Thoughts on Alliance Battles so far

Most of my play time for the FPE has been in the Alliance Battles and I have enjoyed them quite a bit.

Alliance Battles are misnamed, and I think that is what is causing a bit of angst on this forum. For me, the term "Alliance Battle" implies that one guild alliance forms up a 12 person team to take on another 12 person team from another alliance -- a bigger version of guild vs guild. Based on some of the comments I have seen so far, it would seem that others were also thinking it would feel more organized.

The game type at this point is really "Faction Battles", in that the organizing principle is faction allegiance.with the entry mechanism being a combination of random arena plus team arena. As someone who is not in a guild big enough to participate in GvG, this has been a great thing. As a casual, solo player who enjoys PVE and PVP, I was afraid that I would be shut out of this game type. It turns out that I can hop into this as easy as Random Arena.

I like the generally chaotic, large scale battles. As others have stated on the board, a guild who fields a 4 person, organized team can greatly influence the battle, but the other side can still win with quantity if they stay active.

I like that your team has to work together and assualt the NPC defended control points with 2 or more persons.

The game type is almost an exact mix of Unreal Tournament domination and Wolrld of Warcraft Arathi Basin. For anyone complaining hat you had to wait for more than 30 seconds to get into a battle, go try getting into a WoW battleground anytime other than primetime. Normal wait is about 30 minutes. (Not to make WoW comparisons, and I actually do rather like Blizzard, but this is yet another area in which ArenaNet delivers a better thought out product).

The biggest problem with Alliance Battles so far are the deserters. It is very frustrating to see players drop when their team gets even 15 or 20 points down. Perhaps these players don't realize that you still get faction when on the losing team. More to the point, you get more faction the harder you try, as it should be. I don't know what the answer is.

One solution would be a straight up faction penalty for dropping. I am thinking 750 faction is a good penalty. Another penalty might be something like the deserter debuff in WoW where you couldn't join another battle for 10 minutes after dropping. The main problem would be the penalty would also be incurred for legitimate disconnects, but I suspect the number of deserter drops greatly exceeds technical disconnects.

Another solution would be to have an accelerated victory if one side holds all 7 control points continuously for, say, 1 or 2 minutes. Call it a mercy rule. I have seen a team come back from a 5-2 deficit, but I have yet to see a team even take a single control point after losing all 7.

Or, if one team gains all 7 control points, the losing side gets a spawn of 6-8 level 28 NPCs that charge out from the base camp to attack the nearest two control points. That should keep the winners hopping for a while.

A final idea would be to replace deserters with regular henchman as they drop. It would still be unbalanced but at least the henchmen would not give up.

The other option would be to reduce the overall score needed, to say 400 or 350 (this would reduce the faction gain, of course), or increase the rate at which the score ticks. The problem with the current system is that when one side gives up, it can take up to 5 minutes for the game to finish, even though the result is not in doubt. Unfortunately, this actually encourages deserting, since you can make faction per hour by only sticking around on winning teams.

On the whole, it's been great fun and I can't until the full release.

In response to your mercy rule, that would be unfair because every other winner would have gotten 500 faction, and all of the losers get as much faction as they have earned up till then. If you don't give them time for the points to stack up, then that would be short-changing them, and many people would get pissed off. Also: its nothing like UT2k4's domination. More like Onslaught.

My thoughts on the Alliance Battles:
- I love it
- It strongly reminds me of "Day of Defeat", but we gets swords and sorcery instead of guns and grenades
- The rage quiters ruin my gaming experience
- Finally! We don't need to bring rez signets!
- Its chaotic!
- Its fun!
- I love it!
- Too bad no Balthazar faction gained

Ok, end of my thoughts, thread hijack time:

The below thread is titled
"PUNISH the Alliance Battle quiters"
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=142996

So if you got something to say regarding rage quiters in the 12 vs 12, you can post it there.

An idea that I proposed yesterday: