Carrier defense? How much more imbal can it get?!

Because you don't need those strats to win, duh. That's the whole point.

I just played a couple of rounds as Luxon. The difference between that and playing on the Kurzick side is palpable. I didn't have to do anything other than rush and attack Kurzick players. The extent of our "strategy" was one guy calling up the other turtle when we were at the green gate. It was pathetic.

Oh yeah-we won. Handily.


Lol. "All you need to do is cause a stalemate". No shit, sherlock. That's like saying, "all you have to do is win, and about as insightful". Any more pearls of wisdom you'd like to share?

And so what if you dont need a strategy? There is nothing wrong with not needing to plan with random people a minute before the match starts. You just stated the luxon strategy. If it works, why do anything else?

The Luxon NPCS are better than the Kurzik NPCS so therefore it's imbalanced. End of discussion.

That's idiotic. NPCs arent the only factor in the battle. The terrain and objectives and gameplay are all important factors. Simplifying it down to just which NPCs are better is moronic.

If everything was equal (ie each side had a base that the other had to invade and both sides had to get resources to build to 100%) then you'd have a point. But since the objectives and territory is different on each side, your argument is just plain ridiculous.

From playing this mission a good amount, I would say that Luxons have a significant advantage at low to non-existant levels of coordination, but that advantage deteriorates when people start to know what they're doing...

But it seems to come back in force when players start to get good on either side. You don't see many good Luxon teams that really press their NPC advantage, but when you do see one (I.E., a squad that keeps heals on the turtle and has minion support for all the carnage created by the turtle) you end up with a situation that's hardly tenable.

The map has two issues, really. The first is that the Kurzick side realistically needs to split, while the Luxon side does not. At low skill levels the Kurzicks don't split effectively or try to accomplish mission goals well, and really can't win, while Luxons never suffer this problem. The other is that the map, to remain balanced, relies upon the Luxons having an overpowering offense that would always win if time went to infinity, but it merely has to be stalled enough for the Kurzicks to win before they break completely. The way that tends to break is how the speed of the game changes with the skill of the players. When everyone is bad, the game slows to a crawl, but when both sides are good things tend to accelerate and resolve themselves quickly.

This of course is problematic here because it means the map can only really be balanced for a certain skill level, above which the Luxons have an advantage (speeding up of gameplay conquers faster with their advantage and overruns) while below it the Kurzicks have an advantage (game slows to a crawl, progress isn't made very fast, timer expires). This is complicated by the previous low-skill scenario where Kurzicks cannot win if they are incompetent because they will not split effectively.

The net result of all this is that, on the whole, the better team wins. If the teams are roughly equivilent in skill, the Luxons will win if both teams are awful or both teams are good, while the Kurzicks will win if both teams are mediocre. In other words it's not something that can really be balanced around competitive play, but it's not a super serious format anyway - so as long as the sides are splitting wins in half I don't think there's any sort of problem.

Peace,
-CxE

That would be fine it worked for both sides, but it doesn't.

Why does the Luxon "strategy" require less effort than the Kurzick one?

I didn't think I needed to mention the objectives and territory since they are clearly in Luxon favor as well.

Luxon forces respawn automatically, Kurziks have to venture into Luxon territory and carry amber back to respawn their forces. This essentially ties up a PC for maybe 30+ seconds of running time, where the player is doing nothing in combat. It is almost a given that Luxons will control the mines, and when they do they actually get to spawn there making it very difficult to take back. If Kurzik somehow manage to kill the very highly defended Luxon commanders or mines, it is a lot easier for luxon to get them back. Advantage here in terms of NPC's, NPC respawn times, and PC respawn points are all in favor of Luxons.

Since Luxon NPCs can overpower kurzik, the luxons can simply ignore one gate and focus on the other. Kurzik always have to divide their forces. Kurziks also have to dedicate manpower and time to gathering amber and taking back mines. All of which take away from base defense. Often times I see the entire luxon team plus a turtle and warriors fighting maybe 4 kurziks at a gate. This is normal, because Kurziks always have to have 1-2 guys at the other gate to fight off the other turtle and npc's, and 1-2 other guys constantly trying to retake a mine and run amber. Kurziks have multiple things they need to do to survive. Gathering amber, taking mines, and killing commanders all take time and manpower away from basic defense. Luxons just have to spawn and attack to be effective.

Kurziks can hide behind their walls and defend with bonders, but Luxon can hide behind their turtles and do the same thing. It's more effective for luxon because turtles are way tougher than anything kurzik have.

Luxon can use MM to tremendous advantage due to the large numbers of dead bodies. Kurzik MMs see their minions get devestated every 10 seconds due to massive long range huge area of effect turtle cannons.

Luxon have terrain advantage in the courtyards. Kurzik have these nice high spots overlooking the courtyards, which convienently don't have range over the far side of the courtyard. Luxon can easily manipulate the enviroment, moving from side to side of the courtyard to avoid threats, or staying behid the turtles. Making the terrain more of a hinderance to kurziks, as we have to spend time traveling back and forth between the inner gate and the ridge to get range. Not to mention going through the ONE-WAY way teleporter, which permanantly positions you outside the fort.All a luxon has to do is move a half inch to the right or left or back and it forces a kurzik to run for 10 seconds just trying to get range. Also, luxon turtles have massive range and can destroy our inner wall before we can even get range to attack them from the ledge.

Please tell me what advantage kurzik have? We have walls we can hide behind, but so what? Luxon can hide behind their turtles. And the turtles can tank far better than the walls can.

Stationary defense? So what we can summon spirits and place traps at the gates? big deal. Spirits die quickly to turtles and traps have very little effect on a turtle/monk team. Actually spirits and traps are far more effective for luxon at the mines and on the teleport pads.

Bottom line is Kurzik have nothing that Luxon don't have at least equal to.

And finally to add insult to injury the Luxons can gain faction faster in the battlegrounds, since a short game gives the Luxons more points, and in order to get the max faction the Kurziks have to play a long game. Hence it doesn't even really matter if you win or lose with kurzik, you just get a set number of points/minute played, where-as the luxons can get a lot more points if it ends early.

I played on Luxon side all saturday (not 24 hours ofcourse, but enough to complete befriending quest). Luxons have clear advantage. It takes very skilled players on Kurzik side to effectively slow down Luxon forces enough so that amber runners can catch up.

I am not going to focus on ridicilous situations like Kurzik side having 4 monks (which happened a few times) where Luxons stand no chance. I can only say that with equal skill and profession distribution Luxons will win no matter what. Yes, I've seen serious players who can solo commanders/turtle on Kurzik side, but same goes for gatekeepers/Gunther. I have to say that gatekeepers are pretty crappy monks and can be easily assasinated. Also they often wonder off from their position behind green gate, which makes it even easier to kill them, while command points are not that important and can be easily taken back.
Turtles are even easier. I can succesfully protect turtle with Mo secondary. Blind attacker/interrupter. Add some damage. Throw healing breeze on turtle.

On top of that Luxons have time advantage since they can push their victory early and get reward for the half time spent in mission, while Kurzik have to fight to the end to get their 600 faction (not that I care about faction, but it seems like alot of people do).

Just be glad for the Jade Quarry

Which to date probably has 0.0 battles held there...

The thing that really bugs me seriously, is that Juggernauts in the whole game are never ever given any real advantage over the turtles. Don't give me that flip over turtle crap, have you even seen the firepower turtles present? Three of those things one shot almost anything during Gyala Hatchery and nearly kill Juggernauts in one volley. Juggernauts need some kind of mission where they are seen as the killers, and turtle as wussies.

Course, this has really nothing to do with the imbalances and such, but hey! The turtle has a CANNON. At least give the juggernaut an accent and the x-men one liner.

I only read part of this thread... Didn't feel the need to sift through piles of trash talk and murderous tones.

I'd just like to point out that the Turtles are easy as hell to kill, even when they are being backed up by a Monk...

Not for self-promotion or anything, but... Check this out. I never designed it for Turtle Slaying but hell, it works like a charm.

Turtles are the easiest thing on the battlefield to kill... Even for us "noob" Assassins.

The only problem I see with this mission is that Kurzicks do not know what to do. All they have to do is defend, but I keep seeing people rush right out into the battle field, oblivious to common sense.

The reason the Luxon NPCs are stronger is because they are invading a fort, and there are many times more npcs than them.

I have seen good Kurzick teams win quite a few times, so at least some of them know what to do.

Oh and quit whining about the Juggernauts and the Turtles, a Juggernaut does not even have to be right next to a turtle to flip it over. Also, if the Kurzicks would actually try to take down the turtles, they would have a much easier time defending the base. But do I see that? No, they're out fighting humans and getting the gates up while the turtles are still there.

I say it's just a lack of coordination on the kurzick part, even though the luxons seem to have an advantage.

soj or healing hands
healing seed
essance bond (thanks for the energy)
ect

there wasnt that hard to stop you

coordination? lol let me tell you how it usually goes:
1) Im set for running amber and clearing mines. Nobody on the team even bothers to bring anti-mm stuff. We die.
2) Im set for killing. Nobody runs amber. We die.
3) Im set for healing/anti-mm. Nobody does any damage. We die.

I tried it all. Coordination is a luxury which is required for Kurzik to win.

So in the meantime, I've gathered 66k in Kurzick faction in 4 days of semi serious playing. It took me a while to get all the faction but not any harder to get than Luxon faction since faction in general is tedious to gain.

The only complaint I have about the Kurzick side is the constant rash of AFK leeching bots. Almost every time that I lost while on the Kurzick side was due to having an AFKer on our team. And you know what? Most of my team didnt even notice until I pointed it out. And I think some of you complaining about the "imbalance" havent even noticed the AFKers.

When that happens, then I'll start worrying about it. Hasn't happened yet. Therefore, I'm not worried about it.

Sure, it's easy enough to list out a few skills on a forum and say "pwned" but how many monks out there are actually using that build to save the turtles from a rogue Assassin (or any character for that matter)? Maybe a few.

Maybe.

you get greater defence as you push further on to prevent the entire map be owned by luxons/kurzicks.

Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner.

The fact that the good luxon players win faster, creates a balance issue all by itself. I created an algorithm to demonstrate this amoung equal player pools, you can view that here: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/User:Dr...enwood_Balance along with its results. Ends up giving the Luxon a 3:2 advantage before they even enter the mission if you go along with the assumption that if the kurzicks fail to stop the first attack they lose, and win if they succeed (which is generally true).

Though I will tell you guys one thing, diversion is a bit overpowered. Slap that skill on a turtle and disable his turtle shell and he is as weak as a kitten, you also can prevent him from using his seige turtle attack for a minute at a time.

Yes this is true. A few days ago when I was playing on the Kurzicks side, one of the turtles had both a healer player obviously healing it, and a necro, making minions out of all the dead NPC's and humans. This is quite a tough group to kill as the monk usually (assuming they are at least decent) stay far enough back to avoid getting damaged, yet close enough to heal the turtle.

The turtle does the 'seige turtle attack', killing off any NPC's usually in about 2 hits which allows the necro to make minions, which in turn, work as a distraction as whilst NPC's and some players focus on minions, the real threat which is the turtle, stays well back whilst doing its attacks.

Of course the only thing Kurzicks have (as far as 'monster/boss' goes) to take on the turtles is a tree, which is more or less a giant modified praying mantis. Its incredibly slow, not just at moving but its attacks, and I think it would be better if Kurzicks had 2 of them.

Even if you manage to break their 'barrier' and get to the turtle, you've still got the carrior defense not only throwing you away, but doing a lot of damage, and added to that there are several NPC's which can do some serious damage (With one of my characters, either Monk or Assasin, all the hits were doing 70-80 damage).

And whilst this is all happening of course, double it since theres 2 turtles aswell as usually at least 1 monk and 1 MM. And after all that, in order for Kurzicks to prevail, they need to go into Luxon territory, get past the turtles, enemy players, NPC's etc, get the amber, then come back through it all again.

So yes, I do think Luxons have the advantage. On the plus side though, Amber is worth more than Jadeite. Having said that, I usually seem to have higher odds (several times higher) of winning on the luxons side, yet amber is only worth about twice as much as Jadeite.

Ive been using a similar build for weeks on the kurzic gate npcs, 30% of the time though its a waste as some git opens the gate. I dunno whats the point of blocking the gate if people are just going to keep opening it

Anywho

Ive used it a few times on the turtles to great sucsess, TBH though i find the kurzic side more fun atm because its more of a challenge, the luxon side is just to damn easy to win.

From what I have read, clearly the Luxion players have a bigger advantage over the Kurzick player at the Fort Aspenwood mission.

Main advantage is that the luxion side has no time limit to meet to order to win. A good team or even a bad team could simply smash their way threw to victory, while the kurzicks have little choice, but to wait untill the timer is done, and giving amber may repair the gates, but it does little to increase the build time.

Another advantage is that Luxions can constantly attack, while Kurzicks are undermaned because the need amber runners, also a disadvantge is that Kurzick players have to open the gates to go throw them, how easy woulf it be for Luxions to take advantage of this flaw.

Lastly Luxion reenforcement spawn alot more feqently then Kurzicks NPC's. Some say take the mines, well I always seem to get ganked since Luxions have advantage with fire power that they always have one or two spawn campers at the mines.

Lastly the people who say the game is balenced should read there own writing, some say I win 90% with luxion and 70% with Kurzicks, well how is that balenced, in a balence situation it should be very close to even, maybe more like 90% luxion wins to 87% Kurzick wins.

Face it, the only time I win is when the Kurzick team is good and the Luxion team is not. I would like to see two well balenced teams on both sides play, and see who really has more of an advantage, I beat it will be the Luxions.

Clearly they only play were they have an advantage and all those player who say it is balenced are Luxion players who play on the Kurzick side, most likly lying to keep the mission from being NERFED!!

I don't know about 90%, but after I stopped running amber (yeah, i got sick and tired of playing lameass utility role) I only won if like half of the Luxon team quits due to leechers. Why? Because Kurzik side required specific roles to play. Because Kurzik side required to bring counters to Luxon builds. And from what I saw that is just not happening... For all time playing Aspenwood I only saw like 2-3 people (counting myself) bringin Verata's Aura.

The only reason why the kurzicks seem to lose so much (I before you say I am wrong hear me out I played on both sides) is becasue of the larger population of people and that gives them alot less people that do not know what the heck that they are doing. A lot of the time I even observed a lot of them don't even follow a basic stratagey alot of the time other than scatter. They only real advantage I see with the Luxons are a smaller group of regular players and a basic stratagey in playstyle. Things could be changed a little bit, but the advantage isn't much game mechanics in the imbalance its more on the players themselves. If people could listen to the basics such as run amber, Defend, Repair the and etc the kurzicks would have a much greater chance of winning more often. In a sense I guess you could call me a Luxick since I play both sides. ^_^

I agree.

I just go Luxon becuase you can get wins every 1-10 minutes. The Kurzicks have to sit there and dredge out the whole game for the same ammount of faction it could take a Luxon only 1-3 minutes for.

Sure, you might face that one team with the good Boon Monk hiding behind the wall when your team is full physical, but that only happends once in a blue moon.

I don't think it truely has much to do with an imbalance between sides, though. It has all to do with the skill of the players. The Luxon side is much easier to play and really requires brute force. The Kurzick side takes strategy. Most people cannot comprehend any form of strategy (well, atleast most Guild Wars players.)

Wow some of you Kurzicks are coming off as the stereotypical emo whiners. As others have said, there really is no imbalance (nothing is perfectly balanced)

The only real problem are the players themselves. If you are complaining that you have to play certain roles (ie amber runner, gate protector) then go ahead and quit the game because strategy and teamwork is obviously too much for you to handle.

Oh and one thing that I do wish to see changed on the Kurzick side is allowing the gatekeepers and Gunther to accept amber while they're fighting. It seems a bit unfair that you cant even turn a battle around even if you have amber coming in just because those NPCs are fighting.

Also, the Kurzicks only have a disadvantage because of the large number of AFK bots. That's really the only reason for most of our Kurz losses.

Wow, thanks for sharing that with us. That was really an eloquent and _totally_ convincing piece of rhetoric.

No, see, we're complaining all that "teamwork" and "strategy" are really required by one side only. I'll give you one guess as to which one that would be.

Boohoo. I prefer playing on the side that "needs" strategy and teamwork. If you hate it so much go play Luxon then. Just because you percieve that one side or the other needs less/more strategy or teamwork does not mean a significant imbalance exists.

As I said there are only some annoyances that I wish to be fixed but you and others are just coming off as whiney sore losers.

Who said I hate it? I like playing on the Kurzick side for precisely that reason, it requires some strategy and teamwork. But this has what to do with balance? Nothing!

So please take your content-free ad hominem argument and shove it.

And you're coming off as a gigantic idiot.

Thanks for proving my point. This has nothing to do with the percieved imbalance stated by the title and OP of the thread. So why the hell are you so pissy?

Haha hyprocrite.

ChildeOfMalkav
counter suggection: go and play Kurzik if you think it is balanced.

I'm new to the area and have been playing it quite a bit lately, from the Luxon side...

It seems to me that if half the Kurzicks weren't AFK, they could actually win. The few matches I've been in where Kurzick was actually all there, they'd either win or put up an awesome fight before losing.

I AM kurzick. I even stated some annoyances on the Kurz side that I experienced. Any more bright ideas?

ya, quit bein liar and smartass

Yes I am lying because obviously anyone who is Kurzick cant possibly think that the mission is balanced right?

Are you retarded? Whether the scenario is balanced has nothing to do with whether I like playing it or not, despite your persistent efforts to make that the issue.

Do you even know what "ad hominem" means?

Gee let's see. You've attacked me plenty of times calling me an idiot and now a retard instead of sticking to attacking my argument and you say that I'm using ad hominem arguments?

Yes you ARE a hyprocrite.

Lol, too bad you didn't use google before you posted.

An ad hominem argument is an attempt to discredit an argument by putting the arguer on trial. In _your_ case it mean bringing up whether I like playing Kurzicks as a response to the question of whether the scenario is balanced.

(Though I suppose there's always the possibility that you have no idea what you're talking about so you just responded with a total non-sequitur).

Asking if you're retarded isn't an ad hominem argument, it's a response to your (incredibly stupid) post.

Really? I'm not the one calling people whiny, emo, losers am I? I mean, that's the extent of your "argument", which is to insult everyone who disagrees with you and to declare by fiat that no imbalance exists.

If that's what you're going to post, then I have absolutely no problem questioning your intelligence, and you have absolutely no grounds to protest.

Unless you want to look like a hypocrite that is.

Who the hell cares? The fact that you're constantly flaming him and using insults makes you look petty.

I see no reason to be civil to those incapable of civility. You can call it petty if you like.