It's pretty clear from the wait times alone that Fort Aspenwood has become a seriously one sided arena. There is a reason far more people play the Kurzick side than the Luxon side, and it's not because they love playing a monk.
Fort Aspenwood was probably never going to be a perfectly balanced arena - with random teams (which is one of the most balancing and unbalancing factors) and two unique win conditions for each side, it was going to be impossible to have both win conditions equally as challenging as the other, but a combination of bugs, AI exploits and the defensive nature of the map have all combined to result in a pretty heavy favour towards the Kurzick players. This is why wait times on that side of the map are so long.
Instead of requiring Kurzick players to take mines and run amber to Gunther win, they simply have to heal and protect gates and kill anyone who comes close to their green gate or Gunther. With a random team with varied experience, it is quite common to have only one or two people attacking the green gate, resulting in them being easy to shut down.
On top of this, the Luxon requirements to win are much harder. You actually need to do something - you need to kill a lot of NPCs and travel a decent distance while fighting through a team of players equal to your own in addition to an entire map designed to support your enemy. Luxon players need to actively work their way to the green gate and gunther, making sure to hold a res shrine and send in turtles along the way. They need to know when to prioritise NPC targets (such as gate NPCs or mesmers) and when to run past or ignore Kurzick players who are between them and their win condition. Kurzick players simply need to attack the nearest target to the green gate to win. It's easily possible for an entire team of clueless Kurzick players to win the arena simply by killing any Luxons that come close to the inside of their base. The depth of knowledge for a Luxon team to work towards a win condition is often unconventional (attacking the nearest blue dot is an incredibly easy way to lose) and thus not friendly towards newer players.
Not only do you resurrect further away than your opponent, but your only NPC support (to "balance" out home field advantage + tonnes of NPCs) is an incredibly easily exploited, distracted or killed turtle. I'm not going to argue an offensive turtle, when hitting the right targets, isn't a huge advantage. Two siege turtles firing on Gunther and the two gatekeepers are often enough to win with a decently offensive team (getting that far you have to play better than your opponent anyway) unless your opponents have three or more healers and even then you have a good chance if the turtles remain alive and fire on Gunther. The problem is the turtle can be "stalled" with a limitless number of AI exploiting builds, or in the case of the orange gate, by standing in a spot which can't be reached by the turtle at all, causing it to fire at the Kurzick exploiter but never even doing as much as one hp damage. It is also out of reach of Luxon players until they break the inside gate and then run past (and aggro) the ranger NPC in addition to whatever players are defending the AI exploting person stalling the turtle. Even if that person is killed, they res seconds later and can easily return to the same spot to stall the turtle again, often running a spirit lord build offering a huge ally wide buff to a large portion of the map while negating an entire turtle offensive team with little to no risk of being countered in any way.
On top of this there are many other minor ways to exploit the turtle AI to constantly aggro them resulting in them never moving forward and effectively stalling a team which relies on the turtle squads for support when attempting to break through the base defenses. This is before you even consider the reality that in four out of five matches the purple turtle will stall on the outside gate, refusing to move forward and effectively resulting in a seriously crippled offense on that side of the map for the rest of the game.
With all of these bugs and exploits favouring the Kurzick side, it's not uncommon to see entire matches where Kurzick players never leave the base, one player stalling the orange turtle while the purple turtle is bugged and the monks supporting NPCs while the rest of the Kurzick DPS easily picks off any Luxons who attempt to advance without the support of a turtle, into an enemy base filled with an equally powerful team of players and a bunch of NPCs. These matches are still winnable but they are dramatically weighted in favour of the Kurzick side.
On top of all this, because the map favours a defensive Kurzick side, it's also quite common to see teams of three to five monks which automatically results in a win, regardless of how skilled the Luxon players are. There are always counters to monks, but when you have a random team of eight, it's rare to have the adequate counters and offensive builds which can stand a chance against a large team of monks. Since the last big FA balance update, the match times were made much shorter for a Kurzick win, not by encouraging them to run more amber or actively do something, just a flat decrease in the time they need to defend for, while at the same time most of the above turtle AI exploits were introduced (increased aggro range resulting in turtles firing on players they simply can't reach etc). This forces Luxon offense to overcome all of the above challenges in a shorter period of time.
While Luxon players tend to have a need for a slightly more diverse team (usually favouring at least one, preferably no more than two healers, nuking elementalists and players capable of taking down monks, preferably as few melee as possible due to the heavy melee hate and high knowledge base required for any melee to be effective) the Kurzick side has several easy exploit builds they often run (spirit lord, turtle aggro and stall dervish) a heavy emphasis on monks or ritualists and pretty much any DPS class will also be incredibly effective (but mesmers shutting down aggressive Luxon nukers and turtle stalling/killing ledge rangers are also incredibly effective).
The arena is highly imbalanced on many levels with many easy exploits resulting in the turtles becoming usless and Luxon offense being crippled. There is almost no incentive for Kurzick players to bring aggressive builds (which involve running amber to Gunther to reduce match lengths) when it's so easy to defend and cripple the Luxon offense.
At this point in the game's life, do you think ArenaNet will ever rebalance the arena to give more incentives to Kurzick players to be less defensive and more aggressive (instead of favouring large monk teams which would cripple you in any other PvP or PvE part of the game) and hopefully replace the turtle mechanic with something that actually works? They have tried several times in the past to fix the turtle stall bugs, but it consistently happens in almost every other match. Is FA too low of a priority to get the attention it has needed since Factions launch considering the other projects the Live Team is working on? It's current state is more akin to a beta testing arena with all the bugs and exploits rather than a ready to be released arena.
t
