Making the Alliance Battles an more like a Battle!

Redesigning Alliance Battles:

Alliance Battles are a great concept in Guild Wars. Huge maps, tons of people duking it out. However, there are several major flaws in its design.

1. Builds and Armor: Guild Wars AB PvP Balance needs serious adjusting. AB already has a serious problem with team mates following the right person.

2. Capping > Fighting: Capping wins, end of story. What’s in the story? Capping sucks! Run around grab this, run around, cap that, run away from enemies, grab this. Capping should give an advantage not a guaranteed win!

3. Rewards suck: Faction is nice but not worth fighting for!


Alliance Battles has potential, but it’s half done. Therefore you’re having half the fun.

Let’s touch the first major flaw of soft-core PvP. Good builds and good armor. There is a reason why players love Costume Battles and Snowball Battles, it’s all about SKILL.

Codex restrictions suck, mainly because 99% of your favorite skills are mostly gone. How do you fix that?

1. Always give the players 3 set options for builds. Once you enter the AB outpost have an NPC or 2 NPC’s offer the set builds. Have the options rotate hourly and be sure to have many different builds for each class. That way, players are not stuck with 1 build only every day.

2. With the selected set build, it will always have 1 skill that’s specifically AB only called 'Kurzick/Luxon Team Leader.' I’ll go more into this later.

3. Allow players to grab 1 extra skill to add to their build and switch out another. For example, the warrior build has sprint, you can change it for power attack, etc.

Although the builds are set, it feels a bit customizable. Don’t feel like playing a Lightning Ele? Then play a fire Ele. Don’t like Fireball on the Fire ele’s build? Switch it for Liquid Flame. Your armor is set and so will your attributes, can’t go wrong with your choice.

Now the NPC’s will be in the outpost but for an added bonus they’ll be on the battle field as well. The Kurzick/Luxon General will offer skills at your base in battle. So if you’re playing a match and you would like switch from Energy Surge be an interrupt Mesmer instead, go ahead.

Now to my favorite part, remember the skill that I stated in #2? This is what would make Alliance Battles pretty cool. It’s called Kurzick/Luxon Team Leader.

Kurzick/Luxon Team Leader: Skill – You become a Team Leader. All party members within earshot gets 1 health regeneration and 1 energy if a Kurzick/Luxon dies within earshot. You party can only have one Kurzick/Luxon Team Leader active at a time.
Casting time – 2 seconds
Recharge – 15 seconds.

When players are close to the person who has Kurzick/Luxon Team Leader active, they will gain the bonuses. Not only will the skill let you know that you’re leaving your group but it encourages staying together. It's not fun finding your team, this should have to done at the very beginning. Although you can just click and follow a person, this skill adds another level a strategy which is covered in the capping section.

The skill Kurzick/Luxon Team Leader is simple; only 1 player in your party can have it active. So, if your leader dies, a different player can pick it up or if you don’t fell like leading anymore, another player can take control.

When affected by Team Leader, a few things changes that only your party can see. The Team Leader will have a boss aura light around them letting you know who has the skill on them. They will also have an L as an effect on their health bar. When a party leader pings on the map or draws on it, the ping will be blue and the drawing would be red. Once again, only your party can see it. The reason behind this is its simply distracting seeing players with the aura’s running around. Plus you might follow the wrong team if your leader has the same aura as another team.



Okay, next wall of text.

Capping accumulates points needed to win alliance battles. Bad design, bad ArenaNet! You should know better!

Capping should give a small advantage not win the match. It’s not fun running around, kill mindless NPC’s, waiting, rinse and repeat about a bajillion freaking times! Where is the strategy?! I’ll tell you how to fix it.

You see ArenaNet, alliance battle doesn’t feel any bigger than RA. To fix that is simple; each player will have 1 ally NPC following them throughout the match. These allies will be the same profession on your character with a similar build. If you’re a fire ele your ally will be a fire ele, if you’re a protection monk your ally will be a protection monk.

These allies, Kurzick/Luxon Recruit, start at level 15 and can get up to twenty during a single battle. These allies are not super strong, they will have 4 skills at most and they definitely lead a hand for damage/healing. When they die they resurrect, when there are no foes in the area or after a set time plus if they are out of spirit range they will teleport directly to you.

These allies can help you in a fight, but they are also used for something else. Each time they level they get a little strong. Once they go beyond the level 20 cap, their level will reset back to level 15 and you get a Kurzick/Luxon faction bonus at the end of the match. So if your allies NPC level resets, you get +500 faction. Resets 2 times, +1000 faction and so on. Ideally, a good match will have the ally NPC level reset 3 times. These allies will level quickly, not only by capturing shrines but with fighting as well.

For shrine bonuses, once you cap a shrine, if gives +200 max health. Ha, ha, WRONG! These are small advantages. If Kurzicks all have +200 max health or attack and move faster it makes it really hard to win for the other team.

What do you do? Remove the freaking NPC capping guards and shrine bonuses. There is little use for them. For this, all you have to do is wait and cap it. So what would the shrines do instead?

They do four things, add points, upgrade your NPC ally 1 level, access to teleportation, and give an option to change 1 skill on your skill bar.

Adding points are obvious, instead of accumulating points for the number of caps they just flat out add them. They will also level up any ally NPC’s instantly. Lastly, they give the option to change one skill if you select the shrine.

The one skill can be used to replace the Kurzick/Luxon Team Leader skill, it’s not fair that if you have a team leader that 1 of the 8 skills on your bar automatically becomes useless. Shrines will offer different skills, so look out for them. The skill from the shrine goes away once a player dies, so if you want to change something back you can. This will also encourage players staying alive and to capture shrines to switch out the skill.

Change the name Base Defender to Base Reflector. This is out of the blue but must be addressed. Going to a base would no longer an instant kill, the Base Defender is changed to now it teleports enemy players away and knocks them down. Instead of teleporting ‘away,’ they will teleport enemy players to their closest captured shrine.

Talk to the Base Reflector (Former Defender) to teleport to any allied shrine on the map, just like the Reapers in the UW, this guy will take you without walking long distances.

So if caps no longer give points, matches will be longer?

Nope.
Killing a player gives 3 points.
Killing a NPC ally at level 20 gives 3.
Killing a NPC ally at or above level 18 gives 2.
Killing a NPC ally at or below level 17 gives 1.
Capping a shrine for the first time gives 3.
Stealing a shrine gives 5.
The way it is set up, matches are much more fighting fast friendly. Each team has 8 people including the NPC’s, 8x3 is 24 mobile targets that gives points for your team. That’s 48 people and NPC’s fighting. That sounds like a battle! With people constantly change skills, their NPC ally getting stronger and players even changing skills bars. It never gets old.

The last thing to be addressed is if the battle is taking too long, say, seven minutes. The Luxon and Kurzick generals will summon a bunch of NPC’s and will go at each other in a direct path to take out the enemy. If the General dies or the NPC’s death causes the points to go up game over. The General is by the base Reflector during the entire match, which of course will instantly kill any unmanned minions.
Like the old style GvG battles, if the fight is taking too long the game will battle itself out.


Last wall of text attack!

Rewards suuuuuuuuuuck!
I already said that the ideal amount of leveling your NPC is 3 per match. Which means 1,500 + the faction gained from the map, even if you lose a match, your NPC all might grant you 1,000 or 1,500 extra faction. If you leech, you’re not getting the huge reward from your NPC buddy.

How do we fix the rewards? Simple! Give Luxon/Kurzick Reward Bag. Yep.
There are multiple ways to get presents.

1. Donate your faction, 1 donation gives 1 Reward Bag.
2. Each time your NPC buddy level resets, get 1 Reward Bag.
3. Win the match, 3 Reward Bag.
4. Gained a title rank? 25 bags multiplied by the new rank (R1 = 25, R5 = 125, R12 = 250+50).

Just like ToT bags, Christmas Presents, Nickolas Presents and heck, any gift bundle these will have the usual desired consumables in them.

The wall of text barrage has ended, enjoy!

Fixing 2 and 3, mainly 2, would in many ways fix 1 since builds and armor would be drastically changed to meet the playstyle change as well as the influx of better players that would flood AB due to 3.

Other than that /signed.

AB is dying due to abuse and Anet neglect. The time when there aren't enough people online to play AB seems to get longer every week. If anet doesn't do anything soon the place will become another Codex.

The most important change should be 3. AB is PVP and thus more difficult than constantly farming predictable PVE runs and yet those PVE runs have more consistent rewards. This is backwards and needs to be fixed.

Apart from the rewards which are meagre it best when compared with MQSC I don't have a problem with AB. My guild play it almost constantly and I join in once in a while and always have fun. I'm not sure it really needs a change apart from adjustments to the map rotation system to ensure we aren't just playing Asslands and Grenzthe entire time. I certainly don't support regulated skill bars, having that in an arena where the whole point is skill bars are the same/similar is fine (Codex, CB) but adding it into a gamemode which already has it's own identity is a bad idea.

I also don't really like the whole changing your skillbar mid game, it removes the flow of the game, filling it with menus, and it also means builds can be countered and recountered on the fly removing the fun of build creation/planning.

That depends on how the group wants to play. If you say stick togheter and the teamplayers go each their own way they are a bit incompetent. But such people will learn over time. Also your suggestion about a certain aura around them will solve this issue quite well.

Partialy true; Capping makes sure its not a 12 vs 12 campfest around a certain shrine; like what happend in certain maps in costume brawl where fighting is slighty better then capping. If 1 side proves to be stronger in that fight that the battle is already won. Moving your team to tactical positions should give you the upperhand.
(ever thought about defending a shrine (especially monk/ele/mes/nec) shrine against an incomming group (not mob)? You should win that.)

Agree. if you flip the coin, you could say Anet shoulden"t have boosted up the rewards of Fort Aspenwood since that arena is imbalanced in every way it possible is. Giving a huge player base back to the alliance battle.


In what way do you conclude its "half done?". Its only the rotation that is flawed.

and partially build wars.


Basically you restrict your team heavily in skills. Even more the CA, since you are just given 3 builds "and you have to run with it period". In this way there is no more build wars. And no more fun in having the advantage by using your brain before the battle. Also switching out skills because your build "sucks" at the beginning (when just capped a shrine) takes a huge amount of micro to find your proper skill and place in it. This will only drag down the gameplay flow. ALso this is against the very mechanic of guildwars: be prepared before you enter the battle.

I like the skill, but this could call in imbalance. Since now certain energy intensive builds can be spammed more, or vampiric weapons do not have any drawbacks on the battlefield. If 3 casters/melee are still clumped togheter they all have and stay to have the boost. If they have all protector defense they could be almost indestructable.


Nice idea, this could be very improving to the general gameplay.


Its basically 24 vs 24 or even more. And even worse if the teams have a more orientated protecting build (rit + monk, its 2 rits and 2 monks) it will make the team with 1 prot (basically 2 prot) less likely to kill the other. let alone certain builds become incredible strong, : invoke lighting spike, searing flames, dual mesmer rape. Certain proffesions will get a huge benefit just because they are with the 2 togheter. In short this mechanic is an katalysm for imbalance.

Ever thought about a strong that just capped a shrine and teleported instantly towards the <insert shrine here> and finish of the group that just attacked an other shrine. This will be more shrine camp then you can believe since 1 team is now able to defend all shrines. like the GLA in generals (watch a video about tunnels).





Entering the players spawn base should be discouraging. fighting on the edge of it should have risks for the attacking team.

My View on the situation is there to many noobs at the kurzick side, or/and to few at the luxon. The map gets lively if its grentz or further into luxon territorium. But if its in ancestral lands things just die out pretty quickly.
Number of options:
1. Allow players to travel to either side trought kurzick/luxon diplomats in GToB for more balanced play.
In this way kurzicks could fill up the gaps if the luxons are short of players (or they dont like the long waiting times).
2. A sort of mechanic to turn luxon points in kurzick points and vicaversa with the required fee.
3 .Boost up the end reward like JQ and FA

These solutions are simple to implent (to my mind).

i have played ab on and off for years now and i think the only issue with it is map circulation(been ALands for as long as i can remember now)and the lack of rewards for playing.i dont think anything else needs fixing,i really dont want to see fixed build for certain hours/days as this is really the last place apart from gvg where you can run whatever the hell you like i think it would be a sad story to go and change this as ab has never really sufferd with meta ''build'' issues.as for capping always wins?i think not,its all about fighting where its most useful to helping the other teams cap up.As for staying in a team i understand why people get annoyed with others going off doing there own thing but i cant think of anything better to do than exactly that on a cripshot ranger

Err massive wall of text and i cant be bothered to read it all but from a bits read -
AB from when i did it years ago - usually your team stayed together and you followed the party leader - if you ended up splitting ( ie you died ) you joined the next team passing by untill you spotted original team members.This just before i lost interest in ab went bad as kurz had the idea of getting mm`s and 3 teams together and they just mobbed everyone and sadly it tended to spread and ended up instead of 3 groups of 4 against 3 of 4 being just a mob fest ( new players only saw mobbing and followed suit ).

Now i actually read the big glossy factions help book and was surprised recently to see something that i never knew and even asking my wife who does ab a lot she didnt know - normally you have your solo capper who caps whilst everyone else mobs/protects whatever but going by the book if 1 person caps the shrine that side gets less points that a team capping the shrine - 1 point instead of 4 .I always wondered in ab why at times when a shrines capped the score shot up ( paid notice to see if any extra faction or bal faction was given as that would mean kills included ) by a few points.

Now as for build rotation - that sounds more like 12 man codex and as far as i was aware AB never had any player stuck with 1 build only as players were free to use whatever ( within reason in team ) floated their boats or worked.Making set builds i feel would turn a lot of players away ( same as now you read complaints about codex being crap and no1 wanting to play ).

Capping - i feel from what you say , you seem to misunderstand as shrine capping does have its advantage , each shrine has its own npcs which when you cap the shrine they are replaced by npcs on your side - meaning an advantage as your side has a few more players altho npc , also each shrine taken and kept gives more points to you over time as well as 7 shrines capped and kept for 1 min ( i think ) will win the match also theres the orb shield , res orb shrine , keg shrine ( door blowing ) and repair shrine.

Thinking now what your after isnt ab but sounds more like GvG or Hero Battles.
Ab may have slightly shrunk in the amount of players but so far since factions ab hasnt actually died unlike codex.

I quit ab years ago because not of it beind dead or boring but for reasons of the idiotic elitism of players only wanting high rank lux players ( considering someone could never play any PVP and get r12 lux from pve - walk into PVP as a PVP newb and players would be - He`s an elite player with r12 lux lets have him in team ) , players wanting only a set build in their team and even if your build worked they called you noob.A gd example was when my wife ( already r12 lux ) on main account switched to a 2nd account and ran the exact same build as main - the first party she joined looked at her build and low rank and called her a noob - go figure that 1 ?

What happened to the old days of doing AB for fun and not taking it serious and having the opp side saying gg was gd fun , now its all serious and less fun.Me i`ll stick to doing mqvq and getting 30k an hr easily with friends running kooky and crazy builds and enjoying ourselves.

Btw longer matches can mean longer waits for games to start especially at times of day when ppl are sleeping or players doing pve events.

A lot of very valid points and cool ideas. I like the Team Leader thing. I don't AB anymore for exactly the reqasons you are mentioning. Get one team that isn't capping or just mindlessly trying to kill and you lose the match.

Related(sort of):
My fear is that WvWvW in GW2 is going to end up like this. If the matches last upwards of a week you will get people in there just trolling their own team as opposed to actually fighting. I would hate to spend 10-15 hours in a WvWvW match and lose because I have a bunch of trolls on my server. I know it's cynical of me, but until GW2 goes through its first few months ironing out issues it's a genuine concern of mine

I'd probably stop playing it if I couldn't bring my own builds. Regardless of the general terrible level being dragged up by less retarded builds and equipment in general, it still in combination with the rest, wouldn't make it organized enough for proper teamplay.
This would mean it'd get frustrating and we'd lose the single place where you can still bring shit bars, but outplay the opposition majorly anyways for shits and giggles.


There should have just always been a proper mode for both the disorganized pub play we still have, but also one for actual organized alliance battles with full teams of 12 players like we had back in the pvp weekends up to factions release.


Anyways, right now even just buffing rewards to make it that actually doing well in an environment that requires adaptation rather than repetitive farm(pvp/pve) better might just help with all the title/HoM farm going on.

If the potential number of random scrubs rise enough on both sides, then the small amount of matches won due to actual decent teams that are mostly playing luxon would likely become insignificant.

These are both non-issues. If builds are the problem than builds should be fixed. Capping is never an amazing strategy, more important is holding area and you need to fight to do that. At most, NPCs should have better AI/more resiliency/be better spaced so that builds can't clear them in 5s and allies can come to support them.

True, but 'reward bags' are stupid. Just give faction to make it on par with the SC's along with a healthy boost in Balthazar faction to attract the ZKey crowd and thats more than enough.

Wow, gg on the effort but what you write is just completely wrong and misleading.

What are you trying to say exactly? AB balance need adjusting? Skill balance? What has this got to do with builds and armor? You can craft your own armor just like any other type of pvp and pick your skill just like anywhere else. Problem with following the right person? What right person? And what has this got to do with "builds and armor"? What were you trying to say exacty?

Except that you got it backwards. Fighting > Capping. End of story. Dead men don't cap.

Agreed, rewards suck. If you don't think it's worth doing so stay away, I kinda like the idea of only playing with people motivated by the strategy and thrill of winning only, not some trick or treat bullshit to lure title grinders and other dipshits into the format. Or maybe after midnight they could add some ToT bags since its impossible to get matches then anyway...

oh lolol o lol.. They kinda took the last element of skill out of CB this year by catering to the masses of braindead shitters. Players love to mash their buttons and face equally bad opposition so they can feel good about themselves. That's why these formats are so "popular".

I feel sorry for debunking your ideas but they were all based on bad premises and can't lead to anything good. GG on the initiative and spirit to improve AB, though.

Some new maps and a map rotation fix would be nice, but I like the way AB works as it is. I dont want AB turned into a fixed build or fixed armor format. Leave that for a codex fix. Whats great about factions PvP is that you can bring whatever you want. Only problem I see is there arent alot of people playing unless its a bonus weekend or ZC. If you increase the rewards, it will get much more exciting.

That false premise just about invalidated quite a few of the 1666 words you wrote.

The idea of changing skills in battle now only would make the live team hate life. The whole point of planning a bar is to balance for survivability. If you bring a gimmick build and someone on the other team has the counter, well you shouldn't have gone gimmick huh?

I like the increased rewards, and the team leader ability. Instead of a skill, an inherent ability, where everyone in the team gets a +3 health +1e if at least 3 teammates are in shout range, kinda like a pumped up aura of the juggernaut.
This would give teams an incentive to duke it out, especially in the first initial clashes. It would encourage offensive capping as opposed to running from the mob.

Also a more simpler approach would be to drastically up the rewards for killing a human player. Something like 30-50 faction for a human death vs. 5 for an NPC would be quite a bit of motivation.