Various suggestions to improve Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry

If it turns out that way, yes. But it may not. Look at two other situations that may come up:

Alliance members kicking "team mates" of members of other alliances so that they can't get the points - we are competeting against each other via points after all. And it's not faction vs faction in PvE, it's alliance vs alliance.

And how long before the afkers figure out that going to these missions in huge numbers so they can kick the legit players (allowing the Ai to run the mission through) just out of spite or in response to them being kicked?

It's a problem that can only be fixed by making other areas more rewarding. After all, if players are feeling "cheated" by playing Jade/Aspen due to low rewards, then those missions aren't fun enough to warrant the trade off; points over fun. PvP brings it's own content, competition. Further rewarding it favors it and will bring in the rudeness of afkers and leechers. That's the system Anet brought with Factions.

I still stand by the idea of making other areas more rewarding so the afkers stay away from these missions. The final solution I can think of is to move the Jade/Aspen to battle isles. PvPers are wanting PvP characters to have access to these missions and players are wanting to compete in these. So moving them there and removing the faction rewards all together might be a good option. That way, the PvPers can get into the action there and there will be no reason for afkers and leechers to go there.

Lastly, I don't think people are alarmist when not wanting a kick option in place. We've all seen the amount of jerks and elitest fools this game has. The second a kick is added (even in a vote form) it will be abused by those with swollen egos and attitude problems.

The only problem is, these missions are fun and I want to actually be going somewhere by doing them. Maybe just increase the rewards for winning and greatly reduce rewards for losing?

I highly doubt it. Sure, the basic, stipped-down, unrefined kick system that many people seem to think us kick-enthusiests are proposing can have some issues if you get enough collective jerks together (which really isn't that easy to do in the first place), and you completely abandon all faith in humanity. But when you look at the details it really is nowhere near as bad as "abuseable."

I'd also like to point out that every other mass multiplayer game out there has a kick system in some form or another. But as I said, this isn't quite the thread to discuss this.

/signed for upping rewards a bit.
/not signed for allowign pvp characters in it. I've never really doen much pvp in guildwars ( though i have in other games), but a coupel fo days ago I needed a little bit of extra luxon faction ( the FF luxon mission sucks), tried out fort aspenwood and had a blast. I can't imagine that I'm the only one who is enjoyign having a place where I can try out pvp in guildwars without being utterly outmatched. if you think abotu it, you'll probably see my point, that having an rp character only pvp area will help involve more PVE only players in pvp.

Poll 6:Maybe make it like TA works, you can make a group or enter alone.
Poll 7:Yes

BTW, I think they should make the reward for Jade Quarry the same as Fort Aspenwood in the meantime. Last time i checked, people said Jade Quarry gave less faction.

Random Composition is what invited "leechers" or "AFKers" into Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry in the first place. As long as the "Random Composition" aspect remains, "leechers" or "AFKers" will always have the luxory of pressing the "Enter Mission" and leech or AFK away, at the expenses of others.

By making it compulsary to enter the mission as a team of 4 players, "leechers " or "AFKers" will not have the luxory of simply clicking the "Enter Mission" button and leech away. Worst case scenario is that a team of 4 "leechers" or "AFKers" team up and enter the mission as a team of 4 "leechers" or "AFKers". If this event should come to pass, I believe the other team of 4 players have the right to report the 4 "leechers" or "AFKers".

Other possible solution is instead of teams of 4 players, make it into teams of 3 players, and 3 teams of 3 players make up into 9 players per Kurzick or Luxon team in the Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry competitive missions.

Jade Quarry is also faster than Fort Aspenwood, hence the "lower" reward.

Random, and easy entering to the mission is probably also one of the things behind the popularity of them. Even if you'd only be required to team 3 people, nothing stops the botters from teaming together into a group of 3 afkers, making the situation even more worse.

If the botters really have the balls to do that, I'd say the other players have every right to report the abusers to ANET.

Problem is, that EULA and Rules of Conduct don't have anything against afking, so they really aren't breaking any rules. Of course, if they are using bots, then they would be banned, and they should be banned already.. But not everyone of these afkers are bots. Some of them actually speak every now and then :P

http://www.guildwars.com/support/
http://www.guildwars.com/support/legal/

I doubt many people would pay attention to what is writen in here:
http://www.guildwars.com/support/leg...sofconduct.php

Take note the underlined and bold sentences:
Questions:
1. Did these "leechers" or "AFKers", "respect the rights of others", and "respect the rights of others to play and enjoy the game?
2. Did these "leechers" or "AFKers" caused "distress" to other players?

I think your interpretting that rule wrong to fit your argument.

Example

Person A offers an item for sale.
Person B agrees to buy.
Person A changes their mind.
Person B gets annoyed and threatens person with the rule you've mentioned. By saying their distressed.

(See where i'm going with this.)

If that is the case, then please do prove me wrong.

So you are telling me that by

1. Joining the mission
2. Doing nothing for the whole period of that mission, aka "leeching" or "AFKing"
Is considered as "respecting the rights of others to play and enjoy the game"?
And such an action will not "cause distress" to the other players?


Regarding your "example":
Person A offers an item for sale.
Person B agrees to buy.
Person A changes their mind.
Person B gets annoyed and threatens person with the rule you've mentioned. By saying their distressed.

If A and B have signed a contract that is enforcable by law, then A is in breach of contract and can be sued.

Furthermore, your example is about buying and selling, it is not about violating the Rules of Conduct.

OH come on. You're really reaching there. Yes the EULA is pretty vague but common sense will tell you that the scenario you painted is ridiculous.

And people going AFK in a COOPERATIVE mission is clearly causing others "distress" and not respecting the other teammates' right to gameplay. Again, that's using common sense.

The context in which you put it. Does not count as true distress. It's more annoyance than anything with this matter. When you actually feel true distress then try telling me it matches your argument. Liberally interpretting rules in such a way for your own argument without actually understanding anxiety is pitiful.

It is up to the player to feel whether or not he or she is "distressed" or "annoyed".

For example, take a look at this thread:
Is this even allowed/tolerated? (Page 3) (by Sagaris)
59th Post (by josh axiom)

The image involved:


Of course, we are not talking about swasticas in this topic, I was using it as an example.

The symbol in the image was clearly not a swastica symbol, but as for josh axiom's reaction to it, well, read his post to find out more.


Another recent example of a player being "distressed"
Need an official word. (by Vermilion Okeanos)
7th Post (by wolfe2dale)


Anyway, we are a bit off topic I believe.

The purpose of this topic is to come up with methods in order to improve the competitive missions "Fort Aspenwood" and "Jade Quarry".

Initially, I thought that the extremely low faction rewarded was an issue, plus the denied access to PvP-only characters, so I started this topic.

As time passed by, a new issue emerged, thanks to Ira Blink's thread, I have learnt of the current problem that these competitive missions are experiencing, mainly speaking, the problem of "leechers" and "AFKers".

Hence, I proposed a couple of ideas, one of is to give the players the right to report these "leechers", the other is to disable solo entry into these missions by making it compulsary for players to form teams of 4 players and enter these competitive missions as a team of 4 players.


However, it is mentioned that a possible worst case scenario might occur, which is a team of 4 "leechers" enter the mission.

Therefore, I believe the best solution would be to remove the "Randomness" of these competitive missions entirely, making it compulsary to form teams of 8 players in order to participate in these competitive missions.

By doing so, it would completely eliminate the issue of "leechers".


I am certain that people would scream and say that this would destroy Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry, claiming that such a move would turn Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry into another Heroes Ascent.

That would not be the case at all, because Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry can be seen as a Cooperative Mission (storyline mission) as well, why?
In each mission,
1. There is a story scenario involved
2. There are many NPCs
3. The mission can only be accessable by RPG characters (PvE characters)

In fact, I believe such an implementation would "save" Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry.

I have added this poll (compulsary team of 8 players to enter mission) to the original post of this topic, those who wish to support such a change, please do cast your votes.

Thank you for your time.
Cheers.

Poll 5: I like this idea, a lot. Actually adding to the idea some:

Make it so that damage done, health healed, repairs done, damage reduced (protection monks and spirits)... pretty much anything that alters the health of a players or item should be counted towards the end result of your performance.*

Poll 6: Yea, I don't care much for PvP, but if I'm going to play it, it's gonna be with friends so we can laugh about how bad we are at it.

Polls about keeping randomness there: Yes and No. I can't stand it when I even do a PvE missions and some putz goes afk in those. In these, they are worse cause you need the help. Yes; if they find a way to "shoo" the leechers and afkers. No; if they can't do something about them.

*I also believe this is a good way to make the missions less inviting to afkers and leechers as they will have to do something for that faction.

Awesome thread btw. I'm hoping Anet hears some of the requests here and puts them in soon.

Edit: Teams of 8 is too many IMO. Takes too long to get that many people together, I feel anyway. With teams of 8 I just see more "gfl 2 monks" and "SS Necro" or "MM needed for group". I don't like how many players pigeon hole classes into playing a specific build all the time and groups of 8 seem to encourage that (yes, that bugs me in all missions and quests through out the game - hehe).

With groups of four, we can go in with friends and people we know wont go afk on us (unless they have something pressing in RL - which is fine). If the otehr team, a group of afkers gets together and just sit there, that's fine by me as I might actually win the mission with my friends. hehe

/signed
anet did listen to ppl's suggestion about making a 8v8 that acted like random areana, but obviously afkers and leechers are a big problem tat no one in game can do anything about. making organized grp can easily prevent this.

making organized grps can also make ur team work more effectively.

also the 4 mission towns are pretty empty, on a normal day i'd have to wait through 10 no opposing parties or more, just to go in and find 2 afkers.

if pvp were able to come to this place and organized grp were availible then there will definitely be some variation to the standard glf ss, mm, nuker and monk(dont mind the # of ppl, just pting out some meta game pve builds).

The problem with this is that as soon as you allow organized teams, you alienate all the casual PVE players that Anet seems so bound and determined to get hooked on PVP. As soon as organized teams are allowed your going to get the same rank/emote crap that goes on in other PVP areas. Casual players that do eventually get into a group will fail miserably and never come back. Keep the randomness as is. To satisfy the organized PVP players, make a seperate area with the same mission that allows full teams to enter and play against each other.

"Casual" PvE players are required to form teams of 8 players in the storyline cooperative missions. Are they alienated? These competitive missions are basically cooperative missions, except that you are competiting against another team. Rank crap is limited to Heroes Ascent only. It is not that hard to find 3 others like minded players to join your group.Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry is not Heroes Ascent. Have you even played these missions before?There is still randomness if players are to enter the mission as teams of 4 players, your team will still get randomly paired up with another team of 4 players.This idea is already listed in the original post of this thread.

I cannot understand why people would object to ideas that would serve to improve these maps. I am refering to those ideas which would help to reduce, or even eliminate the problem of "leechers" or "intentional AFKers".

Sometimes, I wonder if these people who object these ideas, are "leechers" or "intentional AFKers" themselves, trying to defend their "easier" way of faction farming.