrifice two benefits for one benefit and more drawbacks. Feel free to add more to support or diminish the case against the new format.

benefit: your opponents are also bad?

The only reason you would lose more games than you win now is if you can't lead your team to a victory.

Please note my usage of the word "lead" and not the word "carry".

That's not a strong argument; it doesn't address the problems between the two formats. There are still no-shows, greifers, or those who simply don't want to follow orders in both formats. The problem is that you'll actually come across more of it in the new format.

But is this something that you want? A bunch of bad players stumbling around. I believe that the costume brawl attracts enough players that their is enough variety of teams for all players of all levels to enjoy.

good, leave please. Im sure many of us don't want people like you doing cb anyway. Its supposed to be a festival format for fun. Your previous posts make you look like an elitist ass so I think many of us couldn't care less if you leave.

In my opinion, costume brawl is perfect just like it is. The builds arn't supposed to kill super fast anyway. Why would they in a format with little reliable healing? The overall offensive power of the builds is just like they should be.

While i personally never hit 100 wins. I do recall getting to 40-50 a few times with legit random teams. It doesn't take much to be good.


Quit playing at dead hours in a dead game. You play HA at dead hours you'll face the same team over and over again too.

Anyone who played at peak hours or even just outside peak hours never faced syncers repeatedly.

I put up like 4k points last year, playing at all times of the day. Peak time was the easiest to play. Most people on and easy to get streaks. Playing at 5am on the other hand. You start to occasionally wait to face a team and face the same people occasionally. IT HAPPENS!

I don't mind losing to a syncer at 5am in a dead game. If i start losing to bad syncers, then maybe its time to go to bed.

But seriously. Its a bad fix for ANET original coding failure.

I will admit they did a fairly good balance job with the builds, however they made players have too much defense. Its obvious why they have to much defense too. Its because they want to make sure each class is fairly balanced in 1v1 versus all other classes.

Its cool. I'll just farm and bork the economy more with everyone else. Rip off some kids for their tots, sweets and other things people are under selling and make some money.

Its not fun playing with random kids for hours on end. End of story. I'm too baked to try and formulate more arguments against it. Its obvious if you look past all the syncer hate....which wasn't honestly that big problem.

yes, the typical attitude to someone with a dissenting view, how intolerant.

i mean, instead of attaking me, why don't you look at the arguments i put up. or are you so intolerant that you are going to ignore whatever i say just because you dont agree with me? in which case, who is being the elitist here?

<3 random teams. Death to synching, death to "oh crap I finally got a good team, can't quit now...."

Now, it's just fun with random people, like it should be.

Ever think that you're not supposed to? If the arena's not fun random, play something else. If you need uber competitive play...well, maybe they should do something like a CB AT, like the snowball AT.

Whatever... there really is no point to this since you arn't going to change your views (no one ever does on this forum), but ill go ahead and attempt to argue with you anyway...

So? Thats part of it being random. Random team formats arent supposed to be super competitive. You win, you lose, its all up to chance. That is the whole point of it being random and thats how it should be in my opinion. Costume Brawl shouldn't cater to the hard core PvPers because it attracts all types of games - casual, PvEers, PvPers. It is supposed to be a laid back, casual PvP that people do for fun in the spirit of the halloween festival. It shouldn't be a super competitive PvP format.

This right here is why I called you "an elitist ass". Try being more tolerant of the players. Like I said, this is a format for all skill levels and all types of players. Therefore, you are going to see both typical PvPers (what you would consider "decent") and casual PvEers in addition to the occasional newbies. It is supposed to be an arena of mixed skill and game experience, so stop being so damn judgemental and calling PvEers who don't have much experience in PvP dumb or brainless.

Not true. You're just an intolerant player who obviously expected the format to be more competive that it is. It is supposed to be a casual format that all types of players can compete in, not just your "skilled" teams of experienced (or more experienced than us PvEers) PvPers.

I must laugh at people who are specifically saying that they're upset that they can't synch with their friends anymore. I can maybe get behind people who are upset that you can't fight with the same random bunch of strangers and get used to playing with each other over multiple fights; I do miss that part of the game. But...missing the specific thing that ANet wanted to stamp out? Heh. No sympathy from me.

Also: new map looks really nice. Need to play it a bit more to get a better feel for it.

I'm not sure this format is best for any player type. It's too random. However, the question that should be asked is what do casual players want from CB and does the new format really satisfy that?

To win matches: Not sure if the new format really changes this all that much. Syncing isn't really a problem until the off hours (where most casual players don't play anyway). At best, now everyone has a equal chance of winning, but might as well make it a lottery then.

To play with their friends: Old or new format, this wasn't easy to do on CB outside of off hours.

To improve their play style: Not really possible in the new format because it is too random. The better players are already unhappy with this format. A bad player becoming a good player, will just become as frustrated as the other good players.

To farm points: Is farming a casual activity?

To experience some pvp: Without tactics or the opportunity to improve yourself and see results, this format really isn't pvp at all.

You have 30 seconds to tell players what to do or draw on the mini-map, most of the morons are tellng you what to do and no one ends up listening to anyone. I like the new take on 'leadership'.

Then do that every game....great. No thanks. I can go lead folks in AB if I want to do that.

So, in your argument, skill has no place then? Tactical knowledge? All this is really carrying bad players, or put up with folks leaving, yelling insults when then they run into a group of 5 players. Just might have to wait till the bad players get bored.

Silver

red resign anyone?

Says who? It is a very good format, why throw it away for a 10-day long noobfest? Given a chance it rewards players who can master both tactics and individual skill, teamwork and coordination is rewarded. All the elements are there for it to be a successful competitive format. There is a middle ground you know from being super srs like gvg mAT and this tripe they gave us this year.

Not going to speak for the guy you're quoting but calling the average joe playing CB right now dumb or brainless is in no way unfair to them. I do my best not to get worked up over bad players, but this year this problem is made a lot worse IMO. Previous years when I got some inexperienced people on my team I could at least try to teach them some basic things and help them improve as the streak got longer. It was fun for me to help others, it was beneficial for me to do so since it improved our chances of getting a longer streak and I assume at least some of them appreciated the input. Socially it was a lot of fun too.

UNFORTUNATELY it seems most people nowadays are in fact dumb and brainless and prefer to stay that way. They play pve, they love to grind/farm repetitive tasks and when they pvp they want pve rewards with as little effort and brain challenge as possible. Personally I think this is really sad and I don't get why Anet keeps rewarding this attitude.

Uh, I think most players want CB to have fun. It is also a pretty efficient way to obtain ToT bags for those who want those.

Playing with team mates instead of randoms isn't a problem, playing with team mates so that you can steamroll over randoms with little effort is. If you want to play with team mates, play against other teams.

if you arent serious about what you are talking about, then why do you call out other ppl on that? it seems to me like saying "i dont care what other ppl thinks because im going to blindly believe what i alrdy believe anyways, not even if other ppl raise a valid objection to me"

wait, so if everything is random, no skills, no nothing, then why are we still playing this? why not just play rock paper scissors instead?

in addition, you are trying to go from "opinion" to a normative statement on exactly how it should be. just because its your opinion does not validate any thing you know...

yes, ad hominem attacks are the best.

based on what i say, which you disagree with, you overlook the arguments and proceed to attack me and call me names. who is more intolerant here?

now look here, i honestly dont want to bring the pvp vs pve debate in, because its irrelevant. and stop putting words into my mouth, because i dont think that pvp player necessarily equate to decent players, nor do i think that pve players are naturally bad. you are completely missing my point.

my point is that, for some players who are experienced and knows what to do, but does not get the proper support/cooperation of teammates, it is a very frustrating experience for them. and this new system amplifies that, to the point that, in lots of games, there is no team work and the experienced players are completely overwhelmed and helpless when they are simply trying to win. and this will drive players away.

heh, more personal attacks, and even more unfounded claims on my personality. you are a psychologist, arent you?

ofc i know your going to say something about pvp players being elitist blah blah blah, and say something about me being intolerant to pve players. but i dont want to get into that so lets just drop it. but plz, just because theres more pve players, does not mean you get to neglect all the concerns of the pvp players, like anet did. if you want to promote your fairness, you better consider both sides of the argument instead of being biased to one. pz

Random teams FTW!

Is it fun or just efficient? Anet could make it a dice game with the same effect.

Huh? I didnt say I wasn't going to listen to your objections. I just said that most of the time, thats what people do. How many times have you actually seen someone "persuade" someone else on this forum with their arguements. People are stubborn, but I never said I wasn't going to listen to your post. On the contrary, I said I didn't expect you (or anyone who already disagreed with me) to accept any of my arguements for the above reason. Regardless, this is kind of off topic...

Uh, what? I never said everything was random with no skills and no nothing.



Yes, I understand that this is your point. My point is that you shouldn't be so frustrated because this is (by nature of being random and a once-a-year festival event) not a competitive format to the extent of GvG and HA. If you want teamwork, then play the competitive formats. That is why there have always been more competitive (GvG/Ha) and less competitive (RA,FA,JQ,AB) formats


You can't expect every format to suit both competitive and noncompetitive players, can you? That is why there are many different PvP formats. While you may say that it is unfair that the "special" festival event be an uncompetitive format, and while I may agree that it is a little unfair, it simply can't be both a competitive and uncompetitive format at once and since there are more PvEers and casual players playing, it only makes since that this PvP format be more layed back. Casual players stay away from the competitive formats because they don't fit the mentality and the playstyle of an uncompetitive "playing-for-fun" player.

I typoed on that post. The first sentence meant to read "I think most players play just to have fun."

EDIT: Basically, my entire arguement boils down to a statement made by Mr. Undisclosed in the other halloween thread:

I really can't state it any simpler or plainer than this.

I like the changes to CB. I thought it was supposed to be completely random anyway? They should make it more random! Like everytime you start you get a random build(from a set of premade builds). Anyway, Happy Hunting... Or not.

OR things could just be bad right now because people who haven't played costume brawl before have to get used to the game mechanics and skill bars. ie, eles using whirlwind not understanding it isn't a long range spell, etc

Sure, you can "coach" newbs when you are on a streak. But they will learn. The first couple days always start out like this. Streamrolling through people who don't understand the rules or don't know what to do for the first day or two is the best way to get points (especially snowball). Then people start to learn and the games get competitive and fun. Then they get TOO competitive (with lots of jerks in chat claiming they know the "best" strategy and spasming all over the mini map).

I dont mind the new changes to CB except the random teams. it just lost all of its fun. The best part of gw just got annoying. Somehow it surprise me that im disappointed. Way to go anet

ok, let me point to exactly what you said earlier:

yes, according to you, ALL up to chance. now ur not gonna go back on what you said and revise your statement are you?

omg lol, dont even get me started on gvg/ha. these formats are "competitive"? ra, fa, jq, ab is competitive? lol? the days of them being competitive are long gone.

as for the gamer festivals; yes, i am one of those ppl who only play festivals. me and my friends log on only during event games to play them.
that is why i take it so srsly.

if you want to advise ppl to stop being frustrated, you might as well stop, because it is futile. just because casual players play it too, does not mean the experienced players should carry every single match. period. this new system, as i have stated many times before, does nothing to relieve this frustration simply because anet have diverged a long distance from their original goal of rewarding skilled play. to a lot of players, that is unacceptable

that is about 10 times the length and 20 times the punctuation than what is needed to say what you are going to say. which is essentially "yes, i am being unfair to pvp players". if thats the case, then there really is no point talking about this matter because you are just using a circular argument.

..... thats actually a good idea O_o