Our cleric had left so we had to fight without buffs or heals, and we got beaten up quite badly.
This was a rather annoying issue from our tests yesterday, and as a result it has only reinforced the need to enable the support cleric queuing rule, which will be applied in today's game update. This will enforce that each team must have at least one support cleric. I am looking for more information to improve the detection of support clerics who attempt to join and would appreciate your feedback (see above posts for information). Additionally, an issue which prevented players from joining active games has been corrected, so even if one or more of your clerics disconnects or leaves, another will be able to take their place (more beneficial on the live servers, players are limited on Pegasus which is something we have to work around for the time being).
We wanted to warn the other side of this but unfortunately the normal and trade chat did not work, so we couldn't explain the situation.
In the end one found out you could still whisper, but this is a rather uncomfortable way of communicating.
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I suggest for the first problem, that either the general or trade chat should be made available, so teams can warn eachother in case something happens, or that you get a notification if a person in either of the teams leaves or gets disconnected/logs out.
All, Shout and Trade chat have been disabled in Game Arena game zones to prevent opposing teams from talking to each other. As you pointed out, Whisper chat is still available as it is considered a form of private chat. For your other suggestion, why would the opposing team need to know that a player on your team has disconnected? I can understand the need to inform players on your own team, which is already a part of the system - you are notified when a player leaves the group/team).
Another thing i'd like to point out is that in such a small war, the classes with a more supportive role such as knight or scout (cleric not, cause of the heals that are useful in small groups as well), or classes with less tanking capability such as artisan, bourg, mage, aren't very useful. In a 5v5 (and later 15v15) such a class can't do much (in supportive class case) or will get spotted and focus fired immediately (classes with less defence).
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For the second problem, well it isn't very easy to fix, maybe with the upcoming class balancing it'll be better, but we could try make crystal wars for more players. Yes i know the queue will take longer to be filled, but now supportive roles that are more feasible for group battles can do much better than when it's a small war. Also in larger groups ones with less ability to tank aren't as visible as in a small group, and don't get ganged and die immediately.
Unfortunately these are class balancing issues and are not addressed in this part of Pegasus testing. As you're aware, Leonis is spearheading the class and skill tree updates which will come in the near future.
Edited by Genesis, 10 March 2012 - 03:02 PM.