Curse

Guillaume De Sonoma · Jan 06, 2007, 03:41 AM // 03:41

Seeing as how Anet is now taking an inititive to improve the fun ingrediant of Hero's Ascent I came up with a few map ideas to keep the 'skill' in HA. Origionally designed as 8v8 maps, I feel that they can work in 6v6 too. These maps punish teams that cannot do anything but provide a straight up fight, but still gives the 'straight up fight' teams a chance in my opinion.

1. Simple Underworld style map. Teams of 6 or 8 fight till everything is dead.

2. A HvH style map. Designed to force you to build mobility into your build so that you are punished for running things like Spirit Way, or other builds with poor manuverability.

-First Team to 20 points wins, or team with the most points at 15 minutes.
-Kills reward 1 point.
-Holding the center shrine gives 1 point every 30 seconds.
-Everyone ressurects at the center shrine every 1 minute.

Map Layout:
-One center shrine, provides one point every 30 seconds. Players ressurect there every 1 minute.
-4 Shrines surronding the center, somewhat far away, that provide advantages to the team holding them. They give 20% faster skill recharge, 20% damage reduction, 1 Morale boost every 2 minutes the shrine is held, and one shrine that provides the ghostly hero (the hero helps to capture the center shrine for it's shrine's controller).

3. Current Scared Earth. I have never liked it, but good teams can overcome. 4 Teams fight Team1vTeam2 and Team3vTeam4. There is a gank lever like the current Scared Earth also.

4. Relic Run in the current style or Unholy Temples.

5. Broken Tower in the current style. 5 Minute Timer, Resurrection Orbs appear at all three team spawns and reapear 30 seconds after they are dropped.

6. Dark Chambers Map. Each team has a priest.

7. Current Sacred Temples Map.

-The Vault gives you an option to face the forgotten for morale to be added to your current morale (i.e. 4+4).

Win at:
15 seconds=+10 %
30 seconds=+8%
45 seconds=+6%
1 minute=+4%
1 minute 15 seconds= +2 %

The Forgotten are off to the side of the vault and do not have to be fought.

8. Current Hall of Heros.

tomcruisejr · Jan 06, 2007, 03:59 AM // 03:59

your proposed changes are akin to "putting a lever in Scarred Earth".

Gimme Money Plzkthx · Jan 06, 2007, 04:02 AM // 04:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomcruisejr

your proposed changes are akin to "putting a lever in Scarred Earth".

Yea, except for the HvH style map, tom hit the nail on the head.

master_of_puppets · Jan 06, 2007, 05:19 PM // 17:19

The only propsosed changes that I see are
-the 2nd map turning into a HvH-style thing
-broken switching to 5th
-vault morale thing
and tbh all these are bad ideas

I dont think anyone wants to see HvH-style altar stuff in HA or anywhere. It just promotes more defensive builds, and no one wants a 2nd map that takes 15 minutes. Thats why 90% of teams in HvH have 2 monks, and some even have another support type character.

Altar maps are ok, but need modifying. Song of Concentration has turned it even lamer than it was before, that needs to be modified so it doesnt affect the Ghostly (and why does SoC even have an attribute, theres nothing in it that is affected...) Broken Tower should maybe be put in later, but I think 5th is a little too late. Though its true that there are quite a lot of noob teams on the 2nd that have no clue.

And the vault morale thing isnt good because you dont always go to the vault, and it wouldnt be fair if one team went and another skipped it to HoH. I dont think its needed anyway.

I think some good changes might be:
-take out Scarred. Seriously, I've had it with this map. Since 6 v 6, I dont think I've ever had a match in it that lasted less than 15 mins. Almost all last at least 20 mins. Its extremely gay when you beat the first team in 3 minutes only to have 2 retard teams on the other side that are running spiritway FotM trash and cant kill each other. Then there are those that refuse to fight and you have to go in and they try to gank you and then run around being retards. Just take it out, no one will miss it.

----OR----

There's a time limit of 10 minutes. If two teams on 1 side do not finish fighting or 1 of the 2 teams does not get at least 4 kills in that time, both teams of that side die and the winner of the other side is automatically the winner of the whole map. If neither of the 2 pairs of teams finish, then all 4teams lose. If both matches are won within 10 minutes, the time limit goes away and the 2 winning sides are up.

-Bring back Burial but seal that area to the side so scrubspike doesnt act like scrubspike.

-some kind of change so its not like everything depends on this one skill, Ghostly capping this one time, either interrupted or not. Maybe the Ghostly should rez right away if he dies but rezzes far away so you have to run and get him which could waste some time. So its not like 1 team's Ghostly dies at 1:59 so they gank the team of their choice and decides who wins because they have absolutely no chance

Guillaume De Sonoma · Jan 07, 2007, 03:24 AM // 03:24

The reasoning behind the changes were to keep teams that bring unflexible builds at a disadvantage.

The first map requires you to actually kill something, which everybuild should be able to do.
The second map requires you to have a team that is somewhat mobile, or at the very least more flexible than spirit builds.
The third map, scared, is one no one really likes including myself. With new maps that discourage hyperly defensive builds this map really wouldn't be a problem imo. However I know how it feals to fight 15 minutes against spiritway to only get 1 or 2 fame.
The fourth map is a relic run. I feel relic runs are the biggest test of team cordination and build flexibility. If you win on a relic run against a good team it is always well deserved.
The fifth is a alter, and it has been moved lower in the map rotation to discourage holding teams for entering and being able to actually get to halls by beating bad teams on and winning on the alter maps.
The sixth map is a straight up fight with priests that is used to encourage teams that can kill. I don't know how teams lose to spiritway, but if you get to this map you should be good enough to beat spiritway.
The seventh map is a relic run that requires more teamwork than the last maps and should be the last test before halls.
The final is HoH. Plain old HoH.

The changed map rotation is in my opinion a way to discourage defensive builds/holding builds like spirit way.

And whatever I like the forgotten.

Randomway Ftw · Jan 07, 2007, 04:05 AM // 04:05

As of right now relic runs are determined by who rubberbands the least, and who brings the most snares, spirits to cause the other team to rubberband, but yes sacred (not unholy) temples requires the greatest amount of coordination to win against a good team.

I think that 5 team, 10 minute halls should be brought back to make it harder for defensive builds to reach the altar, hopefully less skips, and weak teams do not make it to the altar.

I don't think spiritway can really be considered an overly defensive holding build since disabling the ritualist is very easy to and screw their energy, wanding can shut down the trapper, while standard melee defense can disable the thumpers, all you need to do is kill the energy depleted necros. What makes spiritway good is the 6v6 buildwars situation, making you lake utility to counter the build.

BlackEagle · Jan 07, 2007, 07:34 PM // 19:34

I don't see how an HvH style map would penalise spiritway, all they'd do is acp the centre shrine and defend, they wouldn't get any kills, and it would be a long match, but I think that is all they'd do. If the shrine that gave points changed every 2 mins or something, then this might stop this. Either that, or have every shrine give points. The idea of a shrine that gives ghost and then ghost has to cap might be good, but that'll just be like altar, except you have to capture a shrine to get the ghostly firstly. For the rest of the maps, I like the idea of putting broken tower further down, but I think scarred earth should be changed. It is very, very annoying, to fight for 20 minutes, to get 1 or 2 fame. I think that this map should be taken out of rotation, or alter the way that it works.

Patccmoi · Jan 07, 2007, 11:49 PM // 23:49

I think that Scarred Earth is mostly a necessary map if HA is a popular area. I mean, if 500 teams are playing in HA, there still needs to be only 3 teams left once you reach the end map. Scarred Earth removes 75% of the team that reach that point, which is the most of any map. And for it to work efficiently, it has to be placed earlier rather than later in the rotation (clears more teams earlier obviously).

That being said, considering how much skips there is, something is wrong with the fact that players get to face in Scarred Earth so often. It's the kind of map that players should only enter when there is too many teams currently in HA and there's a potential problem to reach HoH with few enough teams. Winning in Scarred Earth and getting a Halls skip makes no sense, you should have to play in 2 other maps instead (same amount of teams being cleared but in 2 separate maps which likely means more fame and more fun).

So really i don't think Scarred can be removed. It's more that the algorithm that decides in which maps teams get to face each other has to be reworked so that Scarred is more of a 'last resort' than a first option. I don't play THAT much HA, but i don't remember the last time i went through every map to reach HoH. I always skip somewhere and usually in multiple maps, and i'm not sure if there's skips why it isn't on Scarred.

As for an HvH type map, i think i'd like it but not if all there is is a central altar that gives points and killing people like in HvH because then all that's gonna happen is holding builds taking central altar and never letting other team kill them. No matter what buffs you give to the other team by capping other altars, do you think it'll be enough to take out a team that is designed to defend against 2 full teams in HoH?

Depending on how realistic that'd be, i think an AB type of map could actually be interesting. Fairly small map (say the size of Broken Tower with 3 starting points being an altar and central altar), with points awarded for number of altars you control each X sec and for every kill, with a fix timer (team that has most points after 5-10 min wins) and a max point (if a team reach X points first or gains X points advantage over the other they win. Kinda like having 3 relics advantage in relic runs = win). It kinda encourages fighting all over the map, so more flexible backlines (they can't always be near to each other), more mobile characters, etc. That type of map might be kinda hard to handle for 6v6 though and would be more fit for something like 8v8. But i always felt that AB type of game has a lot of potential and strategy, problem is that AB being 12v12 with PvE reward and 3 random team of 4 players together kinda destroys any potential of real tactical battles in there. An 8v8 version of AB would be horrible for holding teams to fight on since they'd have to spread over the map while more balanced teams would be able to handle it much better and likely win in small skirmishes.

I just think that 1 type of map that is totally against holding builds is pretty important. And likely something about HoH endgame changing because otherwise it'll just be holding teams hoping for map skips.

xcutioner · Jan 15, 2007, 08:25 PM // 20:25

Personally, I'd like to have 3 or 4 1v1 maps before a 3-way(broken tower) or 4-way(scarred earth). We need to be able to build up the fame count to keep people interested in HA. No one likes takes an hour setting up, then getting broken tower/scarred earth as the first map over and over, only to lose because both the other teams decided you were the dangerous group and ganked you. My guild was playing HA every day until heroway/map changes made heros ascent such a grind. People I've been playing with since the beggining of the game, that I farmed HA with from r0 to r10, and they were all gone within a month of the changes. It's now more about blind luck and endless defensive gimmicks than pure skill and ability, especially with the double gank oppurtunities present in broken tower/scarred earth.

It's like Anet decided to drive a stake into the heart of heros ascent to check if it was a vampire...