Quote Originally Posted by Shut View Post
PS:
Freelancer IS active by default since 4.0, it's written on patchnotes:


Also, premades, even if it's 2 people, have freelancer enabled and cannot be disabled, it's impossible for them to choose any GC. Saying that win/loose is because of GC is irrelevant since garo and even more since SB.
This is a really weak "on by default" then. My alt on Sargatanas which unlocked PVP prior to SB and that, until last night, I hadn't logged on to since SB, did not have freelancer on, likely because the game saves your preference. This means only people who unlock PVP after 4.0 will truly have it on by default. Consequently, there's little reason to expect GCs to truly be indistinguishable from one another in terms of average performance, as they will largely retain their unique memberships at least for the foreseeable future.

Quote Originally Posted by Rilasha View Post
Mine was and still is as well. Only my Join Party in Progress was active.

Anyway, long time PvPer and 40% win rate as an Adder. Honestly, it's about who you get on your team that determines if you win or not nowadays. I can tell that Aether Maelstrom are the most popular among premades and old skilled PvPers, so that's the reason why they seem to win a lot. I've been coming in second a lot in the past week, but overall that's the position I've least been in since I played on that character.
Yeah, absolutely, which is what I keep trying to tell people who insist wins and losses are a reflection of personal skill. In a 72 person battle, the combined contributions of the other 71 far outweigh your own and while it does help to be better rather than worse, even the best PVPer in the world probably couldn't single-handedly carry the day except perhaps by providing leadership and direction in /alliance, should people choose to follow their instructions.

If Aether Maelstrom really has a reputation for winning, that would be a self-reinforcing influence that would actually cause something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as more experienced and skilled PVPers would be more likely to a) switch to Maelstrom and b) turn off Freelancer, which in turn reduces the number of Freelancers on the Maelstrom and prevents the skills of all PVP participants from truly averaging out across the GCs. The only way to really achieve that is to force everyone to use Freelancer at all times. Certainly I abandoned my beloved Adders and joined the Maelstrom, then turned off Freelancer, because I was done dealing with Flames and Adders shenanigans.