Curse

Bellus · Oct 03, 2009, 02:56 AM // 02:56

Gratz on the event.

OP, got a name for your henc-spawn yet? -Boy or a girl..?

Fril Estelin · Oct 03, 2009, 02:57 AM // 02:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

This begs the question, "How do you plan to enforce this?"

They won't have to, until someone sues them. Then it's the winner's word against public opinion? But I'm no lawyer...

Quote:

What's clear is that the judging criterion failed. People that are unfamiliar with the flaws in the game's AI selected the winning bars. Updating the AI to address these flaws would be a herculean task. You may claim that the dev team will update the AI all you want, but going to a bimonthly balance schedule suggests that the dev team lacks the time to do so.

What if the implementability of AI changes was one of the main criterion of build selection? There's the new designer Robert working with Linsey now, and when SD will be finished, I bet they'll have time to tackle another big task (although they said they'd be ready to do more littles ones).

I'm hoping that a word from Linsey, Izzy or whoever was on the panel could end this discussion.

HawkofStorms · Oct 03, 2009, 03:02 AM // 03:02

The great thing about copyright law is, you don't have to imitate something exactly. As long as the duplicate product is so similar as that it could reasonably cause confusion in the general public about which is the original and which is the copy, then it could be a copyright issue. Thus, the public opinion IS a criteria in whether or not something is original. If we don't think it is original... it isn't.

(^ above is very oversimplified and I'm am a law student, not a patent lawyer)

Fril Estelin · Oct 03, 2009, 03:08 AM // 03:08

I think pansy malfoy already said that s/he didn't copied his/her build. And then one can argue that some of these builds are so much the "consequence" of the meta that many people can create them without knowing PvX.

After the PvE change to Mantra of Resolve a few weeks ago (1?), I toyed with my builds and I'm fairly sure I ended up with one or two that could be on PvX. Yet I didn't look at PvX.

It's unfair to blame Anet for the existence of PvX and systematically claiming that "if it's on PvX, then the guy who submitted the build HAD to know it was there". But what I'm mainly saying is that we're arguing on a legal point, but we're not lawyers.

(side note: this contest seems, like Inde said, a nicer way to interact with the community than having to come on thread like these; I guess many people don't have the kind of issues that some people have here)

Shadowspawn X · Oct 03, 2009, 03:17 AM // 03:17

Pretty horrible results from this contest, lets just drop it. There is nothing more to be said here. Perhaps its better just to leave the game alone and stop frustrating people.

dr love · Oct 03, 2009, 03:22 AM // 03:22

I seriously don't think the pvxwiki thing is a problem. There's so much crap posted on there, you're bound to have a similar build, whether its 4 skills, 6 skills or all 8 skills, it's all been seen before (even if you're borat).

The biggest problem I feel, is that many of the builds do not work with the current AI. I encourage you too try some of these bars in any sort of pvp format. Some will be mediocre with a few useless skills, some will be utterly useless, some will be a detriment to your team.

I spent a few hours testing, so it's no harm done to me. However, I know people that spent days thinking and testing builds. Heck, those HB lovers have spent years becoming intimate with the AI - I don't think any of them won. But anyone that plays HA or GvG is familiar with heroes and what kind of bars and skills they are effective with in PvP, and what needs to be micro'd. As someone else said, I looked forward to seeing the creative builds people came up with under the limitations of the AI. Most of these builds show none of that. Its a bunch of semi-decent player bars, but shite AI bars. I would take the fighter henchmen over any of these.

And in case you think I'm biased because of my submissions, I put in about 30 para bars only and didn't win. But the para bars look fine imo. You really can't make a strong para henchmen/hero. The only time I've seen a para hero taken into pvp is for a weird arcane echo, arcane mimicry SF spike. So those are some of the only ones in my opinion that deserve to win.

Life Bringing · Oct 03, 2009, 03:27 AM // 03:27

I heard wasabi put up 20k ectos for one of these 20 winners to name the henchie after him. lolduping

Giga_Gaia · Oct 03, 2009, 03:33 AM // 03:33

I know that you're not allowed to tell us anything as always, Regina, but this is the first time that EVERYBODY (Read: your entire community, not just on guru) is agreeing that you guys really f-ed up big time. Your weak responses don't help your case, either. And why isn't anyone from the Live Team, the judges themselves, saying anything?

DarkRazzie · Oct 03, 2009, 03:38 AM // 03:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by pansy malfoy

^__^

This is way dorky, but I'm excited, heh. I never win shit.

(side note, there's no way in dooty I want a henchmen rezzing me with DPS...)

Gratz Malfoy! I would be excited too, I never win anything either LOL

DreamWind · Oct 03, 2009, 03:55 AM // 03:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by dbulger

I seriously don't think the pvxwiki thing is a problem. There's so much crap posted on there, you're bound to have a similar build, whether its 4 skills, 6 skills or all 8 skills, it's all been seen before (even if you're borat).

The biggest problem I feel, is that many of the builds do not work with the current AI. I encourage you too try some of these bars in any sort of pvp format. Some will be mediocre with a few useless skills, some will be utterly useless, some will be a detriment to your team.

This to me is something people should read. Yes the whole originality rules were awful. People should feel sick about it.

But I think the bigger concern is this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenobra

The dev team has stated to me that the reason certain builds were chosen is because they're effective, they work for the game, and they meet their overall design goals for those formats.

Anet doesn't seem to know how their game works....certainly not as much as the players do anyways. Wouldn't they KNOW that half of these builds to not work properly under current AI? Why would the devs say that these builds are effective and work for the game?

Jensy · Oct 03, 2009, 03:57 AM // 03:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkRazzie

Gratz Malfoy! I would be excited too, I never win anything either LOL

Thank you. This...here on guru really has dissolved into a mess. I wish it weren't the case.

The info on hench and tonic was just sent out, so now it's time to brainstorm on a name :P

Reverend Dr · Oct 03, 2009, 04:05 AM // 04:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Anet doesn't seem to know how their game works....certainly not as much as the players do anyways. Wouldn't they KNOW that half of these builds to not work properly under current AI? Why would the devs say that these builds are effective and work for the game?

Its already been posted but:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hero_behavior

*Heroes do not seem to use Falling Lotus Strike or Falling Spider on their own.

*Heroes will not use Rage of the Ntouka, "Coward!", or Deadly Paradox.

And this isn't just improper use (like they will do with everything else such as using hammer bash as soon as they get adrenaline and never even get magehunter or dev hammer charged), they flat out don't use those skills.

Chocobo1 · Oct 03, 2009, 04:07 AM // 04:07

Forgot to say this before, Grats to Malfoy and all other winners, must be exciting being immortalized into Guild Wars : D.

Martin Alvito · Oct 03, 2009, 04:19 AM // 04:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

What if the implementability of AI changes was one of the main criterion of build selection?

It clearly wasn't. Unless you think that wiki Primal, Evis, and LC showed up because teaching the AI to Frenzy cancel and use Earth snares appropriately are easy tasks.

Consider the Frenzy cancel task. You have to teach the game to discriminate between meaningless, small damage packets and severe threats. Otherwise, a midline caster wands the hench when Frenzy/Primal goes up, the AI cancels, and the skill is wasted.

You also have to teach it to anticipate getting blown up, rather than using the cancel reactively. Otherwise you can easily spike it out with large damage packets. If you knew you could make it consistently eat a 200 point Eviscerate, why wouldn't you? That's big pressure for a backline to handle.

Credit where credit is due; for instance, the substitution of Remove Hex for Veil and SH for SoA in meta Life Sheath is sensible. There are viable bars. But most of them include skills that the AI is ill-equipped to handle, and they're almost all distinct problems that do not overlap.

Others have pointed out that the AI simply will not use many of the skills in these builds, or will do stupid things like drain its adrenaline with Hammer Bash rather than chain quarterknocks properly.

Giga_Gaia · Oct 03, 2009, 04:32 AM // 04:32

^Like others have said, this "contest" was more or less the same thing as winning the lottery.

Skye Marin · Oct 03, 2009, 05:41 AM // 05:41

I'd think Anet would have had a better process that what they did. For example:

-delete all builds that don't have 8 skills
-delete all buids with no elite skill
-delete builds where the elite skill does not belong to the primary profession
-delete the most popular 40 or so builds from PvX wiki
-delete all builds containing skills that AI is unable to use, or unable to use well (falling spider, weapon spells?, etc...)
-delete builds that have useless, or replacements that are better (Smiters Boon, Disrupting Shot, etc...)
-delete builds that have skills that require skill to play, or can damage the user worse than benefit them (Frenzy, doylak signet, illusion of pain, etc...)

So, hopefully, that would weed out the thousands of entries to maybe a hundred per slot. Much more managable, and you would have avoided the catastroRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO that happened here.

IronSheik · Oct 03, 2009, 05:58 AM // 05:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skye Marin

I'd think Anet would have had a better process that what they did. For example:

-delete builds where the elite skill does not belong to the primary profession
-delete all builds containing skills that AI is unable to use, or unable to use well (falling spider, weapon spells?, etc...)
-delete builds that have useless, or replacements that are better (Smiters Boon, Disrupting Shot)
-delete builds that have skills that require skill to play, or can damage the user worse than benefit them (Frenzy, doylak signet, illusion of pain, etc...)

1st point Lol, so you eliminate any fast casting and plenty of great dual prof builds, expel rits for instance.

2nd point, good.

3rd point, dshot bad on a hero....? Ghostly hero is better than most of my rangers. Unless you mean it as a replacement.

4th, sure.

Hellscream The Evil · Oct 03, 2009, 07:57 AM // 07:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

We're aware of the criticism that some of the winners have builds that are popular. It probably wasn't that surprising that players were going to submit builds that are proven and commonly-used. Popular and commonly-used builds got submitted by many, many people, and they are popular for a reason: they're effective. The designers did extensive in-game research on what builds were being played and what builds people were looking for when forming a party. Many people submitted the same build to the contest, but a significant portion of the winners had unique bars that no one else had submitted. There were a lot of factors the designers had to keep in mind: whether those winning henchmen bars will get play and if players would want to use them, whether those bars will be effective, how those builds fit with overall design goals, and so on. They weren't judging the winning bars based on only a couple of factors. So while we're aware that not everyone is satisfied with the results, the team just wanted to let you know about the balance issues they were wrestling with when judging those submissions.

so, please, DONT open a contest, go on wiki and that's all. You will have your wiki builds and we will have our time safe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

23 Builds -> 1 submission

edit: 23 wiki builds with a skill random to make them original

Auron of Neon · Oct 03, 2009, 08:33 AM // 08:33

To Regina;

Stop waffling and start learning from your failures. The bars are part of the metagame for players. For you to give Make Haste and Song of Concentration to a hero shows you didn't have a clue what you were doing. There are two problems with this. Firstly, these skills aren't original - every team in tombs has them because Song lets the ghost cap without fail and Make Haste lets any person on your team run relics quickly. It's not like whoever submitted them sat there and thought long and hard about the skill selection - they just copypasted the build that players use into a henchman skill bar contest. Secondly, you plan to waste untold hours tweaking AI to make them competent with their new skillbars.

Why did you remove heroes? Oh, right, because heroes running 1. interrupts, 2. enchantment removal, or 3. hexes are always going to be broken. If you replace heroes with henchmen that do exactly the same thing, you are doing a lot of work for absolutely no gain. Your 30,000 submissions you looked through? That was a waste of your time, and pretending otherwise is fooling nobody, least of all me. For a live team that doesn't have very many people, you should be looking for ways to improve the game that don't take much effort, not looking for ways to waste countless hours sorting through builds you could have found on PvX in minutes and not actually making an improvement in the game at all.

Let me reiterate - you are removing heroes because they are breaking the game, and PvPers have been screaming for their removal for years now. You finally get the idea that heroes are breaking the game, yet you still have no clue why that is. Instead of just removing them and making PvPers happy, you have to screw it up somehow. Whatever. I can bargain. However, putting henchmen in with meta gimmick bars after saying not to submit meta gimmick bars is trash.

The contest debacle irks me, I won't lie. Your behavior and response to the community, however, is absolutely unacceptable. Your company failed. You can lie to deny it (as you've done) and you can blame the community (as you've done). However, let me point this out - your company failed. You took an idea - henchmen bars - and forgot the entire reason you were putting henchmen into the game to begin with.

It's your job to communicate with us, but instead you've mocked us. We've linked you your rules from your website and you called us wrong. As a poster earlier said, what the hell are we supposed to do? Follow your official rules posted on your official website or follow guidelines posted in forums that most people don't even read? Seriously, cut out the crap. Stop lying. Stop beating around the bush. Stop acting like any of this is our fault. Your rules were shit. You didn't follow them in any case. Instead of saying "I'm sorry, even though 30/40 of our hero builds were direct PvX copies and that was in violation of the rules, we really felt that it would benefit the game more to have these bars anyway" you said "oh, we didn't actually say that was a rule" and try to link to a bunch of guideline BS as if that makes your failure any more acceptable. But guess what? I can do that to you, too, Aside from the links to your official rules which people tried to follow and were subsequently punished for doing so, your people said that you would most likely not accept gimmick builds. Except that was a blatant lie. 16 out of 20 of the GvG builds are meta gimmicks, or were in the very recent past. 14 of 20 HA builds are meta gimmicks, or were in the very recent past. I don't care what you say about anything else, or what you try to blame on the community, Martin lied to us, as did your official rules page.

Like I said, you can come back after the fact and say that we didn't understand what you wanted, and that it was our fault that we didn't read your mind and submit only meta gimmick player builds, but you'd be lying to us. Again.

That's the first bit of my post. Your contest was poorly designed, poorly communicated, and several failures on ArenaNet's side occurred that you haven't admitted to yet. You probably never will, just as you didn't when you screwed up the July 08 mAT, so I'm not even going to hold out for an apology, even though that's sort of your job.

I'm concerned about where you're going from here. You just lied to us about your contest rules, took meta gimmick builds for players regardless of what your original aims were, and grabbed a bunch of basically piece of shit bars and decided you're going to make them henchmen bars. To start, that's a bad idea. Your coders can't make a henchman, incapable of being separately flagged or locked on to a target, snare relic runners in HA with grasping earth and ward against foes. You are not going to be able to do it, plain and simple. So why did you bother accepting that bar? Do you think you're going to fix a bunch of the AI problems now, even though you haven't been able to in four years? Are you really going to go forward and put these bars in the game, even though players who have a clue about PvP are telling you that it is a very bad idea?

Let's go over your logic for all of this from the beginning. You have (finally) opted to remove heroes from PvP because they break the game. You still need something for players to use in case they lack people, so you wanted to add henchmen in the filler slots instead of just leaving those players out to dry. Henchmen in the past, however, have been bad and never taken - so you wanted to make sure your new ones would be more viable.

There are now two flaws between your original logic and what you've done. Firstly, you took player bars and pretended henchmen can use them well. You're kidding yourselves. Henchmen will never run the majority of those builds remotely well. I've seen your company's work for 4 years now, and I'm pretty safely going to assume that most of the AI tweaks will be minor, and that henchmen will remain incapable of bodyblocking a target or snaring a relic runner (or putting song of concentration up for the ghost to cap, or putting make haste on a runner when he needs it...)

Secondly, Martin claimed that you were looking for "robust, general purpose builds, not some niche meta builds or builds that will not be immediately made obsolete by meta shifts." You then did exactly the opposite of what you said (again). The majority of the builds you picked are from the meta right now. In two months or four months or whenever you manage to do another skill balance (so more like ten months), half of these skills will no longer be in the meta. Because you chose skill bars out of the meta as it stands, they will not last even one meta change, let alone several. Unless you plan to update the skills on the bars with each meta change (which doesn't seem like your plan), the henchmen will fall out of use, because you did a terrible job at picking robust, general purpose builds - you just grabbed whatever gimmicky bullshit exists right now on obs.

Those are your two major problems, and you haven't even put these henchmen in the game yet, you've just talked about it.

I highly recommend you do another little team meeting and take with you a dose of reality. Your idea will not work if you plan to implement these bars as they stand right now. You have already wasted countless hours sorting through bars needlessly, but you will waste countless more if you implement these bars and they fail as hard as I'm predicting they will.

Re-think this entire project. Hand out your prizes and assuage people's feelings, but for the sake of whatever's left in PvP, do not put these henchmen in the game.

Bug John · Oct 03, 2009, 08:34 AM // 08:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sankt Hallvard

What's your point?

You aren't happy until the AI is on par with or better than human play?

Glad to see Anet pour resources into amazing contests like this btw. The biggest problem in this game is the henchmen skillbars. Skill balance, gvg tie breaker and the 4v4 v 8v8 format issues don't need attention.

Bring on the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing costume brawls already, the only honorable format left worth playing.

isn't my point clear enough ?

people have been using heroes for things they were good at and the ability to control them...
all you get here is a warrior dumber than anyone you could pick up in spamadan ad1, what's the point of having them in game ?

no tease, no tainted flesh, no searing flames... anet doesn't even understand how their own AI works