Fix JQ map imbalance

Kurzicks have it easy. They have the shorter run to Yellow quarry, which is very significant indeed, and an easier time operating in the middle because of the diabolical placement of Archers. Luxons need to aggro and take continuous Archer damage before they can get to the Kurzick rear lines; Kurzicks can take aggro, deaggro (the terrain allows them to) and then operate without retribution. Kurzicks can gank green quarry at spellcasting range from the top of the bridge, Luxons can't do the same to purple quarry. Purple juggernaut has a smaller walk distance compared to green turtle, which is why Kurzicks always get the first point of the game. It also means Kurzicks have shorter lengths to run on respawn. In short, the entire arena is heavily biased towards Kurzicks.

I hazard this advantage is worth about 3-4 points over the length of ~15 minutes. I played a game earlier today which, although I won 10-5, would easily have been 10-1 if I had the Kurzick side with all other things being equal. In a map where you win if you get to 10 points, this advantage is absolutely massive. It is a big reason why I win ~90% of my games on the Kurzick side, but less than 50% on the Luxon side. Skill level does play a part, as does the number of bots, but this is more important in my opinion.

If nothing changes, small wonder why there are so many Luxon bots in JQ, and why all the good Luxons play AB. Please fix the map, or award the Luxon side 4 points at the start, or let them play with 10 players against 8 Kurzicks, or something.

While there most certainly are things to fix in Jade Quarry. Your analysis I find lacking and completely biased.

I would start with the archers on yellow side. Either fix it so that the luxon archers will fire on the yellow juggernaut by moving them into correct position, or move the kurzick archers so that they will not fire on the yellow turtle.

while I agree with the above post about there are things that need to be fixed in JQ, but the OP makes it sound like the chances of the Luxons winning is useless and the Kurzicks have these huge advantages

I believe that the OP has just gotten on some bad teams. I can go to JQ just about anytime and I have consistently come away with streaks of wins. While I don't win every match I would say that when I play the Luxon side wins the majority (mainly during the day on the weekdays). I would say the real problems in JQ are botting which has been battered to death in the forums and the leavers which not really sure how that can be battled.

I would say work on your strategy to combat some of the issues that you are dealing with and just have fun.

It seems you have never played Kurzick side at all, and are just upset about losing in Luxon side. You think you have an unfair advantage, yet you've never played the other side, making your post rather biased.

And I can't even take your post seriously when you say "Give Luxon more points at the start" Or "Let Luxon have 10 players versus 8 Kurzick". Really? If that is seriously your suggestion to fixing the problem, then you have no idea.

So, /notsigned till you actually do a bit more research.

I would hardly call it significant. An advantage, slightly. But, not significant. I've played plenty of games where Luxons have gotten to yellow first, when sins use Dash or in the case where Kurzicks didn't use any speed boost at all. In the games I usually play, Kurzicks get 1 point and then Luxons end up capping Yellow shortly afterwards. But, yes. There is a VERY SLIGHT probably about a 2 inch margin where Kurzick is at a shorter length to travel.

*Plus, it takes about 6 seconds at moving 25% faster just for Kurzicks to get to the portals.
That "diabolical placement of arches" makes it so green doesn't score for kurzick 8/10 times.

Not true at all.

Luxons can do it from a few places. That little rock where the kurzick green spawn is, and to the side of the quarry coming up from Green.

This technically is right, but its <1 second.

Again, hardly worth noticing. Especially when farcasters come into the equation because that distance isn't even ran.

*Plus, it takes Kurzicks 6 seconds at moving 25% faster just to get out of their base.

JQ games never last 15 minutes. Most of them last around 8 minutes.

So cut your "nothing short of a guess" in half and that means Kurzicks are scoring about 1.5-2 points more than Luxons / game (*ignoring all skills and player abilities) Now, figure in skills such as Make Haste and Fall Back, and that even more lessens that 1.5-2 points. Now, figure in player abilities. The "advantage" is hardly noticeable.

*PLUS, it takes Kurzicks a god long time to just run out of their base.

When I played on the Luxon side, my team consistantly destroyed the kurzicks over and over again. As soon as the kurzicks get lots of good players on thier teams, that's when they need to fix the problems with JQ. I do agree with the part about yellow archers though, thats an extremely unfair advantage no matter how good or bad the teams are. They really need to fix that.

We're not doing rocket science here. His analysis is solid enough, besides I already know all of this to be true. It should be fix, it gives ridicilous advantages to the kurzick side. Of course, his numerical conclusions are ridicilous.

Also, there is similar things going on in AB. I bet it is on more maps than saltspray, but then it is hard to notice. The battle cry shrine on the kurzick side is closer to the base than the one luxon side is to their base.
These small advantages are absolutely significant.

Not to mention kurzicks win in a draw! In AB, that is.

This does not mean that the game is fair. If a professional soccer player plays soccer against you in solo, while your friends are on his team, he will win. Does this sound like a fair set-up?

True. This is the most significant advantage to kurzicks.

How did you conclude he never played on the luxon side? I didn't find that anywhere. In fact, I found the exact opposite: "It is a big reason why I win ~90% of my games on the Kurzick side, but less than 50% on the Luxon side."
You are good at selective reading, Spyder.

/signed

I seem to win a lot as a Luxon. Probably because I'm smart and always take out the Kurzick main quarry as a Ranger.

The only things that need adjusting in the JQ map are as follows

Reposition Far Shot point on Kurzick side of Yellow Quarry

Remove the Jade rock on approach from Luxon yellow spawn to yellow quarry, there isn`t one on the Kurzick side and its something we actually have to maneuver to avoid when heading for yellow.

Micro reposition of Green Quarry to even up times between green turtle and purple jug.

Award the Luxons a win in a tie, its our home turf after all ! Compared to FA which actually gives the Kurz a bigger advantage as the ' home ' team, JQ is far more open.


As for your point about the bots, the reason they`re nearly all on the Lux side is simple.....vastly shorter wait times to get ingame. They`re used to farm Balt points for Z keys to sell online so the more games they get in the better, from the view of the bot user anyway.

Of course you are going to win a lot if you are somewhat smart (a.k.a. not retarded). Mostly, because most people are not (i.d. they are retarded). I win a lot of FA matches too if I play on the luxon side? You are not going to suggest that FA is balanced, are you?

I'm not saying FA is balanced....

I'm saying JQ is balanced. The small advantages isn't what makes the Kurzicks win.

Did you even read my post? I didn't say that you had. I was trying to point out that JQ is not at all balanced. And I was saying that winning games does not change that.

It isn't fair, that's how things are. The differences are significant if the teams are equally skilled, even if this never happens.

Archers not attacking the yellow juggernaut is the biggest problem. I agree with the sentiment that the maps need fixing so /signed I guess.

Are you kidding ? You realize how imbalanced is mo/p roj build for JQ , not talking about match up 8 melee vs 5 roj monks. And you are talking about fact that archers not attacking juggernaut ?
I will /signed considering it's a game bug , but seriously if you believe that makes you lose games....

The significant imbalance now is that luxons have a higher ratio of bots to people actually playing. I've played kurzick matches with half the enemy team being bots. "Fixing" that would go much further than a few archers.

It doesn't make me lose games because I play on the kurzick side and therefore win all the time. To give you an idea, Archers can easily kill an unsupported turtle.

Stop taking the bait guys.

Yeah that was my mistake as I didn't see that, and I apologize for missing that. I'll admit to my mistake (unlike half of the people on these forums).

But yet again, no reason to start insulting me. Simple mistake. Try to keep it about the topic, instead of making personal comments on other people. Like I told someone else before in the other thread, unless my reading skills is important to this topic (which they aren't), then keep it to yourself.

Still, /notsigned for the suggestions the OP is making. They are ridiculous suggestions. Give Luxon more points to start? Give them more players than Kurzick? No. Suggestions can be made, but those are ridiculous.

So, to sum things up, there IS a slight advantage for Kurzicks, namely the archers on the kurz side of the yellow quarry not attacking a juggie passing by without provocation. Other than that, there is no advantage for kurzicks that I have seen. Some attest to a slight advantage kurzicks have in starting closer to the yellow quarry, but I have never seen this, and it is often that even with a speed boost on the yellow side, the luxons still manage to cap first. I have noticed that kurzicks have to actually get to the central area of the yellow shrine to actually cap it, while luxons only seem to have to reach the outskirts of the central area of the quarry to cap.

Other than fixing those archers on the kurzick side of the yellow quarry, everything is relatively equal. And, saying that, those archers haven't been fixed yet, so I doubt they will be fixed in the future.

Oh, wait, the tiny advantage that the Kurzick gets? It's not a big deal. If you're team is worth it's meat, and is better then the other team, they'll win, easy as that. No way the little bug on JQ is what makes Kurzicks win.

Oh has the sticky purple jugga been fixed? That used to lose the games for the Kurz most of the time.

There are multiple MINOR advantages the Kurzicks have in JQ. Individually they are almost unnoticeable. However, together they equal a definitive bias. /signed

You and me both.

See, I haven't played cappers for a long time, so I don't notice the yellow quarry archers, although come to think of it many months ago when I did play cappers they were there. You evidently don't play carrier-hunters, so you don't notice the middle archer placement - even though they are completely important and vital for the carrier hunter to make his circuits. Here's how.

On the Kurzick side, after you leave the green portal, run down the stairs and head left. There is an Archer shrine up there, and it starts as yours (Kurzick). You can run directly under that to safety. Archers will shoot you, but cannot hit; you are directly below the cliff. In the approach you take one volley of arrows. After that, you can run straight pass them while still hugging the wall. You run past the Luxon yellow portal, deaggro the Archers (you have enough free space to put two full aggro circles between you and the Archers, more if you want to), and now you are free to cover all three green, purple and yellow turtle routes.

On the Luxon side, you can try the same thing. After you leave the purple portal, run down the stairs and head right. There's an Archer shrine up there, and it starts as yours (Luxon). You can run directly under that to safety. Archers will shoot you, but cannot hit; you are directly below the cliff, and you take one volley of arrows. However, after that, the similarities end. There is no way to deaggro while still covering both the yellow and purple approaches; the terrain is simply that way. You are forced to take a second and potentially third volley of arrows as you run past. Which is very bad, because of Pin Down.

This is a critical advantage and arguably more significant than the Kurzick's shorter run to yellow quarry, because it lasts the whole game (carrier hunters cannot really cap Archer shrines quickly). Oh and by the way, it's far easier for a Kurzick carrier hunter to cover yellow + green than it is for a Luxon carrier hunter to cover purple + yellow. There's a shorter run distance to go with the Archer advantage.

Kurzicks start closer to yellow shrine; only way Luxons cap that first is if they have Dash and Kurzicks don't (it's quite common that both sides have 33% speed boosts such as "Fall Back!").

Good players will of course beat bad players. But once you start assuming a skill imbalance then you can argue that Heal Other is a better spell than Healing Burst because a n00b who doesn't read the description might think Healing Burst damages yourself to heal other people.

I think the idea that "Luxons win if they have better players" is true but also utterly meaningless.

The circuit on top of the bridge is important because that's a place where you manoeuvre. Not everyone approaches purple quarry from the green quarry.

JQ games can last 15 minutes when good carrier hunters are operating. Want to see how long it takes for a carrier to run jade, even supported by "Make Haste!" and Cure Hex, vs. someone with Winter's Embrace + Freezing Gust?

If you're going to figure in skills such as "Make Haste!" and "Fall Back!", why not figure in skills such as Kitah's Burden and Melandru's Shot?

By the way when I say I win ~90% of my games as Kurzick I mean it. I once kept count, mainly to compare with Div who also said he won ~90% of his games on the Kurzick side. I remember one 25-win streak I had, I can't imagine that happening on Luxon side.

I believe there are a few imbalances that give kurzicks the advantage. Its easy enough to counter if your team is better. But hypothetically, if both teams were equal, the Kurzicks would win. Thats enough to slightly change the map for a better balance.

If this bug fix also prevents carriers of both sides from getting stuck, /signed.

I too would like to see some jq love, since it is a pretty fun casual arena and a great time waster for me.

There are a number of small terrain differences which do make a difference over time, like the rocks near the kurz archers and such that Jeydra mentioned. The line of sight coverage for the archer shrines is more time consuming as luxon, whether from eating a pin down or waiting for them all to use it.

I can't say that I've really noticed a difference in the run distance to the yellow shrine, since a lot of that is how fast you are off the portal. I almost always can cap it first (vs equal speed boosts) on either side. Of course, I haven't done any real testing so this is just what I've noticed from playing jq too much.

P.S. I stole that shatter build Jeydra.

That's completely player controlled. Only retards play warrior in JQ.

This is incredibly hard to fix. Besides, fixing the archers would be a nice start

Indeed. However:
which is rather significant on its own.

Seriously, do you not comprehend that any advantage is unwanted in a competetive mission? Besides, the advantage isn't tiny. It is actually quite significant. It is hard to notice because generally the difference in skill between two teams is big. On top of that there is the lack of communication within your team, which makes it hard to notice as well.


Nice synopsis, also there is a definitive difference from yellow to luxon/kurzick, respectively.

Warrior comment makes me sad.

Also I'm curious if anyone has done any testing as to the path difference on yellow or any of the carrier times for the quarries.

Map balance means nothing when the "advantaged" team has crappy players. All else constant, the map is still balanced just fine. I find myself losing more than I win, but that's because of dumb random allies, regardless of the side I'm on.

/signed

I'd love to see the JQ map fixed. For all the reasons given by OP.

No, I don't comprehended why it needs to be fixed. How often does the bug make the kurzick team win? Rarely. It's not a big deciding factor. It's player-skill.

There are more problems to worry about in GW than this bug. Because we all know how long Anet takes to fix things.

A good team that capitalises on the advantage of reaching the yellow quarry first will control the first few minutes of the match. If you can interupt the very soon to be cast RoJ you will stop them from retaking it and then you can cripple and pick off the waves that try to retake it from there. It's not a momentary capture, a good capture of a shrine will dictate at last the next 3-5 minutes of play in that area of the map.

Jade Quarry is a balancing game. If the Kurzicks ignore the archers next to the yellow quarry, at no point in the game will they fire on the juggernaut. This is a huge resource advantage as taking an archer shrine will kill an unprotected juggernaut or turtle every single time. This relieves the kurzick players of a lot of pressure from having to constantly hold that shrine because it's effectively not there to them. When you don't have to apply resources to control that shrine you can invest in a stronger offense on the quarry or invest in a stronger offense elsewhere, either way your advantage is twofold - not only do you permanently have that shrine removed from strategic consideration but you also now have extra resources to apply elsewhere. A single ranger can hold off three or four players and never worry about the yellow juggernaut getting killed behind him. This is why that shrine needs to be fixed.

By simply taking the shrine it only triggers a command post message (and that could be any command post) which means shrines are a good way of stealthily killing a juggernaut or turtle without the other team knowing about it. This doesn't even matter for the yellow quarry on the kurzick side because it doesn't fire.

But yes it's true, the state of this arena is nothing compared to some of the balance changes that need to be made to other parts of the game as well as potential additions that could be made to the game.

Even with the slight Kurz advantage is easy for Lux to win.

Cap and hold yellow and its a piece of cake.

Most annoying thing for me is you make haste someone and they don't start running asap so the Kurz cap first.......

Lux home one is pretty easy to cap/recap and the Kurz have a long way to travel to reach it.

Mostly the Kurz home shrine is worth capping if you are ahead or can sneak through to solo wipe it.

One last thing melee = FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As far as I can tell there are 2 reasons the Luxons are at a disadvantage and none of them have to do with the map: Bots and leechers. There are plenty of those on the Luxon side, rarer on the Kurzick side.

How easy it is to win with a good team and how many bots are on lux are separate from the inherent imbalance in the map design. There is certainly a limit to how evenly matched two randomly assigned teams will be, but the playing field should not influence their performance. The changes needed to make JQ even in regards to the map are relatively simple compared to other balance issues in the game, as they are concrete unlike skill balance and the gvg tiebreaker, for example. Of course I don't expect any action by anet at this point, but that could be said for any changes to the game.

You HAVE to consider that Kurzicks can do the same things, except have an easier time and on top of that have the ability to spawn archers that actually attack the yellow carrier. The differences are big enough to form a serious imbalance.

Fact of the matter is the map design imbalance in JQ has been there from the start, Anet haven`t done a thing about it in 2 years, i highly doubt they will now, even though as its been pointed out it would be relatively simple to fix.

Biggest cause of imbalance in JQ on the Luxon side is the 20+ Bots operating there, farming Z keys for their users to sell online , no amount of reporting, screenshots etc from myself and others can get them removed.....because Anets detection procedures are quite simply shyte !

i've played both sides...... and with the fact that its always a PUG group, i personally have no time to pay attention to some minor bugs. no matter the "advantages", in the end its the players and possible teamwork that makes a difference.

This is completely irrelevant. Besides, if you lose more than you win, generally, you should ask wether it is those allies you speak of that are such failures.

Once more, it is irrelevant wether the difference in player-skill between two teams is so large that the inbalance is not the decisive factor in victory. It is still a factor, and a signifacnt one.

As for your second argument, stop using it. It is completely irrelevant to the mere observation that JQ is unbalanced that Anet is understaffed or appearently slow at progamming.

All of you have to comprehend that we are not discussing wether one team is generally better than the other, or JQ strategies for that matter. We are discussing wether this map, jade quarry, is balanced. It is not.

I still don't see how it's a factor. Please tell me how many games win because of that bug?

Bit of a pointless question as no one will be able to answer it !

Kurz purple jug takes roughly 7/10 of a second less getting from A to B and vice versa than the Lux Green Turtle does, so assuming both leave base at same time, both are unhindered and unhasted, by the time one complete trip is done ( base-quarry-base ) the Kurz jug is already 1.4 secs ahead of the Turtle, assume both score 5 times, the jug will be 7 secs ahead of Turtle, in a tight game, 7 secs is a massive amount.