Curse

Mental Leteci · May 06, 2007, 06:23 PM // 18:23

Altar Holding.

Kool Pajamas · May 08, 2007, 06:06 AM // 06:06

My current vote is make Broken Tower holding/king of the hill and Courtyard as a 1v1 kill count.

Akaraxle · May 08, 2007, 12:38 PM // 12:38

Kill count yields some interesting strategies, which are unfortunately almost nullified by ganking and build superiority: the mode would need to be reworked in order to stay, which is white I voted for removal.

However, I don't want to see altar holding back either. That leads to completely retarded holding strategies which are boring, unfun and assimilable to PvE - aka spamming interrupts on the hero and exploiting its pathing AI. It's one of the factors that have always marked rank as a completely unreliable measure of skill.

lyra_song · May 08, 2007, 01:38 PM // 13:38

Kill count should be 1 v 1.

1 on 1 on 1 doesnt work. Havent you ever been in a threesome? Someone always gets more attention, and someone always gets left out. *snicker*

DarkRaider · May 08, 2007, 02:30 PM // 14:30

bring back holding, holding was fun and more exciting tbh

Kyp Jade · May 08, 2007, 04:12 PM // 16:12

Holding was not fun, however at least in holding you know whats comming to you. And you know precisely how to win, what to disrupt, and what to heal etc etc etc. And did you know e-denial builds were actually the first real holding builds? Yes its true, used to be you could drain a ghost and he wouldnt be able to cap. you were already speced for all maps AND you could hold all day if your ghost died. The only reason e-denial stayed around after that was fixed was because it farmed fame so well since the broken tower was 1v1 holding (drain the infuse and spike the ghost)

Now ppl have adjusted thier build to deal with the new mechanics, and hey thats called balanced builds (being prepped for different situations) So e denial strategems are out the window.

Killcount is more subtle that AoE'ing a big mob of stuff,
a) good teams dont mob
b) good teams dont mob
c) ok ok you can aoe stuff as long as you snare them, normal battle movements creates the mobs you need. But you need to know when to apply pressure, and when to back off and force the 3rd teams hand. But you also have to do a LOT of other stuff to kill other than SH, u just tend to notice the big firestorm animation better than the other stuff,
d) I like aoe, but its a lot harder than picking a mob and casting some DoT, dots generally dont do enough damage to kill anything anyway, and at most only apply a lot of pressure.

The ONLY reason people have the smallest problem with killcount is because
1) Kill stealing
2) They dont know how to look at the radar
3) Ghostly hero farming
4) Slow paced matches.

ill adress in order of importance, fix these

Kill stealing, god I hate doing 90% dmg to a ghostly hero only to have some caster on team 3 to see it and steal my kill.

Im sorry, its just funny when a team cant look at a radar and decide to pull out, even at bare minimum your tactics caller as a 5 second window to say run away.

Ghostly heroes should NOT give extra points, and he really needs to be fixed so that when he resurrects he doesnt immediatly run halfway across the map through two other teams to stand where he died. He should be fixed to run with the team.
A mechanic that should be implemented imo is give him a better AI on some maps, on UW and burial mounds he should follow the team like an NPC, on capture point or alter maps, he should follow whoever takes him.

Kill count is just too slow, the maps you have set for killcount are to big to , and resshrine camping is an issue that ought to be addressed.

And in actuality some of your maps ought to be looked at again.
Burial mounds is the only real options for killcount. Make it 6 way killcount, best 2 teams win. This will keep the number of teams advancing past the mosh-pit maps in similar quantity. I suggest these 6 ways, and more importantly burial mounds. 3 way leaves too much open to posistining issues, and nothing will happen until the 2minute mark. If you open the map to its old incarnation, but make it kill count, you have a few things going for it.

Defendable res area, vulerable attacking position for res area.
Look at the map closely, if a team gets wipped, and they are getting farmed at the priest, whats to stop another team from ganking you? nothing.

Stopping Res, if your ahead by 20 or so (not impossible in a 6way, and probably a low estimate) and another team is farming kills. Go kill the priest of the noob team and move on.

Lots of targets. Hey this is fun, And the target rich environment might be friendly to AoE, but more often than not it will be snares that win the day, snare a team, get them between you and the team tahts killing you gg.

Burial mounds would open a lot of strategies for kill count, and wont have the option of always waiting until 2 minutes, if you camp your base, and some other teams are getting kills, you lose, it will be fast paced for however long the match gets set.

-------------
Other maps that should be looked at
Broken Tower = Capture point between 2-3 teams.
Im sorry, this map is the only map that looks remotly possible to play as capture point. I realize Anet likes the current rotation of HoH objectives, but it is plain retarded to just DUMP objectives on HoH without forcing a team to play that type of map before it makes it to HoH

Courtyard would be the BEST map for a 3 way relic run taht you have in HoH. You have the gate you can shut against the winning teams, and the 2 side areas to get to thier relic spawn.

Sacred temples is my favorite map too... Dont touch it.

In any case, offering varied objectives promotes fewer imbalanced builds. There will always be a gimmick that every other team will run, but you will see more teams spec themselves to the objectives, and fewer Build wars.
Annihilation maps should be few and far between, seeing as its the most BASIC win condition.
----
Anet, if you want to have potentially great mechanics like killcount, implement it properly, or take it out all together, the way it is now does not support a skilled team at all.

Anet, if you want to have different objectives in the HoH, force teams to spec for all of them, or to cross thier fingers for a skip. When a team has to spec for different tactics, other than a 3-2-1 SPIKE for half the maps, full spike teams like rtspike and SF spike will all but dissapear, and skill balancing wont be an issue. Let SFway or rt spike have 5 fame runs, they wont get past the first capture point map.

Also if you implement HA in a good way, taht requires tactical thinking and *gasp* splitting sometimes, you will lose a small amount of the population, but you have the potential to pull in a lot of the GvG population to HA in thier spare time intead of go play pve. Annihilation maps are boring, and killcount should only be early in the rotation anyway, and in more than a 3way.

(GvG ppl tend to like strategy based objectives, and raising the bar on HA would definatly draw in a lot of them since they dont gvg 24/7)

Death_From_Above · May 08, 2007, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Just an observation. But did everyone notice anet have killed guilds off. This has resulted to a decrease in the bio diversity regarding gvg and HA build wise. They have killed off the HA section of the forums to. Can someone tell me how many new posts they see on the HA section a day please? Its funny when you think about it. HA made the world go round and with its demise you have pvp as everyone knows dead. Its like the core of a star, it keeps everything running. Anyway was just wondering if anyone else noticed these secondary effects. One ironic thing though is if you look at guildwars propchies trailer you would find that woman mentions about her father once fighting in the guildwars. Guildwars came to an end and now their started. It seems the wars between guilds is comming to an end to.

BTW, didnt you guys find it ironic that Galie grey posts for the first time since like the earth orbited the sun regarding HA and it wasnt even on the HA section. And people claim anets not avoiding us, need i say anymore.

Elrodien · May 09, 2007, 02:41 PM // 14:41

remove kill count
make new maps
remove ghostly as a game mechanic completely

You just got tomahawked · May 10, 2007, 01:45 AM // 01:45

The problem with kill count is it promotes spike teams. With altar caps you can run holding or spike or if you're good, pressure. Anet preaches about diversity of builds when they promote single-mindedness themselves.

Master Ketsu · May 10, 2007, 05:10 AM // 05:10

/signed to remove killcount a million times. Their is a reason Ive been working on gladiator more recently.

Killcount in HA is crap. It greatly encourages mindless beatdown/spike builds, and punishes hex/pressure builds that take skill and are actually fun to run. I understand anet is trying to prevent the lame overly defensive nightfall holding builds from resurfacing in 8v8, but killcount is ruining HA. Its halfway based on luck ( Rank 9+ noobs ftl ) and greatly encourages cookie cutters.

/signed again, again, and again.

Gimme Money Plzkthx · May 10, 2007, 08:35 PM // 20:35

The problem with killcount is it forces certain types of builds to be run. While in theory it would not limit stuff in this way if one map remained killcount; in practice it would probably still eliminate teams that are more balanced on those maps. Thus, it needs to be removed on all maps.

Lorekeeper · May 10, 2007, 09:58 PM // 21:58

its a sad day indeed if the ONLY alternative to Kill Count that everyone can think about is Altar Holding.

use your imaginations, just because you support or dont support kill count it DOES not automatically mean that you support or advocate Altar Holding. Please stop making this debate so narrow in scope by continually discussing the issue this way.

several people including me have posted ideas for a range of alternative map objectives.

as for the assertion that altar holding will promote its own ''lame'' builds which some suggest will be just the same as the spike builds we all love to fight against now... hmmm well...

this would only happen if kill count was replaced by altar holding on BOTH broken tower and courtyard. In that case... and for the same reasons that kill count has such a dominant influence on the HA meta today, all teams would have to fight on 2 altar holding maps... and then possibly again in HOH. So of course it would make sense to run a build that could prove highly successful on a large portion of the HA map rotation.

Can altar holding be included in the HA map rotation without it dictating the HA meta too strongly?

yes it can.

By not putting it on broken tower AND courtyard. Make one of these altar holding... and make the other one another objective.

The more diverse the map objectives the more diverse our builds have to be. The more focused the map objectives the less diverse our builds have to be and so the birth of holding builds or spike builds.

Relic run maps are possibly, and currently anyway, the only map that can be included more than 2 times in the rotation because in order to be highly successful in a relic run you do not need to design an entire build around it. All it takes is a few run skills and a few snares and most importantly of all... for your team to know how to win on relic runs.

Unless Anet can come up with a similiar, less build demanding map objective, i really strongly suggest that the broken tower and courtyard map objectives are kept different.

Just think... in all eras of HA/tombs broken tower and courtyard have shared the same map objective AND in all eras we have had to suffer a meta full of lame builds designed to capitalise on the objectives on these 2 maps. I realise this is a gross generalisation but there is some sense to this idea.

Its just possible... that HA without this link between broken and courtyard might give us a more diverse HA meta.

ITS WORTH A TRY

what really needs to be done is for the HA community to collect ideas for alternative map objectives for the existing maps like broken tower and courtyard.

who knows... maybe if we present enough well thoughtout ideas Anet might be moved to take them into consideration.

leeky baby · May 10, 2007, 11:50 PM // 23:50

I have yet to meet a single person that likes kill counts. Spike teams can get the first kill and turtle up, while the other teams spend the rest of the match trying to get some sort of positional advantage that rarely happens. No team will make the first move as the third team will gank them from behind (and righty so i might add). No team can run into a turtling team to try and get kills whilst at the same time defending from a ganking team thats attacking them from behind, sorry but it just doesnt happen.

The other alternative is for two balanced-ish teams to try and fight each other for kills, and all that happens is the spike team just moves in and spikes people off at there leisure.

Then you get heroway teams that are simply there to be farmed by the other two. No skill is involved in this other than who should just so happen to drop the most damage on them in the shortest time.

This just leads to a completely negative playing experience, i dont think ive ever actually enjoyed playing on these maps since the day they were first introduced.

Plus i must think of past mistakes in this regard. Old 6 way burial mounds was removed as when it came down to 1v1v1 it would just go on forever with no team willing to make the first move. The same with scarred earth. And then anet see fit to reintroduce these silly game mechanics when noone wanted them and (as far as im aware) noone actually likes them.

What are your thoughts on this ? Am i missing something and kill counts are actually fun for you ? (btw, i am rank 10 and have done my fair share of ha, in my mind i think i know what works in ha and what doesnt, but im open to being wrong).

On a similiar subject i also find the relic runs and capture points in HOH (note i said hoh, not ha) to be a complete step back from the old alter holding. It did actually take skill to hold an alter vs 2 teams, although its true that the new versions take a certain degree of skill, you rely way too much on what the other teams are doing... do they decide to bodyblock your runner or the third team ? there is entirely too much "out of your hands" luck involved in this.

leeky

Lord Natural · May 11, 2007, 01:30 AM // 01:30

I've been fighting the good fight against kill-count for months now, but I'm finally tired of it. At this point there is no saving HA. Just check out any HoH match on obs. I challenge you to find one that doesn't have 2 of 3 teams running something completely retarded. All I see are 8 rit/ranger/ele/ranger <insert scrub junk here> builds. Even if the original objectives were restored, the metagame is so far gone from anything remotely related to coherent pvp that I wouldn't expect anything good to come from it.

I know HA has always had its share of weird gimmicky crap running around, but there was a time that I didn't mind facing r spike, blood spike, iway, etc. The game was balanced and as such always favored the balanced build in the end. However, things have been imbalanced for so long that I'm starting to forget those days even existed. I can't even imagine forming a normal group right now. I'd feel like I was drowning in shit, facing this crap on every single map.

Death_From_Above · May 11, 2007, 05:42 PM // 17:42

What are you def or something. Winning on kill count is not the problem. Its the things you have to do and bring to win and the fact it sucks and kicks all pressure and heavy hex teams outta ha. So please dont say we complain to much when clearly there is a problem.

As for the post above about how we should suggest constructive new alternatives to HA minus alter capping. This has already been done, i even suggested a few, however the threads got closed in the end. Anyways would anet even look at it (noooope) There to far up on their high horse to realise player suggestion can fix HA. They clearly dont even read the HA section because if they did kill count would be gone by now. Galies once in a year appearances also support this.

Basically to suggest things would just be a waste of time. Anet dont care anymore as implied by galie when she said anet had spent so long working on HA. So ye, HAs down on their priotity list hence why just bring alter cap back and go away anet because if we sit here wanting new changes in stead. Guess wat, newssssss flash, we wont get them for another 3 years and no doubt about it anet would make it suck because they would ignore the advice and ideas of their players.

masta_yoda · May 12, 2007, 02:03 PM // 14:03

I think people are complaining way too much about KC. People keep assuming it promotes spike, gimmicks and stuff but so did the old tombs.
If we remove kill count and make 3 holding maps, most likely defensive/holding builds would return. Removing KC wouldnt reduce the amount of spike e.g Old 8v8 had R-spike, blood spike, ob spike which is even more then the current amount of spikes atm imo.
Also believe in that KC would take more skill and co-ordination then holding the altar. KC you actually have to have good positioning, when to gank, when to run and other factors.

Gimme Money Plzkthx · May 12, 2007, 07:52 PM // 19:52

The thing is, people can afford utility to beat gimmicks if they don't have to run a million offensive skills for killcount. Besides, there was a lot of balanced and stuff in altars, and some holding builds, but in killcount, you HAVE to run mad offense.

Gimme Money Plzkthx · May 13, 2007, 03:14 AM // 03:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by defrule

Hero's Ascent update coming 2009!

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they removed it, or dumbed it wayyy down to like an arena level with random maps TA/RA style in GW2 just cause they're tired of hearing us bitch. I'm not going to buy GW2 anyway probably so lets hope they balance HA so I can keep playing GW :P

Lorekeeper · May 14, 2007, 04:03 PM // 16:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nurse With Wound

Post in here your thoughts about what they should put instead of it. Oldschool altar holding? Deathmatches? Runs? Or something totally different?

like i said, please stop discussing HA only in terms of kill count and altar capping. Its narrow minded and really doesnt provide any constructive input to the thread seeing as there has already been a post addressing the issue. Wanna know why anet ignores this HA forum? Cos they dont think reading any threads provide them with any constructive reading. You are just proving them right.

if you wanna harper on about altar maps and kill counts like a broken record by all means do, but do it knowing full well that anet wont be listening anymore. And please address previous posts which tackle your concerns, otherwise this thread just turns into a mess. If everyone just looked at the title of the thread and clicked ''post'' and typed ''i hate killcount i hate altar holding" wat a wonderful thread this would be!!!!

write something new for a change, instead of whining about what you hate, which everyone and their grandma has done 10000 times already, write about any ideas you have.

HA will never be 'fixed' if all you can think about is kill count and altar holding.

lorekeeper

Nurse With Wound · May 14, 2007, 04:34 PM // 16:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

write something new for a change, instead of whining about what you hate, which everyone and their grandma has done 10000 times already, write about any ideas you have.

HA will never be 'fixed' if all you can think about is kill count and altar holding.

QFT.

The purpose of this thread, just like I've written in the first post, is to discuss the changes you would like to make to Heroes Ascent. Sadly, the quality posts in this thread are a minority. It can be contributed to few factors, some of them irreversible, like few of very good posters who left the game, but others can be avoided. Please, I urge you to be creative, and read the previous posts in the thread. Ill make a purge in this one, leaving only quality posts. Hopefully I wont have to do this again. You have to remember that shouting "killcounts sux" its not enough to be heard. Propose alternative. . Those maps are now 1/4 of the whole map rotation, ( possible ) removal of kill count ( and maybe maps associated with it ), will mean revamping of the whole arena. What would you like it to be?