Anet tricked me with 12 v 12

NO, they will not!

1) Heal party, etc. does not effect everyone (only those who are relatively close to you) in the party.
2) Having a bunch of IWAYers running around is NOT going to help you cap objective points unless they split up, at which point they would become useless and die in a very undignified manner.
3) Having 3-4 support chars is not going to help you out nearly as much as you think it might.

Just a small point.

After the same period of time, the thread complaining about the 3x4 teams is only 1/4 the size of the thread complaining about random teams of 12 during the FPE..

Anet did this to stop leavers, and by and large, it has worked. I havn't seen nearly as many drop outs as in the FPE.

Do you even remember these forums post FPE? Here's some things to refresh your memory:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3000396
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=142951
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=142932
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3000330

After the FPE, everybody was whining and complaining about 12v12 and how horrid it was in it's current state. ANet made some small changes(disallowed people to enter solo), which has seemed to drastically cut back on the big complaint- half the team leaving as soon as your team was 20 points behind. Now, since they listened to everybody's moans about 12v12 after the FPE, they're getting more whining and complaining.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3000396

-Despite the title of the thread, most of the posts were in OPPOSITION to the OP.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=142951

-This thread addressed the actions of PLAYERS, not gameplay. Even I supported minor penalties for leavers. But, I had no beef with the actual gameplay.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=142932

-Same as above.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=3000330

-Same as above.


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3 of the threads you've presented as "Edvidence" of people not liking the format are actually in regards to actions of direputable players and not gameplay/format issues.

The one thread that was about format, ultimately resulted in far more posts supporting the FPE Format.

Feel free to offer more evidence if you would like to dig it up, but I think you'll find far more evidence supporting FPE style.

Agreed- most all of the complaints were about people quitting- which ANet did something to stop. They can't change the players, but they can change the game. Leaving 12v12 the way it was in FPE would have resulted in the same issues in release- 95% of battles being decided in the first 2 minutes based on the team who had the first ragequit. They made one small change, which has fixed that issue. In addition, it helps avert other things like party-wide skills being broken with 12-player parties.... heal-party/aegis/orders spammers, etc. It may not be the best solution, but it fixed the problem that generated dozens of pages worth of complaint posts.

One change that was suggested that I would like to see would be to have the other 8 players on your ally bar, and to have some way of communicating with them- maybe change the trade chat to a chat that is seen by all 12 players on your side, or something like that. I'm definately not saying that it's perfect now, but at least I'm not faced with 5/6 the games that I get in be decided by which side has the first ragequitter. With the change, it's also much easier to coordinate with your friends/guildmates who you enter with- you don't have spammed map-pings, and you can at least expect the other teams you get paired with to have some coordination rather than being 8 people who entered solo and have totally random builds and group composition.

hmm, another thread about 12vs12.. and still the same nonsense

12vs12 during the FPE was NOT fun!...

Rage quitters everywhere, hoards of minions dominating everything, and the entire part sitting in their base waiting for the timer to go down!

improvments need to be done but dear god dont go back to what it was like during the FPE, that was just the dark ages!

I love it when people say "12 vs 12 was the deciding factor and now that i dont like it i wish i had never bought this game".

Who are you kidding? You are addicted to guild wars, you would have bought it anyways.

yes you should be able to chat and see your entire battle but not letting ppl solo run just might be a good idea
-sure some people just want to pug it out with a build theyd like to test out without the hassels of waiting for a group, but not letting a single guy just randomly join a battle also weeds out a ton of potential ragequit noobs who will desert from battle for various reasons

Without solo joining I'll probably never play this at all.

Wrong, they could have changed the requirements without changing format. Still require 4 man teams to join, but put them together as a single 12 man team.

You better play now because within a month people won't be stupid/fair enough to have a 4man PUG there.

Who are you kidding?

The requirements prevent ragequitters, not the style. And people still ragequit.
You obviously havn't played at all if you don't think minions are dominating everything. And that is with the Minion Master nerfs.
And people will still sit in the base waiting for the other team to win just to get what faction they can.

The format fixes nothing without breaking all the team part of it.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Really.

Right now you can still get a random group.

No I can't. Random would be how it was in the FPE, and that would be great. PUGs aren't random. People are very selective about who they take along. PUGs are exactly the reason I'll probably never play it. I have very little time to spend on the game most days and I don't want to spend it trying to get my non-cookie-cutter characters into PUGs. Just hitting the 'Enter Mission' button whenever I have a spare hour or so would be the greatest thing.

Guildies won't be an option either. Half of them won't be buying Factions the way things work right now and most of the ones who did get the game aren't interested in PvP. The remaining ones are not likely to be online in sufficicient numbers at the same time to field a 4 man crew more often than once a month.

You obviously arn't listening. The Pugs arn't picky enough yet, but if you procrastinate and Arena Net doesn't change it back (because back would be fun, can't have that), then you won't be able to play within a month because it will be run by cookie cutter builds of people who think their farming of Hall of Heroes entitles them to respect.

Perhaps so, but that's all academic really because I don't have a character anywhere near it anyway. That'll probably take me most of that month.

There was a fair share of negative comments about the way parties were put together randomly as well, at least on the forums I regularly post on.

But Anet still shot itself in the foot, they have someone that looks through all fansite forums. With the numerous comments about how fun the FPE was, the way it was structured ... they should of made the info about certain changes more available.

I've loved everything that Anet has done with GW up until now...

The new Alliance Battles just aren't as fun as they were in FPE. Ok sure some skills were overpowered but I'm sure they can be fixed without just sucking all the fun out of ABs in general. I mean like its been stated above, it just doesn't feel like 12v12 anymore.

Please Anet just change ABs back to what they were in FPE, 12v12 madness.

Thank you A Net for making alliance like this. We have more coordinated teams and less rambos. Alliance battles shouldnt be for casual RA people since it impacts the game a lot! Unlike RA. We need professional teams and A Net saw this. GJ!

I think the change to force people to form 4 man teams was a good one. Builds team work which inspired less quiters.

However the lack of communication between teams is horrible.

A friend of mine had an idea this weekend that wasn't half bad. If they are worried about spells like heal party being abused because they weren't geared for 12 people then...

Have your 4 people as a team and the other 8 as "allies" like how bodyguards and the guildlord or npcs like rurik get added. Then just make it so team chat and map pings get shown to all allies.

Skills remain balenced, but communication is improved. Seems like a non-exploitable middle of the road answer to most people's complaints.

You see, this is what you don't get: When you email Anet about these things they email you back and tell you to go POST IT ON THE BOARDS..... So you are completely and utterly wrong.
People who are posting their opinions on here is because they were told to! If you do not believe me, write a letter to Anet about not liking something or thinking something should be changed.

These people have a right to be mad. If you like it the way it is, fine, that is your opinion but the opinion of most of the masses is that they do NOT like the new way.

And Fate, you and your buddy are ages too late with that idea. It's the same one that we have all thrown out about a million times. I posted the idea a while back... Someone in here actually created an example of it. It is a great idea - we just dont see anyone using it.

why not just add a 12vs12 random arena on the arena island?? then evrybody will be happy....
i for one loved the 12vs 12 pug madness...
and for quitters, make so they loose f.ex 200 balty points for each game they quit..
and for balty point bots (those just standing there.)
if you havent moved for 2 min or so, -200 points... (this should be implemented in ra too..)

Why did you even say this? Were you kidding?

I can understand why no one likes this as it is inconvenient and at times frustrating. But look at the good part, you can trust people more not to leave and its more organized, you dont have people randomly running everywhere. Now it tempts you to play as a team with your core 4 players and work together with them. They do however need to implement a alliance chat (one to talk to the whole 12). The new way is much better and organized and filters out the people looking to join in and leave (the obnoxious enemies, like a luxon joinng kurzick then leaving and vise versa) Just look on the bright side folks it will be alright!

Check my post (#27) on page 2... I guess lots of people are having the same idea

He was reffering to trying to heal the other 8 in his group... So no this WASN't a joke - if you cannot see the other 8 health bars then ya can't heal them without having to look really hard for which ones are low and such.... But then as I have previously read there are monks who never gave a care for the rest of their team, only the 4 they went in with and their own hide... Sad really... to not work as a team...

This is the problem, with the setup now it's not seen as a team effort, just a group of 4 effort and forget what everyone else is doing, just so long as your team does it right...

*sighs*
"Allies" and some form of chat!

Not being able to communicate is dumb.
Not being able to rez a teammate who isn't on your team is dumb.
Not being able to see how the rest of your team is doing (by their health bars) is dumb.
Leavers still go unpunished, and Anet's "solution" is terrible.
PvE challenge missions give even more faction than the Alliance battles, so no one who seriously farms faction would even think about it. Of course, the challenge missions are extremely boring and repetitive so PvPers get screwed over.

Because these party-effect skills were balanced for 8v8 play. They aren't cost-effective in 4-man parties, and they shine in 12-man parties. I don't know if you played much of the 12v12 FPE battles, but getting together a bunch of hard-hitting hard-skinned warriors with backup e/mo heal party and orders support would tear through anything like a knife through butter. With their huge range, the party-effect skills even allow for a lot of mobility.

And especially on the huge AB maps where teams are often required to split up, you create huge mismatches. Picture a couple of order-powered warriors converging on two random characters. They'd rip through said characters before even getting hit back with anything worthwile, and the little collateral damage they'd take would be mopped up by heal parties every 2s and healing signet. Warriors are already the most common build in AB's, imagine what it'd be like with 12-man teams.

Ok please tell me how

Less Communication = More Organization.

That's a rhetorical question. It doesn't.

That's just a plain faulty arguement, unless you're running TS or Vent and spike entering.

Entering solo = prayed and hope your build would work with the people you were going into the match with. A VERY high chance that out of the 12 people ONE was a monk. A VERY high chance of one HUGE melee in the middle and no tactics whatsoever. Free For All.
Teams = squad tactics, team builds. You get to organize what you are going to do. Hold bases? Flag Capturing? Mage Bane? R/N/Me whatever Spike? What is your purpose now, and plan for it with your OTHER THREE TEAMMATES.
Knowing that a SPECIFIC number (three) of people are depending on you to preform a function seems to have the effect of less rage quitters.
I still see a fair amount of people try to go solo the elemenatlist or necro shrine and die quite quickly. Or they come across my squad for a quick bash. For the most part though, I see people moving around in squads. In the FPE all I saw was meaningless chaos where a win was brought on more by luck than by skill.
Also I am guarenteed to play with friends and guildies before the match.
Random Teams < Organized Teams
Good Job ANet!

The reason for the change was to prevent Abuse from Heal Party, Extenguish type skills. in a part of 12 these skills can be considered SUPER SUPER Broken. Imagine a team with 3+ HP spammers you thought they where bad in gvg now look at them in this senario if they left it the way it was.

Um, if i'm not mistaken, your guild has to join a side (Kurzick or Luxon) to even be able to ENTER alliances battles anymore. (That is, I haven't seen the NPC in House zu Heltzer, and the other side's NPCs are gone from the GH.) That alone reduces the number of saboteurs dramatically. This point doesn't seem to have been brought up, so I thought it should be. And my biggest issue with it right now is the isolation. It is NOT 12v12, it is 4,4,4v4,4,4. There is a difference. The tactics are gone, there can be no coordination between the different groups of 4, and that just is not a stronger strategical position.

And splitting up negates the very party-effect spells and "builds" you mention in your first paragraph. On top of it all, when you have 3 separate teams of 4, how do you guarantee that you're going to be playing with other support chars that help out the "team build" you're working towards with your individual team.

But, you're right about one thing; splitting up inevitably has to happen, and that's the whole reason the change sucks horribly. When you split up, you aren't going to necessarily be going with your group of 4, you'll just go with whoever is around you when they start running to a shrine. THAT is the reason you need to be able to at least see everyone; so you know what and who you're going with when you head somewhere to take a shrine. Usually the battles at individual shrines do boil down to 4v4 or 6v6, and in the FPE, that was facilitated by having the entire party in the window. Now, it's just a giant clusterF around any given shrine.

I personally do not want another HA or anything like that.

I am tired of the Rank discrimination and it really pisses me off, you want an all guild group go to HA.

I spent no joke 4 HOURS to get one group and we died third round.

4 hours for 0 fame nty i dont want anymore HA

Case-in-point of how the new split system does NOT help strategy/tactics.

I run a nice little solo Warrior Build for the sake of taking shrines on my own when convenient, or my team is being stupid because, wait for it, wait for it, they can't communitcate.

Now to the story.

My team is down 100+ points, mass cluster fighting on the Orb Shrine (Etnaran Keys) I mean EVERYONE is distracted, on both sides. The enemy has 5 posts, so we can't afford a long delay fight. But since no one can communicate, no one's gonna stop what their doing.

I just rezzed and look at this situation and realize; this is it, this is the VERY situation I'm built for. So I jump in the teleporter, and start sneaking around to the Warrior Shrine on the beach. I managed to get there completely undected and start killing the Warriors.

Then to my dismay I see a person from my team heading in to help me. I wanted to say "no, go back i don't want you drawing attention to me." Well, it was ok, she had come in without bringing anyone with her. Fine, she starts helping me. Then to my horror....here comes another ally, who I can't tell to go back, because of the split system.

Can we all guess what was tailing him? Yes, a blue dot.

The one opportunity to turn the match around (in retrospect of course, I'm not trying to be arrogent) was screwed up because I could not express my plan to my team.

Subsequently, within a minute we had 8 enemy players wailing on us....we died. We lost the match.

1) Heal party and orders have range larger than radar radius; two people can easily cover most of the battle grounds.

2) Ignoring the fact that you wouldn't use IWAY, warriors are the most robust (strong, durable) characters in the game. They can run faster, they can snare, they can heal, and they can put out a very large amount of damage in a very short time. You can outright kill targets before they even get a spell off on you if you reach them unnoticed.

So why exactly do warriors become useless when they split up? If your small group of whatever meets a small group of warriors, you usually get owned unless you're heavily anti-warrior or you just run, because you need all the support you can get to work those warriors' health down before they tear you a new one. Warriors are very strong in small encounters, no doubt about it.

Heck, it's like that even now. Warriors in AB are all over the place. I play a warrior and I just run around deciding who dies next. Lone targets are especially juicy because once you get close to them, they're dead.

3) First, heal party is one skill. Meaning you have 7 other skills to throw at the opposing team. You make it sound like these "support chars" just sit there all day spamming heal party, drinking tea and eating crumpets. Water snares, anyone? If you get snared in the vicinity of warriors, kiss your candy arse goodbye. Hell, they even made a new "extinguish" skill that's a weaker, non-elite version of martyr. Good luck with blinds and cripples.

In regards to necros, blood is not only the orders line, it also happens to be the direct damage line.

So, you could argue about how this setup isn't exactly super, or you could've played in the FPE and noticed that nearly every battle happened to have at least one e/mo and usually lots of warriors. I ran orders a few times, and when I happened to score a warrior-heavy team, a steamrolling ensued.

Once again, it's not difficult to reach most of your team with party effect skills. You can't guarantee an ideal team setup, but that's the beauty of warriors - they are self-sufficient.

Being able to talk to random teammates is nothing too special. I can't even remember a time where a random teammate followed any kind of orders. Drawing on the map can help, but I wouldn't bet on people following orders even half the time. I'd rather have a balanced game where you're not forced to be one of only a handful of viable builds.

I don't get your issue with splitting. The way it works now, splitting up a team of twelve comes naturally - you split as three groups of four, each of which is already organized.

And if you just run around following random squads on the field, you need to work on your tactics.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe your lack of captures and your 100 point trail might have been what made you lose, and not this silly little incident you spoke of? I'd also question your use of a "solo build" in an environment consisting of built teams.

True. This is why I don't think that full-team communication is critical for this mode to work. Just keep an eye on what's captured and what's going on around you. Chances are, you don't need communication to get the jist of what your team needs to do next.

With 12 people in one group, entire party spells like Heal Party and Aegis are overpowered.

How so? How is the ability to affect a random party of 12 people any more overpowered than an organized group of 8 people?

This is why people suggested it to be at least changed to teh other 8 people as allies thusly not affecting them.

It's basic math...67x4=268hp for 15e, 67x8=536hp for 15e, 67x12=804hp for 15e. That's why heal party sucks in 4v4 and kills in 12v12. Also, because the teams split more and the damage is more scattered, heal party has a much larger effect than in organized 8v8 where quick single-target damage is more common.