AB Empty

No one gave a shit about the rewards, it was just fun. But I'm not saying that better rewards wouldn't make it popular again. Do we need to add zaishen boxes and 5k balth reward to every format to make them "fun"?

I think people just be bored, yo. I've never really cared about the rewards.. I got my money from pve and no need for faction when you buy the skill pack from Anet store.

Have to agree.

I also found adding rewards big enough to entice players usually resulted in the wrong type of players turning up and telling everyone what build to use or spamming "need healer" anyway.Usually it went from casual and cruisy, what I always thought AB was intended for, to serious friggin business and /ragequit for two days.

I'd rather not play it at all than go through that bollocks again.

/agree with this. If you want evidence of additional rewards detracting from the casual nature of pvp, then look at RA. RA used to be all about having fun.

Really? I've been playing since launch, and RA was always about griefing and wasting time. When they introduced title rewards people actually stopped griefing in every match.

I used to play AB quite a bit, and while there were some that played like this, I found the majority didn't. Just go look and see some of the crazy bs some folks are running.
I know PvE is built to allow folks to play by themselves, but PvP doesn't and you shouldn't intend to play it unless you are willing to work with others.

-i

Agreed but it's AB, not GvG.

Working with others is a no-brainer but every time there was a double faction weekend the sudden appearance of rank and ping build requests was a joke.Rolling any build that wasn't a current "face roll" cookie cutter usually ended in tanties, abuse or getting kicked, regardless of build effectiveness.

Sure not always...but certainly way more often than usual.

Problem is when you add a good enough reward the "speed clear" mentality and faction chasers come into play where people want the fastest wins and most efficient builds to attain given reward as quickly as possible, especially with such a large portion of the community focused on GWAMM atm.

That's all good but it's not why I play AB at all and such mentalities often discourage players from taking part in a PvP format that was really designed for casual fun.

As such while increased reward may bring players over to AB I still think it won't actually make it any more enticing for casual players.

Each to their own.

I also recall a day when if you encountered a griefer you could just map out. If you do that now Anet comes and fecks you in the ess.

And rightfully so. How many people just map out because they don't like the team composition? Far too many. Personally, I would love to see Anet remove the /resign function in PvP(god think of all the trouble that would have saved.) and have far more severe punishment for leavers and leeches. Too often a leaver is hoping for some freaky Ideal situation( guess they don't get that AB randomly pairs teams together, RA is, well Random Arenas, not Ideal Team Arenas, and that FA & JQ are just as random...). Why people would think that screwing over your own team shouldn't be punished is beyond me.

forgive us for not wanting to play in double/tripple monk teams, for not wanting to play in setups that won't EVER score a kill, for not wanting to play with people who enjoy griefing or entering with pve tank builds, for not wanting to play with flare necros, heal other rangers, meteor shower warriors, meteor sins. for not wanting to play in setups one knows won't even nail a single zbox (i.e. teams/setups that suck so hard they wont get more than 5 wins, and even then end up blaming the mo for the loss).
can you ever forgive those who wish to take part in something that is at least remotely resembling a match that might end in a kill before the 8 min mark?
oh mighty one, can you ever forgive us sinners for wishing something as... normal as that.

can you ever comprehend the fact that TA has been wiped so those who still feel the need to play a proper 4v4 match can either rage quit or sync because the vast majority of players cannot display even the most basic level of game understanding in order to contribute to their team.

why on earth do people think that not contributing to your team is ok, but refusing to play with such players is - not. you have trolled the update thread enough, it's time you stick your head out of your ass and learn to look at things from different perspectives. sure, leaving nab teams 24/7 is not ok, but neither is being forced to stay in them all the time.

Considering they removed TA, this point is getting valid, but it just shows how ridiculous the format( or simply PvP) is.. It's considered to be random arena so we should play with anything, but let's face it : people rarely try when it's not a team that has an healer or that has at least 2 casters...

- Quite the same for JQ : are people even trying when there are 3 bots and 5 warriors against 4 roj and 4 mesmers ? clearly not
- Same for FA : the match is pointless if luxons have no monks against turtle killers( + if they don't get stucked..)

Once again, that's an issue of organized formats being unplayable, thus people want to play and win in random formats...

Forcing people to play doesn't solve the underlying design problems. It's a lazy solution that's not fun and doesn't work. RA desperately needs TA and some mechanism to force serious teams over to it (such as a cap on the title around r4-6 in RA), but the current activity situation means that such a change risks turning one active format into two inactive wastelands. ANet needed to get this one right in 2009; I'm not sure that much can be done now.

The problem with AB is that it combines the worst features of all the PvP formats. You have to form a group of four, but you're randomly paired with two other teams which are likely to be frustratingly bad. It's a cap points game, which I think most players would agree is the least entertaining game mode. You spend a lot of time running instead of fighting, and the game lacks the deeper strategy derived from both sides having a single, fixed point of weakness such as the Guild Lord. The game is almost invariably decided by wiping opposing teams, but the match usually takes ten or fifteen minutes to resolve even when one side has a clear advantage.

The result is that you have to bribe most players with rewards in order to get them to enter.

People like you don't leave for as many of those reasons (read that as excuses) as you say. Lets look at the bolded part shall we? You want faster boxes and faster points. As far as heads being up asses yours seems firmly lodged in there. RA = Random Arenas. I find the PvX mentality of gameplay/brainwashing to be both boring and lacking any semblence of creativity, if you want a composed team there is HA/GvG. If you just leave in one of those formats flaming is the least of your worries. If the Random part is still confusing you, well I would unsqueeze those cheeks and let that overworked gray matter get some fresh air. Leaving gives dishonorable, but the mark you leave is that of an impatient child who throws a tantrum when you don't get exactly your own way.

@ martin, Though forcing people to play with others randomly may not seem efficient, is it fair to run others aground because you don't like a setup? The reason TA went the way of the dodo was the same as why HA is heading there.
AB ran adrift for an entirely different reason. Prior to the rewards update for imperial faction, AB was still relatively active. Once it became apparent JQ and FA were faster for faction gain, people seeking titles/Zkeys naturally gravitated to those formats. AB still has its charm, but until the rewards rival that of the other 2 imperial outlets, people will avoid it. This weekend reminded me about the good bits of AB. Though few and far between, its still an easy, fast format. Compared real pvp its easy to form a group, enter and play, hell it even rewards you for trying. No "oops we died after 5 minutes of gameplay, and put some effort in, naturally we get nothing " of some other forms of pvp.

No, but the job of a game developer in a social genre is to deal with people as they are, not as they should be.

Which is exactly what I said in the concluding paragraph.

you do realise i added the brackets part after the 'single box' with the sole intention of hinting that boxes are irrelevant. my bad, ill specifically express that which normally needs no additional explanation (unless you're playing pvp solely for pve rewards/factions - which is clearly not the type i was hinting at in my post, but you apparently could not comprehend that, being stuck up in your pvp hate as you are).

moreover, pvx is something that feeds off pvpers and their build 'creativity', not vice versa. so please, mr troll-a-lot, spare us your whine.
you dont need the most typical and effective build to get somewhere (but it most definitely helps if you roll a cookie-cutter build if you're mediocre/terrible instead of old school shock axe or zb prot). good job on yet again ignoring one of the main points in my post. and no, i will not quote it. find it.
and for the love of GW, spare us with this never ending mantra of 'creativity' pve players seem to oh so enjoy upholding. you remind me of this random sin that landed in my team and who first went 'ive been testing this build, i think it works now' and then i see it cast visions of regret.
for creativity (read: something that will actually contribute to your team) you first need proper and insightful game understanding, not just a simple desire to be different for the sake of being different.
there is no such quality as unique on GW - everything is reproducible; besides,even the quality of unique in itself is often useless. do i really need to add the "unique lol pic" again? jesus.

HA is terrible, gvg is a shadow of what it used to be. TA wasnt what it used to be either, but that in no way warranted its removal. complain to anet if you have a problem with exped players having a problem with players wanting to be 'creative' and 'unique'. go play vs AI in zaishen elite for that. i'm sure they'll give you a warm welcome.

given anet has catered to the likes of you who raised a big tantrum on how ppl did not want to play with them, my point is very valid, especially given they removed TA.

and last but most definitely not least, RA is still 4v4, you will fight in a team of >four< people, meaning 3 of them will have to carry your weight. with your 'unique' and 'non-pvx' builds, you're in effect making it a 3v4, not a 4v4. so go ahead and troll those 3 other people, but dont be surprised if you'll be trolled in return.
let me repeat myself for emphasis and because you tend to ignore the main points ive made so far: RA may be RANDOM, but you're still playing in a TEAM, and hence you must C O N T R I B U T E to that team. if you choose to be different/unique/creative for the sake of those qualities alone, then you're better off fighting in pve or vs zaishen elite. I am certain they will pose quite a challenge. and you even get factions. 2 birds with one stone!

because you seem to be enjoying to play the role of a stereotypical pvp-hater, i'll add a slightly adjusted stereotypical saying: it's not (only) what build you got, its how you use it, babe.

cant believe it is i who's feeding the troll now, how sad is that.

Well to get back on track I and my alliance friends had a lot of fun playing AB over the weekend, shame the arena can't be that active every weekend and it takes some double faction to lure the masses away from whatever else they get up to.

I play the game for enjoyment and reward of being with like minded people having a laugh, take away all the z keys,title tracks etc etc suits me!

I do agree with your points, but it 's still going over the main reason of why RA is here, which is having fast fun, testing builds , etc...
Obviously, when i go RA i want to have fun and have fast matches, what i'm not getting in other formats.. So sure, i'm mad and frustrated when i keep having no monk and opponent always get one, but well... if you consider rez rupters, luck match ups, blind spammers, 123 earth eles, etc... it's not making much a diference...

He wants to have fun in RA, he's right.. the problem is like i said above that we need more fun and active organized formats aside. The deletion of team arenas clearly did no good to RA, as most TA players went in RA to win, followed by GvG/HA players months later...
You need to consider there are people casually playing and they're only going in RA, whereas there are also players who aren't able to play organized formats and are thus going RA... you can't blame those casuals for doing that, it's supposed to be the point of RA....

Kicking out new players with unwelcome professions and/or builds, not briefing them on goals and tactics and generally abusive behaviour towards them carries a large risk of kicking them out of the format altogether. And now the format is dead ... stop whining, it's your own doing.

I agree. Never imagined that could happen but for once, I agree with you.

^oh noes, another troll.

it wasnt that bad back during district split - when international distr actually had above-average amount of decent to good players.
besides, how can one possibly have 'fun' in an arena as degenerated as RA.
unless you're sadomasochistic, that is.

Well, that makes short work of your own arguments. Ploink.

See, that's how you wind up playing all alone, or with a handful of histrionics worshipping your narcissistic self.

Isn't that right on the verge of syncing? Gathering all the players you like to play with in one dist so you have a better chance to group with them.

Which illustrates the futility of criminalizing the activity. ID1 evolved as the focal point for better players without anyone having to advertise it. If you were looking for skilled groups, and you brought enough to the table that skilled players wouldn't ragequit on you, it simply made sense to go there.

Grind and randomization rarely mix. Let's be honest: by randomizing the task (thus slowing completion), the devs are acting as time bandits. Players will want to repatriate their time, and the more creative ones will find ways if there is any possibility of tipping the odds in a player's favor.

Just wanted to comment that AB was extremely busy and fun all weekend due to the double points event. Thanks to all who came. Good times.

Thumbs up for double AB points all day erryday!

I didn't really find it fun to be honest, most fights i saw took place either in kurzic castle, either in luxon one and most fights were about running around with people having no tactics( i once decided to go waste our opponents time to make us cap a shrine more than them and i still got kicked for not staying with team)..

So sure,it was fun to play with friends though, but however i generally found it a bit boring and not relying enough on tactics..

^I, meanwhile, absolutely loved AB this weekend. Was consistently in good parties (even when the others with us weren't as good), and playing JQ over AB the last months made me forget how AB sometimes becomes an organized RA, when teams have to meet up for a capping point. Was so satisfying.

And 4 districts worth of people! If that isn't any indication that people DO want to play AB when the rewards ARE worth it, I don't know what it is. Devs should take some attention to upping the numbers for this format, IMO.

I think AB is pretty good as long as you lead (and know what you are doing). Too may people randomly add others and don't know how to separate the good from the bad after a match and get rid of people who contribute nothing. Running as Monk helps too i find, if I go frontline pug monks will never folow common sense (e.g. pre-prot when necessary). They also have a tendency to run off and not know when is the right time to defend.

That is exactly why I stopped playing AB. Because of elitists like this. No one there wants to help the new players, they just get rid of them.

new=/=scrubs=/=stupid.
you sound like one of them carebears. honestly.

stop victimizing yourself, it reeks of hypocrisy.

a small advice for the future. when you read my posts, read them with care, because i was criticising this so-called 'ingenuity' aka 'creativity' aka the irresistible urge to be 'unique' that can be found everywhere but with NEW PLAYERS.
and do you REALLY need to have everything handed to you on a silver plate?

new players cannot be 'original' because they don't even know what the meta is. i am actually VERY nubie-friendly and gladly explain things in details IF ASKED, and if i actually come across that extremely rare type of player that actually wants to know more about pvp and learn new things, but:
1) no one asks anymore, they just complain like you do;
2) instead of asking they call you pvx meta copy /rolleyes;
3) there's no new players, there are only scrubs left and a handful of veterans trying to avoid getting headache when dealing with them;
4) ppl have close to no common sense now, so RA and esp AB tend to be overwhelming for many (apparently it's hard to avoid a mob of 2 teams in AB, because feeding them free 4 kills is clearly the better option);
5) i havent been asked anything pvp related in years. yes, years. clearly RA peeps are a god's gift to that shit hole - every single one of them. bless us.

^But unlike HA, it's very easy to prevent that. The basics for AB is to follow your team, and to play any 4vs4 encounters like you would with RA. There's also no rank descrimination, so you always get more chances to play and gain experience, and it's also very easy to form your own team.

Anything else, just ask at the outpost, and somebody's bound to tell, unless you happen to be unlucky and you're at dead hours with only one elitist team waiting for the timer. :P

I see Urania is aspiring to become a politician.

It's not the problem of 'meta', but of the perceived metagame. The perceived and generally agreed metagame is consisted of the build readily available on a handful of webpages, gwpvx being the top representative. The current mentality may be summed up as -> if you don't run something worthwhile from pvx, and if you don't follow the team knowing what you're doing all the time, then i'll kick you next time we're at the outpost.
Now, imagine a world without builds in the web. With no gwpvx or other sites holding the 'meta'. Sure, there would be good, wide played team builds, especially for GvG, based on observation, trial and error - over and over again. There would be much bigger diversity in the game, with the meta not being so stale, without 'great, everyone will be running XYZ now...' after every skill update. And not being able to get builds off pvx would, in the very beginning, scare off wanna-be PvPers who don't even want to put any effort in their game, who don't want to improve, just to reap easy rewards.
So now, imagine if you declined using/checking gwpvx every time you pug with someone. If you thought about the build as it is, and maybe tried to create a teambuild on top of a fresh idea. Something no one else will run in the upcoming match, or something that is your guild's trademark. Even now, with pvx, you might try to run something original, even if with subpar dps/hps/other statistic, simply because no one would anticipate it, and you might get both fun and wins. Maybe not as easy as you would using the pvx 'meta' builds, but still. And maybe you would lose the blinkers that limit you from playing with anything that is not 'meta'.

I actually find the most recent posts quite amusing. I always thought it was PvPers who played for 'fun' and 'competition', and used to accuse PvErs of the reward/time ratio being the most important thing for them.

Gingrich IMO. He has valid points to be sure, but he's also a skilled devotee of the politics of divisiveness.

Which isn't without merit. PvX defines the character of the meta, but in no way alters the incentives to kick someone who doesn't bring a worthwhile character build and doesn't follow orders.

Don't get me wrong: I'd like to see us return to an era without things like Obs and PvX, but the reality is that the cat is out of the bag and it's up to us to deal with it.

Maybe I see this a little bit differently as someone who has played both seriously, but it seems to me that the structure of rewards dictates behavior in both formats. I guarantee you that if you give out rewards on the basis of #1 overall rating rather than the winner of the mAT, top GvG builds will change.

A surprisingly interesting bit of cynicism.

Yes PvX and the like have provided a base where ppl can at a min, say "help yourself some b4 asking for help". Yes there is a major gap in the experience of the player base. Yes there are the the attitudes which decay gameplay. Yes rewards from zc and bonus weekends increase participation. Yes if those rewards were continuous it would lead to more bots/farming. Yes bots and farming in pvp are issues. Yes the high end players play for rewards. Yes the low end players want to play for rewards. Yes the formats have be neglected. Yes the discrepencies between pvp/pve cause issues. Yes those issues are both between skills and player base. Yes the game is old. Yes the population has dwindled. Yes pvp formats suffer greater from less population than pve. Yes there is discrimination in pvp. Yes there is discrimination in pve. Yes ra is the most popular pvp format. Yes it's due to ease of entry (lol) and low set-up/prep time. Yes ab has sub par reward when compared to jq/fa. Yes maps are stagnate. Yes it is reasonable for ppl to expect to be able to play all parts of a game they paid for. Yes some players put forth more effort than others. And finally yes this rant on yes's has gone on too long.

besides, the true high-end played for fun. then rewards. if at all.

The high end PLAYED for fun, then rewards, true. Now what do they play for? Fun has been missing from these formats for years. If playing the exact same teams over and over again on the same maps is fun for some, so be it. But lets be real here: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

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Yes every single point is valid. But valid or not , what are the solutions? Thats what we are debating here.

your whole problem in a nutshell.

apparently it was too hard to have a civil discussion

carry on

Preach it!

I would like to add that getting some voice comms and finding a good guild/ally/group of friends makes the experience much better.

AB was empty calorie fun like RA before people certain people started syncing teams, throwing the ebb and flow between probably 30/30% keys / grenz, 15/15% canyon / ancestral, and 10% saltspray way off, to like 60% the deep map and 40% the mid map. It was impossible to win if you had one decent team + two mediocre or bad teams vs. 3 synced teams, the former of which would be based locked in a few minutes.

I had a lot of casual players on my FL, some of whom I met on this forum when gladiators arena actually had SECTIONS, that would invite me to play and it was fun even if the group wasn't the greatest. However it seemed like in a matter of 3-4 months all the regulars in AB quit. Whether it was the syncing, string of ridiculous skill updates, or just general boredom who knows.

Strangely enough this is exactly the reason I used to enjoy AB.The open expanses combined with a solid IMS was good times.

Each to their own.

Ability to play with friends yet still be paired somewhat randomly is a stroke of genius in my book. It ensures more equality between sides while still rewarding skilled players and teams. It lets nubs and pros alike play on the same field and focus on what they do best.

It's a cap point game, but that in no way means you run more than you fight. If anything strategy in AB is deeper than any other pvp format. You run into scrims all the time and have to decide quickly if you can beat them, what advantages they have, if you have escape routes, if your allies are likely to come to your aid or if they will flee the fight, can you end up being sandwiched, npcs present etc. If taking dozens of decisions like this every match is void of strategy I don't know.

The match is indeed decided by wiping enemy teams, but how you do it, the speed you do it and where you pick your fights are more important than the sheer number of players you slay. All this makes for the most strategic pvp format. To avoid talking past each other just imagine if the format allowed guild teams to make teams of 12 in size. You can imagine a much more competitive format which would most definitely be decided by strategy. It would of course also be ultimately doomed as nubs would never manage to make a competitive 12-man team. Hence the genius of the 4-man team randomly paired into 12v12. AB - the misunderstood genius. RIP.

Syncing will always be a problem in any GWs random format because,

a) Anet refuses to fix their flawed grouping system either because it is impossible without overhauling the programming or they just don't give a shit.

b) The GWs population for such formats is at the right place for syncers to effectively sync and reap rewards by cheating other players.

c) The live team is incompetent and keeps dishing out updates that do the exact opposite of what they were meant to do. They just write shit in notepad, think its good, then program it in. In case you didn't notice I'm referencing the strong box update.

d) Anet does not punish players taking advantage of such a flaw in the system. Most gaming companies that catch you doing this stuff will ban hammer your ass.