Costume Brawl Revisited

Hey Folks

I know CB is not for 4 months but having seen how long it takes anything to be updated and worked on is ages I thought I would bring this up.

Since the last changes to CB where after every win the team is randomised saw many players walk away from CB as you could not develop team tactics and strategies to maintain a winning streak, as every team is different.

I and am sure others do not want syncing to be possible, players want to play with 'random' good players if they are on the team, develop good tactical skills and strategies.

To make Costume Brawl more fun, having some semblance of a fixed team at some point is important to make the whole experience fun and enjoyable.

It has been suggested that after the players second win that team stays fixed maybe a good solution.

But please, whatever the solution is there needs to be away to bring back the 'team' aspect of playing. With every team being random, 30 seconds is not enough to communicate to bad players, who just want to spam and red target kill, regardless of enemy numbers.

A new map would also be a great bonus (but only if the above changes can be made, yes I know its selfish).

What are your thoughts?

Silver

I like the way CB is - truly random match, with points at every win. That's how RA should have been from the start.

You have a point, but I think CB is slightly different (in my opinion) and could be that style of play has changed in Anets view to make it truly random all the time.

However, I think it misses what use to happen before the change, where there was significant enjoyment playing as a 'team' and with 'good' players who knew the nuances of each map, when to engage, who to engage and importantly map movement, how to cap whilst keeping opponents off-shrine and shrine advantage.

You miss all of this by making it truly random, and less able players who think they know how to play spam 'stay together', 'mob' and 'dont fight just cap' mentality actually miss a great deal of depth to make wins possible.

It is very frustrating that good players are penalised by such players. Instead it is better that you have one or so of these players so that they can learn and become better at the game, rather then just mindless running around, trolling and frustration.

Silver

Well costume brawl an RA don't really fall in the same category.Costume brawl is more like HA , where the objective of the game isn't always to kill the enemy.

While killing obviously helps (just like it does in CB) it does not guarantee a win, heck you could kill the each player on the opposing team 10 times if they run more relics then you their going to win anyways.Just like in CB killing helps but towers are the way to win games, killing is just the way to speed the win up, killing is in fact the slowest way to win.


Couldn't they do away with the Districts or hide the way to change and see which district you are in.You could just do that every player can only be in the district they spawned in and save it so they can only go to that district, you let the game assign a district to those players randomly and its saved as their district.

Syncin isn't allowed that also mean guild members should not be allowed to guarantee that they will be on the same team or opposing team.But it can still happen, just like with two random other people, just because their in different districts doesn't mean they won't be able to fight with or against each other.

Sure people could always spam in Party Search that they are looking for good players to sink with, that could always be reported and it would be much less to how it is now.

It's even more like HB

Yeah your right, I was mostly saying that, while in RA killing is everything that's not (always) the case in CB/HB but yes your right.

I'm with you but you need to understand that this change was deliberate. Anet wants to cater to the pve crowd at the expense of everyone else playing something other than high-end pvp. The logic is that if they can lure enough pve'ers into pvp everyone will benefit. This is noble of course but I'm not sure it's really working and they have ruined some of the best aspects of pvp in the process.

For one they buffed dervishes a while ago, the number one pve profession, into a overpowered faceroll character. The pve crowd went wild with enthusiasm and probably lured some into pvp. Then they added strongboxes to pvp for as we all know pve'ers need fat loot to bother playing. Fair enough.

Last year they changed the way CB works for the same reason. To get more players interested in pvp they dumbed the format down to one where you just bash your head against your opponents. Any form of coordination or teamwork is made nearly useless as you'll get a new team the next round anyway. So the best players quit resulting in an even higher chance of winning for the average pve'er. They learn that "pvp is fun" but learn nothing else in the process and above all they learn very little about the team aspect that is pvp as well. I fail to see what the next logical step is for these people. If they are of the carebear type that can't handle failure and losses they will never make it into competitive pvp anyway. Then there's the argument that CB is a festival game and that festival games are for pve'ers only since the pvp'ers have fun all year round in pvp. Fair enough.

Sankt, you are absolutely right.

Anet contradicts itself in this process by making the rewards for the Halloween UW quests significant. PvE players were earning stacks of goodies compared to CB, and generally CB arenas were marginally full in 1 district, where as before you had multiple districts.

On one hand the carebear attitude for CB resulted in PvPers abandoning CB, and the attraction of the rewards for Halloween quests mostly ensured that PvErs would not bother with CB resulting in a significant demise of the format.

It certainly is a festival game, but one of the best casual pvp formats that has significant depth and skill, which most people now miss out on, and like you say its a faceroll experience with little enjoyment now.

I cannot see how even the casual PvErs enjoy the format, the rewards are poor, chances are you lose 50/50 and button smash following a mob running around the map or cluster **** on another map pretty much cluelessly.

I know the Test Krewe had input into this, but most got banned or rarely played the format in any event, it is quite frustrating that a format I eagerly look forward to every year left me bewildered, disappointed, frustrated and bitter.

Just seems a fix of the TA, HB, Xunlai Predictions magnitude, we cannot fix it lets destroy it altogether with no meaningful objectives being set by Anet as to what direction they want to go in or how they want to get people into PvP at the time. However, I think the recent changes in RA and CA are good and in the right direction. Lets do the same for CB.

Silver

People enjoy playing that format for many reasons .... Specific bars , not same problems than in RA( monk isn't really a must), not only about facerolling 1234567 on target to win ,etc.....

But like a few said , anet and logic ftw.... PvP is dying , let's remove the easiest access format.... let's also remove a half-competitive format to replace it by the exact same in worse... However , i don't really think the recent changes are going in the good direction...
Sure , on the paper , there are more players , but on pratic ,it's only people farming chests ... Why do you think noone apart a small minority , representing top GvG guilds , is caring about dervish issues ?

CB is my favorite PvP format. There is no mystery why I didn't play nearly as much last Halloween though. I hope ANet changes it back, but I highly doubt it >.>

More people playing RA and CA regardless of the reason is good (unless of course its like rrday or something), when the popularity of a format is in decline or reduced like it was for CB then there is a problem, like last year.

Everyone who RAs or enjoys CA should be pleased that more people are 'playing' those formats, really.

The dervish issue is just another Shadowform issue, too little too late.

seems you just want to sync and farm gamer points. Noone wants to play with "bad" players so you just saying the can f off so you can get your title?

CB is fine as it is changing it would only cost time that should be spent on real changes to the game.

add a CB aT to please the people who want to "play with their team"

keep it the same for the rest of the silent majority

and while we're at it, bring back HB

If you had read the first post I said anything to stop syncing was good and the fact that I mentiong playing with 'random' good players? I rarely play with the guild and most of my GW friends dont play anymore, so finding and seeing talented players is great to see in CB.

I also said having 1 or so less ability players is fine as they can learn better tactics as the team plays together. Perhaps you should really learn to read what people say, rather then jumping to conclusions and throwing wild accusations at folks.

Let me say it again so the dumb morons that feel the need to troll understand. Syncing must be stopped, regardless. There I said it, again.

I was one of the silent majority that had to suck ass when they implemented the lame changes to CB. Anet turned their back on this silent majority for the carebear players who actually played the format seldom and even less once they found they could only win 50% of the games and could get better rewards in the PvE halloween events.

The fact that I was one of the noobs who learned how to play the format and be good at it, I have no qualms in having noobs in a team where you have the chance to teach them how to become better, 30 seconds is not enough.

All you are saying is let the bad players be bad and segregate good players from bad players. That does not help anyone and only helps to further the divide of PvErs and PvPrs.

Silver

Sure sure I wouldn't expect you to make a thread saying I want to sync so this would be a perfect alternative. Why else would you be so frustated about it if someone uses the word sync in his post.
Getting in new groups every match would make everyone equal and get the "wich you seem to hate" syncers out. Problem solved. If there gone change it the way you want you will either sync or get rolled by a sync and leave out frustation and we will get another QQ anet stop syncers blabla thread. So dumb moron troll if you want a PvP format were you might get a decent team will random entering and tag along with them go RA

CB offers more than RA, its more map control, understanding who has advantage, splits, different bars and so much more its not just a matter of go to RA problem solved (I do RA anyway).

I am also not saying keep the same team from the start either, far from it especially to stop syncers. I am saying if you have a team that wins the 2nd match (which the teams would have been mixed twice) then let the team stay.

Last year I endured several days of the format, despite many pvp'ers giving up on it. I racked up multiple streaks and multiple times. However, it was not intelligently fulfilling or even remotely enjoyable.

FWIW - before the update my highest streak was 68 wins (3-4 hours playing), we beat sync teams, multiple times and we were a random team. Many folks have higher streaks than that, what do I care, it could have been 20 but the beauty was that it was 'perfect' harmony, we knew what the others were doing, when we would engage. It was bliss and fun, even a noob who could have been in our team would have learnt more for seeing how we played the bars, capped, moved, split and supported each other. I am supporting integrating good and bad players to a point where it is mutually beneficial.

Silver

Are you trying to troll or do you suffer some mental disability? Nowhere in his post did he promote syncing so idk why you act 14 years old about it. His suggestion about leaving the team fixed after the first random pairing makes sense both to promote teamplay and deter syncs. It might not be possible but it's a suggestion to fix a now terrible format anyway. (It used to be one of the best formats for pvp.)

I find it provocative that you get away with calling him a "dumb moron". I get infraction warnings for 50% of my posts on these boards and all I do is radiate like a fountain of wisdom. You on the other hand spout ignorance like a pool of filth.

At the risk of sounding elitist, "debating" on these boards is like playing RA without syncing.

I liked it just like it was - with completely random teams every match. Made it more fun for me and less of a serious competition. There are plenty of other formats anyway for serious PvP play.

Changing the way teams are formed randomly and perhaps stay together after 'x' rounds wont make you play the format seriously no matter what. You have decided that already, so you will play it casually, like the majority of PvErs who do play it casually. They still played it casually before the change and after the change, some just got better at it, to lesser degrees.

If you are one of the ones who runs around in a mob and just wants to kill stuff, that is up to you. Just as it is up to me to leave the team or take it as casually as the next person and just spam my skills, go 1v1 in CB or run around aimlessly. Just as it is up to you to leave the team if you think they are taking it too seriously.

Anyone who says, 'Go do something else', forgets this is a multiplayer game, where formats needs players, some formats are too 'serious' and others too much hassle to deal with. Effectively what you are saying is, 'let Anet carebear us PvErs, because we are bad, we want to stay bad, we do not want to improve our playing ability and we dont want to share anything with those dastardly PvPrs'. Sounds rather childish to me (and yes I have generalised a lot there, lots of PvErs are good at CB, you just see them farming PvE instead).

I am going to throw one thing back at you, typically I believe events, formats and activities should be inclusive rather than exclusive, cater to all. But it seems here the 'intelligent' option is to say 'Go do somethinge else'. Well how about you go and play some casual formats instead? There are plenty. That way the pool of CB players decrease and we have increased waiting times for games? Right? That makes perfect sense...........Lets get rid of people who want to play the format.........

Seriously........

Silver

Randomization makes CB not fun as it becomes nearly impossible to get a decent streak going. The format necessitates organization but prevents players from organizing. It's just crap in the current state. They need to simply allow players to form their own teams (as in team arenas) and prevent teams from having more than one copy of each profession.

To hell with streaks and syncing.

I had much more fun last year than in any other.
You could just join and get to the fight, and there was no one quitting for not getting the team they wanted, since quitting would be a waste of time.

It's all advantages.
No sync - The best way to make people stop doing something is making it pointless. Actual randomization make syncing completely pointless, since you'll sync only for the first fight.

No piggybacking - Your own skill counts more than being lucky to get in a team of 3 'pros' that will get you through several streasks even when you yourself have poor performance. So what if you get into a team of 'bad' players? Part of the skill in a random format is being able to take the lead when that's needed, with little time to think about it.

Each battle is the first one - Lock and load, every time. No time to get comfortable. When you face those that have started you will have to do the 'warming' with the 'new' team too. No time to get acquainted, no time to gain any advantage over those that just hit the Enter mission button for the first time.

'Casualization' - The last thing a FESTIVAL format needs is random occurrences of several 'pros' getting together and thrashing the rest for an entire streak. The other players are not there for you to farm them, they want to have fun too. Want less casual PvP? GvG says hello.


Actual random teams is the best option for festival arenas. I would go as far as apply the dragon festival and the snowball arenas.
Even RA could use it, if no better working solutions against syncing are found. It may not be the best for non-festival arenas, but it's still better than ONE team syncing.

You put the points down well. This is why I like CB so much. This is ALSO why the 'pros' are mad they cannot get-together anymore to trash everyone else...in what is supposed to be fun and enjoyable festival fights.

Yeah, I'm a pro because I like actually coordinating well with my teammates. Instead of having to redo tactics every game. Sorry.

You guys have got to stop putting words into other peoples mouths. OP argues that having fixed teams after the 1st win would stop syncs and yet promote teamwork and coordination. No one in the thread has defended syncing in any way so idk why you keep bringing it up.

Like I said in my previous post: arguing on the internet is like competing in the special olympics - you're still retarded. (Someone insert that nice picture pls, I'm not tech savvy enough)

A 'pro' that can't adapt tactics every game...how amusing.

Quitting in CB was made pointless by the fact that your rewards remained fixed, 15 gamer points per win no matter the number of consecutives. This itself pretty much fixed 95% of syncing altogether where in RA it is a problem because consecutives give you more points/rewards. Anet got rid of the main incentive, 'the reward' which pretty much stopped syncing. Randomising teams after the first win stops syncs further to pretty much pointless.

Why do people keep talking about leading a team to winning? Most of the casual players do not follow instructions, some of these 'leaders' are telling you what to do (wrongly) and it ends up in a chaotic mess. In fact there was still plentying of piggybacking, I had to carry many players over several days, the only redeeming part of that was the other teams were just as full of clueless morons in those matches. It did not mean we were good, it meant we were lucky, it was not skill, it was which team had the more clueless players lost. By the way, these players still remained clueless when you saw them again in matches.

What you mean by 'casualization' is please Anet, we are crap PvPrs with no incentive to learn, I think I know how to play and I will lead this team into a 'C' space victory.

Also it seems you have some severe reading deficiencies. I have said anyone says go play something else fails to understand that the number of people playing CB dropped, it dropped massively and will continue to drop. So you want less players to play the format, increase waiting times and have all matches lack any real skill? Because your afraid a better team will roll you? It is PvP for a reason but we throw any level of skill and coordination out of the window in the name of casualization and carebearism.

There is no harm being done by becoming a better player. Again, please say it out aloud. THERE IS NO HARM DONE BY BECOMING A BETTER PLAYER.

You must have only played a few games, played with your eyes closed or thought the aim was 1v1 like most of the casuals in CB. Or you are amazing talented. For instance, how did you manage to stop 4 other players c targetting, for the whole match?

Or how you managed to show the team not to run around in a mob whilst the other team was out capping you?

Or how you managed to get the rit on your team to throw some weapons or heals on other players?

Or how you stopped the morons who rushed a shrine as soon as they respawn that has a full team of 5?.

I could go on.....

Every player adapts, some better then others. You missunderstand what he refers to. You are 20% of the team, you can only do so much, time after time after time after time, for days.........

If anet is reading this, which I doubt. Look and see what you have done? You actually made guildwars players worse, not only do they stand up to say they do not want to improve, they also have regressed in their comprehension skills. Well done.

Silver

To add more to what Silver said;

You obviously are stupid. I'm not 'god almightly' pro. Sure I've been in some top GvG matches, but I'd hardly call myself pro. The best thing about costume brawl was teaming up with randoms and getting a good relationship with them. I can't count how many teams I've had where once we got in a rhythm we'd be beating up on synced teams. I've had multiple occasions where a newb who we started out with was getting better with each game. That's casual friendly and that's why I loved costume brawl. It was easy to play, hard to master. Now, with the new system from last year, there is no coordination. I'm getting people who I try to teach that I won't even see the next game.

I can see why you get infraction warnings just by the way you post. Also your lack of understanding why I typed dumb moron on the first place might be a concern if this is the way you react on it. Look to me your the person to so called troll aka provoke. So what are you 13 or suffering from a mental disabilty?

Atleast a sane person in here.

Maybe CB isn't it for you and if you want coordinated matches try HA and GvG. Those are made for what seems people like you and people that want to farm title points.

Let's not forget reality here.You have a valid point, but let's not forget that CB was actually a team/coordination game, and the only reason it was changed is because people had to mess it up.If that had not happened the mode would probably still be the same.

"This is why we can't have anything nice"

QFT. This was just another step away from skill factor in GW and towards the casuals (the term "casual" being used as an excuse to be bad. What, you've played casually for 2-6 years and you're still shit?).

The teams that go on streaks and stomp every casual player are the ones that are good at the game. Should they be punished because others don't want to l2p?

Randomizing every match just makes it 100% about luck (getting good teammates often enough).

The OP's idea of fixing teams after the second win would eliminate sync'ing and reward player skill as well.

I don't farm, I play for fun. HA and GvG aren't fun anymore. The high entrance levels and the time it takes to set up a group, let alone win, is not fun. CB was a great format because how casual it was to set up, but like I said, it may be easy to learn but it was hard to master.

The current system of shuffling teams after every match seems fine to me.

Given the current situation with whole teams being ejected from RA by simply having a single player reaching 25 wins, I'd like people to ponder on how exactly the current queue system needs to work in order for something like this first-round-only shuffle to work properly. I just tried to do it, and it seems a lot more multi-dimensional than I'd care to tinker with right now. Long story short though, if they can't figure out how to eject one person at a time from RA for reaching 25 wins, I doubt they can properly shuffle teams in the right ways and at the right intervals that a system like what has been proposed can work.

Even then, I am skeptical at whether it would solve the syncing problem, because anything that is set up in a way to be consistent after X rounds is prone to it. One round is a fair deterrent and would indeed restrict syncers a good amount, and doing it after more rounds would be even more restrictive, but there are those of us who are well and able to figure out the patterns necessary to run the gauntlet on these shuffles and put together a sync team at the end of them all.

Mess it up? I wouldn't call taking an exploit that ANet has for the most part brushed off and constantly abusing it to the point that they've actually taken some action against it as "messing it up."

The game is no less about teamwork or coordination as it was before the shuffling change. The only difference is that the players you have to cooperate with each match are often new, and the team that wins will more often than not be the one that finds a way to cooperate before the other one. It's harder than with the same players each match, but is no less important, and is no less of a factor in the game.

Yes, because the players we consider to be good at this game are the ones who do nothing but beat on the players who have little to no clue at what they're doing, right?

That's not how I gauge skill, and that's not how you should either.

As if the current format doesn't already reward player skill? I know that I'm going to go into CB and win a whole lot more than Joe Schmo, because over the average player, I have more experience. This experience gives me what I need to make the moves I need to make, guide my teammates on what to do, and bring us more victories than someone who is significantly less knowledgeable than I. Everyone has to deal with random teammates, of course, but my skills will allow me to achieve victory more often. Feels like a reward to me.

The only bonus you get from getting consecutives in CB anymore is a little bit of extra Balthazar faction, and maybe some bragging rights. I wouldn't say it is a decent representation of skill anymore though. It's mostly just you getting lucky enough to get decent enough teammates enough times in a row. A tracking of your win-loss ratio would be a much better indicator of your skill in the current state.

HA and GvG aren't CB. What players looking for the return of the previous CB grouping system should do is push for tournament style matches for CB, similar to what is in place for Snowball.

Yeah, good point. There are cunning criminals out there who no matter what kind of security we have in the society and no matter how many policemen we have on the streets will still get away with crime. With this in mind it makes just perfect sense to abandon any idea of law enforcement altogether. After all we waste a lot of resources on police forces and it's really hard to get them to do any actual policework other than the usual eating of donuts and mandatory paperwork.

You opened so well by claiming this solution would be unfeasible due to technical difficulties then rambled on into the strictly illogical.

The fact remains that CB is a very well designed format and its potential is lost and wasted on a bunch of buttonmashing dipshits that have told themselves that they don't want to get better. They just want to be slightly better than even worse people so they can win a few games and feel good about themselves. It's called carebearism and it should be confined to pve.

The idea about a tournament style like the snowball arena is possible, but do you really think it would spark enough interest to have a healthy playerbase? It seems at this point in the game pvp need some pve scrubs just to get to a critical mass in terms of players. Organised play might be just too high a threshold for these carebears to bother setting up. At least with the simple "enter match" button the threshold is kept low. I wouldn't mind having a few bad players on my team as long as they had at least some potential for improvement over time. This has been said a number of times in this thread already btw. So while you thrive on your self acclaimed skill in CB others find equally or maybe more satisfaction from improving over time as a team.

Shayne, I apologise in advance, this is in no way an attack on you but it seems you represent the Test Krewe and what is left of CM on these forums. Forgive my tone as well but I am really frustrated here and the points below may shed light on some of the issues.

Here goes:

The current system to you seems fine? For what? Poor players, bad displays of skill, a button smash fest and trolling, decreasing numbers of players? What seems fine about this? I am really confused that you think it is fine? Oh wait, you are on the Test Krewe, you have to defend the decisions you guys have made, along with the garbage bars that went with CB last year making the ranger exceptional fantastic compared to any other profession. Oh wait, let me add this, that you guys planned bars to make CB like rocks, paper and scissors, professions to beat other professions, how about balanced bars? Yes this all seems fine to me too. Just like Anet thinks the derv is fine and that the bots in snowball GvG are fine too.

No, it is not fine, maybe to you. Certainly not me.

You are asking us to tell you how the RA queue works? This is freaking Anets job to sort, they have countless suggestions to fix the problem but they will not because they don’t have the budget to, instead make profits by making costumes.

Solve the syncing problem? You got rid of the rewards; if you were reading the posts in this thread you would have seen that. RA you get increasingly higher rewards, making syncing worth the effort. Really, review what you have done. It is not that hard.

Yes, Anet and the Test Krewe totally messed up CB. There are still exploits in the game Shayne, in RA, in GvG, in HA, in CA and so many others. More so in those regular formats, but to take a one week format and completely forgo any level of skill, tactics and team play is absurd.

Shayne, you find it hard to believe that you can in 30 seconds coordinate a team of clueless players, time and time again. I played over 600 matches last year, I gave up after 70. Please I am not stupid so don’t give me garbage reasoning. It looks bad and makes for poor arguments to defend a poor implementation. I saw the same lame arguments in the thread last year. Maybe you got lucky and people listened. But overall the feedback is that it was next to impossible, especially when the next match you lose these players.

The only point I agree with you Shayne is that the point of CB is not to beat on poor players, its not a display of skill. At the moment, all you can do is beat on poor players. Most of the talented players left CB. So all I get to do is beat on poor players who have no reason to improve, no incentive to improve and no willingness to improve as has been demonstrated by some posters in this thread. Well done, you showed that you don’t need any skill to play Costume Brawl or actually become a better player.

I don’t care about multiple consecutives, I care about a format that includes players of all abilities that can ‘PLAY’ and coordinate.

And no we don’t want similar styles of tournament for CB like Snowball GvG, where all the botting cheats just find new bots to introduce whilst Anet does nothing and has done nothing. Absolutely zero has been done against those who used bots in last year’s snowball GvG (and there were loads, absolutely loads of players using them). I know this to be true because I 'know' some of these cheats and they are still playing the game. Some of these players were making between 7-20 million gold in zkeys, not sure about real money. Before you go accusing me of being a botter, I simply will not risk my accounts as one of them has 35 maxed titles on a single character.

If you care Shayne, and I think you do as you have a level of pride and prestige with the Test Krewe. Please listen to what we are actually saying, we do not want people to sync it is cheating but we do want a format back that made every year in Guild Wars something more to look forward to. It was one of the best formats in the game, but not anymore. We have time to work out a solution, let us use it if we have common goals. These goals should be:

1. Remove syncing
2. Make the format enjoyable to players of all abilities

You achieved objective 1, now make 2 happen.

Silver

Here's some logic: it's a better use of the developers' time to use the code that they already established for shuffling teams after every match, which is impossible to abuse, than spend time rewriting the entire code that is currently in place to do something that will still be abused.

In that case, CB never had any potential, because those types of players always showed up in CB. The only reason you might have thought they didn't exist or that they weren't a problem was because you hung out with the cool kids who marched four or five at a time into the arena and obliterated anything they'd see without a second thought.

Ask the snowball tournament players who can almost always push two pages of entrants if you think that this would spark enough interest. Don't forget that there have been entire guilds formed and dedicated to the syncing and playing of these kinds of events.

I don't want Regina's job, I don't want Martin's job, I don't want Stephane's job, and I don't want Emily's job. I don't mind speaking out a little bit about the things the Krewe thinks and does and pushing the limits of my NDA, but it would be a terrible misrepresentation of the entire team if you take my opinion to be that of all of us.

I haven't the slightest clue at how to solve 2 or what kind of a solution 2 needs. You may as well have said, "Make the format enjoyable to all players," because their level of skill doesn't determine what they get a thrill from, whether it's fighting people better than them, worse than them, grouping together with new people for a long stretch of time, grouping together with friends for a long stretch of time, winning matches fast, winning matches at the buzzer, being thrown in with new people each time, winning the most matches that they can...

The only solution I know to offer is to add some kind of PSR system, which is a laughable prospect at this point, because it would involve revamping the entire PvP system. It's not even guaranteed to solve the problem. The most that ANet would probably get out of such a switch is seeing how players react to the system before they put out GW2 with a similar kind of system. GW shouldn't become GW2's experimental ground though, so I wouldn't be in favor of this idea.

I hear you and it is not what I meant by you being the role of CM because your input is at least more significant here then the official ones which are few and far between, if any. It seems you are one of the very very few avenues we have to get some messages heard. Would you be kind enough to raise some of the issues like the snowball botting abuse for instance?

What is the PSR system?

I agree that a total revamp of match making would be a waste. The fact remains, the incentives to sync have been removed and anything that can keep a team together after X wins will help more abled players to teach poor players how to play. Whilst reducing syncs even further and making the format challenging, intelligently stimulating and bring back 'team' play, afterall there are 4 other players playing.

I will not go into the significant increase in leechers last year, I would even turn around and say, give everyone their minimum gamer titles if it helps to reduce leechers.

Thanks

Silver

Your assumption is unfounded. I did CB just like everyone else, hitting enter button no syncing and got paired up with some pveers and maybe 1 or 2 more clued players. The pveers were crap of course, but funny thing is that a large part of them were able to improve over consecutive wins while I could adapt to their playstyles and somewhat cover for their mistakes. Win-win for both parties. Now it's my turn to assume, and that assumption is that this was an enjoyable experience for the other players too, realising that the game has more depth than just button mash and that pveers can also master this was probably very exhilarating for some of these. In this respect CB would be an ideal recruiting ground for other forms of pvp, especially the tactical aspect found in gvg, ab and to some degree ha. The biggest problem with gw pvp today is the lack of a bridge from pve to pvp and from low end pvp to higher end pvp. Stimulating this transition should be the top priority for anets resources imo. After all this was how gw was designed to begin with.

That is no way what I want. I just want the casual team coordinated CB I loved before. There's a reason I don't do HA/GvG anymore, and I wouldn't play CB tournies for the same reasons

The old CB was casual enough where it had a low entry level, but it took time to get skilled in. The team coordination was awesome, like other and I have said many many of times; you can teach/help newbies in getting better. There is no other format like this, and that is why I loved CB.

This finds its way into our discussions about the arena each season. I can't say how much action exactly is being taken against this, but the devs do realize it is an issue and have spent time addressing it. Personally, I think the problem is exaggerated, but I also feel as though I've only seen the tip of the iceberg for how sophisticated these bots can get. Unless something significant changes, I doubt that bringing it up again will put much greater focus on it past letting the devs know that the problem still exists.

From what we know of GW2, stats for structured PvP will be kept in order to generate a player rating. I imagine that this is somehow modeled after the Elo rating system. I used the term PSR (Public Skill Rating) because it's a term used in another game I used to play, and I somehow believed that the system was more universally known by that term. The current GvG system likely revolves around a sort of Elo system.

Just because the points from consecutives has been removed doesn't mean there isn't an incentive to sync. There are two things that haven't been addressed: the ability for syncers to essentially choose teammates of similar, high caliber, which is who they would prefer to play with, and the ability for these kinds of teams to score more rewards than a randomly selected team, due to the differences in average skill level.

Why do you think that players have been syncing DA and Snowball all this time? There haven't ever been any kinds of things like CB's old point system that gave extra Gamer points for how many consecutive wins you have. Clearly, they still see a benefit from playing with other players of their choosing rather than hoping that three or four or five of their teammates have their head screwed on well enough that they can pull out a win. Even if you put points aside, I'm sure these players would rather play with each other rather than random players.

I guess what it comes down to is this: is having your ability to play with the same teammates on long streaks worth letting syncers run rampant in your arena? In other words, between the system where you get sorted into a team and keep it until you lose, which can be abused by syncers (current RA system), and the system that shuffles you after each match, which gives no ground for syncers to survive (current CB system), which would you choose? It seems that you both prefer the former, and that's fine. I prefer the latter, because even though ANet couldn't really be straight on whether they saw it as a threat or not, I saw it as a loophole that needed fixing, and now that they have solved that loophole, I don't believe they should go back.

I'm not offering you the middle ground of a first-round or X-round shuffle, because that system hasn't been observed to exist in the game yet. There's no guarantee either that such a system is possible or that the developers will feel compelled to implement it over other projects, so for the time being, I'd like to understand clearly which of these systems you prefer.

This time around your assumption is correct; I would choose a flawed CB that can be synced any day over a broken CB that loses about all its potential as an arena and all of its ability to create fun based on creating relations and promoting teamwork and improvement over time.

We have all tried very hard to convince you and your likes that this would also be more fun for you despite the occasional frustration over facing(and losing to) a synced team. I'm also skeptical about how you brush off the OPs idea as unfeasible. I really don't get why a proper fix to syncing seems so elusive. The biggest problem with their half-arsed fix is that they have ruined avenues that could be stepping stones into more serious pvp, dumbing down cb as mentioned, merging ra districts creating one big slugfest but without eliminating the sync issue, creating codex for more syncing and another pvp deterrant and deleting ta thereby removing another 4v4 format and frustrating a segment of pvp players. So yes in all honesty I would rather they hadn't "fixed" syncing than have the tripe we have now.