Alliance Battles are pointless

Ok, here are the current problems with the new "Alliance" features that were added to guild wars.

1. Because Alliance Battles count up the total amount of wins from luxon and kurzik, YOU yourself [even your entire team] cannot be good enough to change the territories.
With only 4 people per party, you are dependant on the skill of 2 other teams. Along with only being able to strategize and talk to 1/3rd of the party, its extremely hard even influencing JUST winning at one battle[which the outcome wont even make a difference]


2. Whenever your faction gains territory it gives the opposite faction the advantage to winning. In such broad-scale battles, the one faction with the slight advantage will win more on average. Thus, this makes it almost impossible for a large amount of territory to be gain, and the boundry line will pretty much stay in the middle forever. With only Etnaran Keys and Saltspray beach as the only 2 maps that'll ever be played on, Alliance Battles become very dull.


3. Donating Faction to your alliance is completely useless. In both factions, the one alliance with the most faction has access to House Zu Heltzer or Cavalon. This gives access to the elite mission. For all of the other alliances, you can "own" an outpost if you have the next largest amount of faction. Except for the owners of House Zu Heltzer or Cavalon, all you get if you own a town is a Fireworks Master{with not so spectacular fireworks} and an extra Merchant {which gives 20% off salvaging kits, ID kits, ect.} Instead of getting your entire guild to focus on donating faction in order to get an ID kit for 50g less, you could get 15k for 5,000 faction that you donate-instead. Therefore, unless you are in a huge alliance of 1000+ people, it is pointless for you to put it to the guild. Also something to note, its that if everyone realized the pointlessness of this-the price of Jadeite and Amber would sink, therefore creating another useless point to factions.


4. Even the two "amazing" elite missions are not very good, and aren't worth spending 1million gold on maintaining for your guild. If you can get someone to allow you to see what the elite missions are like [like TC for example ], you'll see that it is just like another FoW/UW, but a little different, no exp rewards, even worse drops, and alot more enemies. There are still alot of glitches throughout the mission, and the only good drops you could get were gambling on zodiac item chests with 1.5k keys. [like 50% of the time, the items you get are rare water magic staffs of dwarfslaying, and are completely worthless]Also, Anet reciently nerfed the amount of chests that appear and the amount that are actually rare. Many people consider the 5-6 hours it requires to complete the actual mission not worth the trip or the drops you get from it.
So much for this being an "elite" mission. Oh, and you get no EXP from it, so its not even a mission!



5. One part that I liked about Guild Wars, was the ability the individual could influence the game. For example, you can be talented enough for your party, and the build you created, to win the Hall of Heroes. If you hold halls for a long time, you can become well known and almost famous in the game.[Ascalon Electric Company, Wanna Be Gansta, Power of My Rangers are all people/guilds that are well-known within the game, for holding]
What the new addition does is make you feel small, because whatever you do in Factions-you really cant influence the game or change it. Its all dependant on how 100,000 other players play, and how they do as a whole.



So you see that almost all the new "game mechanics" that were added to the game, are totally pointless-and are probally just a frame to make people buy the game.


Also, just a note, but i DON'T want this channel to be full of people who say:
"Well if you dont like it-dont play the game"
"So what if its pointless? dont be so negative"

I am not saying that the things that were added cannot be fun at times, I'm saying that they aren't rewarding[running in circles can be fun-but not rewarding], and that it makes the individual unimportant. Though I am one of the few who feel that ArenaNet doesnt actually listen to the forums, dont use this channel to bicker on weither or not you like the game. Maybe we could find a way for Guild Wars to make it not so pointless.

Although I hate to be all negative, I must agree with much of what you said. The points you made simply have the ring of truth about them, not a ring of bias. Outside of being able to freely visit each other's GHs, the Alliance system is a failure in my opinion. Alliance chat is a great idea and I would love it, but only officers and leaders can use it. I share your frustration with the town control/faction donating system also. Before Factions came out, all me and my guild did was talk and plan how to pool our faction together. Then within just a week or two of its release, suddenly we must get 3,000,000+ faction just to stand a chance at competing. Ridiculous, no chance at all we're spending all our time "FF"ing. I had thought A-Net wanted to get rid of the necessity to farm, but instead they took it to a whole new level. Oh yes, the Elite missions...only the first place alliance has access to them, the rest will never get to see them.

Overall, the game is great - the scenery in the Echovald Forest is simply breathtaking at certain spots. The only failure I'm seeing about the game is everything connected to the Alliance system. You're very right, it encourages "elitism", lessens individuality, and just puts barriers around the finest points the game has to offer. Not my intention to rant, but I truly feel that the Alliance system could have been made to work more fairly.

One thing you gotta learn about alliance chat is this: there can be over 1000 people in a alliance, now imagine those people who gotta say something, even if its unnecessary..... yeah, it can get old real quick, especially those immature people who just gotta talk in alliance chat cause its gold text -_-

Officers only was a good decision, sure it sucks for alot of people, but they can always talk in guild chat or pm whoever who they want to talk to, end of discussion.

I share your sentiments about most of all things said though. Owning an outpost is pointless >_< there is no bonus for doing them, not even a secret area per outpost. I can see how this is part of the 6 month per game cycle is already affecting content. Not that i can complain much, the game is worth the money.

Also, in game, grinding is a decision you do for yourself, Anet don't force you to it, IMHO, having played 2 weeks after release and seeing the current game now, Anet has given ALOT of GIMMES to people who are casual and don't wanna earn anything basically. I have no complaints cause its made it easier for me in alot of ways, however, some things ingame have to be a goal, otherwise whats the point in trying in the game so hard?

I personally dont support this whole exclusivity deal, but I can see where its validated. Just think about it, if everybody wore the same clothes, have the same amount of money and same everything..... gets boring real quick. Theres gotta be a line somehow that separates those who go the extra mile and those who simply just go casual, although being a casual player myself, me saying that feels awkward, but I feel its how it should be.

Elitism is unavoidable, luckily there are a few people on top that do give handmedowns to the people who ask for em. Heck I'd like to go to the Kurzick elite mission, but unlike TC I really really doubt people in the kurzick area are as kind. However, its really their decision, its not a right for me to automatically have access cause I bought the game. Its like asking to have everything on my lap cause I spent the $, thats stupid. Most people don't realize that.

What really bugs me though is the alliance battle system, it is flawed

Alliances,the downfall of Factions? From everything people have said it sounds like that's the key prob to me...

this Elite mission system is a failure to me... dont wanna spend countless hours doing PvP (which i dont like^^) and u dont even have a benefit from it...
so basically, u do 10k pts of each factions for the quest, then u get 10 amber/jadeite with em, u buy the other ones u need for a 15k set and u dont care about this Factions thing .. weird, it's the main purpose of the game itself

(not mentioning the silly 600 pts rewards u get in a random messy mission with half of leechers/leavers/afk/guys opening gates for the other team)

No it was pretty dumb...how many 1000+ people alliances are there? If you can't maintain order then...yea. A.net should have at least give the alliance leader the choice on how alliance chat behaves...because I guarentee you there are more 3 guild <100 people alliances out there then anything who are very let down by the inablity to comunicate with each other...

I dont' even have a way to know when other people are on in the other alliance unless I want to clutter up my already confusing friends list

Actually I used to think that PvP sucks, but having tried the alliance battles a bit I have to say they are pretty fun

Hmm, your title is About alliance battles, and yet your main rant seems to be about Elite missions, and Guild Alliances :S

and, I disagree about the elite missions.

I think they are brillant, what do you mean no XP ? you get XP for killing.. and there are SO many monsters they all give huge ammounts of XP.

The drops.. far better than FoW! I dont recal seing any whites at all, chests have always been a gamble, but at least you get golds from them. you get millions of blues which recycle into huge ammounts of materials which you can sell.

as for Alliance battles... great fun!.. its mindless killing, and I always have a great experience, even if lose.

As for Alliances themselves... anyone who thinks that 1000 people should chat on Alliance chat is just an idiot, it would get turned off, and noone would even bother with it. Our Alliance of 7 already suffers from spam, and each guilds is only small..

As for Alliances themselves.. Even if your alliance never bothers to compete for the an outpost, we have so much fun with our allied guilds.. so many more people to play with, scrimages, AvA, HA Ta.. missions, challenge missions.. the sheer number of players and guilds we can now communicate with without losing their own identity.

Alliances?... Best thing ANET ever did, well done!

lucky you for being in a alliance willing to grinde 24/7 for it's 8 MILLION faction...geez man do you even read the boards

Dude I hate people who think like this. This mentallity which goes things like in voting and such adds up and causes a greater affect. Its kind of like the my one vote can't make a difference thing. Yes it can but you just won't notice it very much BUT IT ADDS UP. Same goes for alliance battles. STOP LOOKING AT THE SMALL STUFF AND SEE THE BIG PICTURE!

Well said

Great post Snowman, its good to see some positive comments on factions.

I love the Alliance system, but to be honest the huge negativity surrounding the 12v12 combat scared me away for a bit. Since then I have become even more addicted to the combat in 12v12, its still fun and people need to stop bitching. Sure the fpe was fun too, but with this its even better when you have a guild to run around with. If you cant find a guild, its not that hard to find one honestly, the guild I am in currently I found off of this website and is definatly one of the best guilds I have ever been in.

Offtopic, elite missions.

Actually the race for "zomg me alliance zgonna farm Cavalon l337 alone(The Deep)" will be over soon. TC is extremly kind and lets anyone in.

Once you're down there, you can leave your favourite char there and you'll be able to access the mission even after another pro-farming alliance takes it over and locks everyone out.

I don't know what you're talking about with no white drops. I saw only one golden drop from monsters. The rest was 70% white, 25% blue, 5% purple.

We reached Kananax (the last "boss" whatever he's called) in like 3 hours. And since it was the first time for almost all the people in the group, we spent 1 hour trying to figure a way to kill the guy with build we had.

For 1 hour we systematicly killed every nightmate that spawned hoping that they`ll stop spawning after a certain amount of kd's on the boss. Turned out that the rumors were just rumors, nightmares kept spawning. So we did a "whammo rush" and got chaos storm spiked by 2354 nightmares.

All gold drops I got were from chests. The best thing i got was a zodiac hammer 14^50, req 13 and an ironwing bow, 15% while enchanted also req 13.

I don't see those as some "uber" drops since soon enough the market will be flooded with that crap. So why rip people just for the skin?

Afterall, if you have some brain, do the mission a few times, it will becaome just like FoW/UW. People will get used to the diffrent rooms and area effects.

Regarding XP. Of course you get alot of those down there. With a full 12 peeps party, you get like 15 XP from each kill.

Now let's say there are 1000 monsters down there (maybe more). That's like... 15K xp? It's not anywhere near fow/uw where you could get that from the quests in like 1 hour. Let's not forget that currently in order to clean everything and reach the last room, the best time it was like 2 and half, nearly 3 hours.

So yes, it's an elite "mission", but the rewards tend to be less "elite". And soon people will figure out a way to effectivly farm that place, just like they did with old tombs. Althou everything down in The Deep is 99% anti farming.

I love Factions, but you have very valid points and I agree. I'm just happy that A-net has the ability to change or improve the game with updates. *nudges A-net* Hear me?

/signed