Alliance battles: 12 v. 12 or 4-4-4 v. 4-4-4?

Well, they got the Alliance system up and running half a week after Guild Wars's release... though there is one dramatic difference from the way it was back during the BWE - the setup of the match.

First, you need to be either in a guild or have a guest invite from a guild with Luxon or Kurzick ambassadors to participate in the battle.

Secondly, you must join a group to play. No group with less than 4 members is allowed in.

Thirdly, when you do enter, you can not team-chat with the other joining groups of 4 because your party is specifically restricted to you and your three buddies.

Lastly, when one team captures all points, the other team has 60 seconds to capture a point or the battle ends via mercy.

Personally, the changes appear to have been for the better, because I have played close to 10 battles today and found only one or two of them with a ridiculous level of ragequitters, not to mention most of the battles have been fairly close with not even 150 points difference in the final minutes. But still, it's annoying that you can only team-communicate with the three people you entered with, which prevents you from developing elaborate team strategies like before.

Though, while I was bitching about this in game, someone pointed out that it's good that it is 4-4-4 v. 4-4-4 instead of 12 v. 12 because of minion masters healing all minions, monks healing party and other additional party-oriented spells.

So, I think I've covered all of the bases of what has changed about the alliance battles, now what do we think Anet should do about it?

Personally, I like most of the changes except for the 4-4-4 v. 4-4-4 layout. I would like to see the 12 v. 12 method of play return, though with an added price for skills that target an entire party (perhaps extra energy per member? Ex: Change Heal party to all it's current text plus "all members are healed for 5 percent less for every member healed" or "this spell uses one additional energy for every two members healed"... This would make party heals, minion heals, etc. much less frequent... though I will admit that a minion master who mashes Blood of the Master repeatedly with 3 MM's worth of minions is basically crucifying himself, and the party heal to save his ass would drain the monk very, very fast).

Personally, I found the 4-4-4 v 4-4-4 frustrating. Having played in the FPE, it was easy to coordinate the attack.
With this setup, you basically have a solo warrior, with a few others to support. Everyone is off ganking and doing their own thing, and there is no team play, as there had been before. In the FPE, you knew when a point was under attack, and could act as a FULL team, not just a little 4-man team, to take it back.
Yes, one monk could heal the whole group, one minion master could heal all the minions-but change the skill to only heal those on your mini-map. If the other team has the same setup, its not any more unbalanced. But that's just my opinion.

completely agree with the above poster Ailyrr Merlena (and I think there is already like three threads on this subject >_>)

I agree with Ailyrr as well. The Alliance Battles during the FPE were a lot of fun, some of the most I'd had in Guild Wars this entire last year. It's a shame they changed it.
Yes, but since the suggestions forum thread has turned into a flame match of drivel between you and Ahruhk that nobody really wants to read, it doesn't hurt to have a new thread. It's an important issue too, worthy of attention.

(by the way, 12v12 isnt an alliance battle AT ALL. alliances dont matter in them at all, its 1 faction vs 1 faction. alliances are groups of guilds, and its not required that you fight with your alliance in these battles)

I hate dispise and loathe 4-4-4 vs 4-4-4. As to why, it's been said by enough people enough times already. I expect A.Net to change it back in a week or so.

6+6 vs 6+6

xD

We heard this same sorta line after the PvE mob AI update (aka, "aoe nerf"). And those threads were even larger and nastier.

That's true.

The same thing was also said when drops in Chapter 1 were drastically nerfed and everyone said: "It is just a temporary thing until they figure out a way to get rid of all the bots".

The drops never got un-nerfed.

These things are precisely why I'm taking a "wait and see" attitude before purchasing Chapter 2. Based on history of Guild Wars it doesn't make sense to think that because a change is vastly unpopular, it will be changed back.

All I want is the ability to talk to the rest of my team.

That'd be nice.

/signed.

At LEAST open teamchat to the whole 12 man TEAM. Sheesh..

has anyone tried using the "alliance" tab to try talking to the team?

I am putting this in here because I think it is genius. And after this, I am emailing this to the Anet devs.

To fix the problem, Anet should list all other group members as allies. That way you can still see the people on your team while still being able to check in on the entire team. Also, with this, they should re-enable entire team chatting.





This will not work because the alliance tab is for communication between guilds joined together in an alliance. In it, only guild leaders and officers can chat.

This whole 4 man limitation really gimps strategy using and communication with other party members. If they felt a Heal Party or Aegis spammers needed ruin the game, couldn't they just split the party up and set people as "allies" ? Or at least allow people to pick their whole 12v12 players, but split into 4:4:4vs4:4:4.

Only leaders and officers can use that, so really, it's useless for 12v12.

Unless you mean during battle, maybe that changes.

There is an older Thread about this, please go there: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3021356

aww but I stopped flaming =P
Besides it gets really old when people yell at you that you asked for it, even when the original thread long before Factions came out was all about keeping it the way it was and not changing (even if the OP was screaming to change it in that thread).

On topic though: old way = happier me and many others

Yes, and it does nothing in the PvP area. its for something else completely. And it works as it is suppose too. Officers and leaders of the Faction alliance of up to 10 guild can talk to each other easily with this system.

So yes IF they are all your allies and all officers and leaders in your alliance, then they can chat do you using that. But this is very unlikely..

this is the proposed prototype of what we are asking for... It maintains the changes to the system with allowance to target and talk to your entire team.

The main reason for 4-4-4 is because spells like Heal Party, Aegis, Martyr and Order of Pain simply became far, far too powerful. People would just sit in the base with an Mo/N and spam those skills and the entire team would get buffed like mad. And also people would only join teams as an excuse to get in. As soon as they were in battle, the teams would dissolve and everyone would go their seperate ways.

So if Anet decides to fix this they'd go with the above plan ^^ and make it so that buffs only affect your team and not allies.

That isn't true, and it's getting quite annoying to hear people constantly repeat it everywhere. Heal Party, Aegis, Martyr, etc. etc. DO have ranges, and relative to the size of alliance battle maps, those ranges are VERY small. Only people who are within your mini-radar are affected by "all party member" spells, and if your entire team (or even most of it) is within your radar on an alliance battle map, then your team isn't doing a very good job of holding objectives, unless you've just destroyed the opposition within the first few minutes.

Often, when I was monking or E/Mo healing w/Heal Party during the FPE, I wasn't able to heal more than 5 or 6 party members at any given time with my Heal Party. I can not remember a single instance in which Heal Party was able to reach between any two shrines on any of the alliance battle maps. The best you can do is sit between two shrines and heal party members fighting at those two shrines.

Organized Chaos. It was fun and it was as close to a pve-pvp hybrid as I think it would be possible to do given what we've seen so far. 12v12 in FPE convinced several of my PvE-only guild members to try out PvP and they enjoyed it quite a bit.

So, no, the change can not be justified by saying spells such as Heal Pary, Martyr, etc. were too powerful. Even if they were, both sides were playing with the same "overpowered" abilities and having more than 1 or 2 heal party spammers on a team anyway would severely limit your party.

Whilst the FPE WAS fun, at the same time it was completly shit!

It was always so one sided, it was only ever the case that one side would win completly!.. so it was completly boring and had no skill base to it at all.

Yes I agree there needs to be a coordination between the 3 teams of 4, and I also agree that Alliances! (as in a the group of guilds thing) needs to be able to form their parties for a REAL alliance battle!

However as it stands now, its still a far superior game to the joke that was alliances battles during the FPE.