Curse

Villnar Shadowbane · Oct 03, 2009, 09:54 PM // 21:54

Anyone care to answer how the henchman bars with Grasping Earth And Ward Against Foes, are suppose to be able to snare to the same level as actual players. I wasn't expecting to win, but after looking at 50% of the bars that won I was in shock. I'm not sure that this move is going to make these parts of PvP better. I still would rather wait 5 extra minutes forming a party than add a hero that is going to have to be flagged by the relic and pray that it can put up a ward and not use grasping right after... Guess we will have to wait and see how they really perform. Of the bars that won, I think we can all say that we have the exact same one saved (speaking for the Players which play HA and GvG).
GG good Luck hope everything works out. :S

Martin Alvito · Oct 03, 2009, 09:54 PM // 21:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shayne Hawke

It's not the first time ANet has done something in GW that immediately receives a reception like this, but I don't remember ever seeing anyone from ANet come out and say that they realized that something that they did was flawed, until months down the road when it has already become a severe issue...

There's definitely a deep-seated refusal to admit error. This comes through in the balance updates. Lingering Curse hung around for some six months without a nerf, then still required two nerfs to bring into line?

There's a long litany of such examples out there.

DreamWind · Oct 03, 2009, 10:08 PM // 22:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by capashen

i found an "Hidden message from A-net" : don't use Henchies in HA nor GvG

If that is true, then they should have told us that to begin with instead of parading around this contest with wrong rules that was nothing more than a false way to involve the community. That just pisses off the community who followed the rules and expected the contest to be a legitimate good henchie bar contest.

As it stands, the community didn't need to be involved. If Anet wanted to remove all AI they could have just done it instead of using this useless contest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Still Number One

I am continually amazed at the Guild Wars community that after more than 4 years of A.net showing how completely incompetent they are toward PvP, people are still surprised when A.net screws up.

It has been said already but I will say it again because some people just don't seem to understand this. A.net doesn't understand how PvP works.

Badda bing.

Narcissia · Oct 03, 2009, 11:15 PM // 23:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Dream

Cassie Santiago:
The only self created build! Congratulations for him!

*cough* wrongo. everything can be compared to something similar on pvx, I suppose the only original thing is how the builds are used
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Me/a...7s_Degenerator

Mafaraxas · Oct 03, 2009, 11:20 PM // 23:20

it's idiotic to think anet wouldn't realize people would copypasta meta bars. It's pretty obvious the originality guideline was only there to protect anet from idiotic lawsuits or licensing issues when they announced the winners. Regardless of whether it's enforceable or not, the winners claiming that their submitted builds were original means the liability is taken off of anet.

tbh, they could have just copypasted the costume brawl bars (see 1, 2), with res sigs added, onto henchmen and it would've been better than the winning submissions; those exactly fit the criteria of "...robust, general purpose builds, not some niche meta builds..." for the most part. and it's easy to see heroes would play the bars better.

ups?

Axel Zinfandel · Oct 03, 2009, 11:22 PM // 23:22

I think it can be mutually agreed that if this was Anet's intention with the contest all along, they probably should have simply taken out Heroes and saved themselves the time and trouble, and focused elsewhere.

Draikin · Oct 03, 2009, 11:54 PM // 23:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

And you think that is acceptable behavior when using Frenzy or Primal Rage? =/

At least it's a lot better than the earlier AI for the skill (or lack thereof), and I don't see a lot of room for improvement.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

Every 1s the AI checks the entire enemy team for spells being cast, and can immediately fire off an interrupt. This means it has next to 0 reaction time between knowing a spell is being cast and starting to interrupt it. It doesn't need to tab through people either, it already knows who is casting what.

There may have been some failure rate or delay built into that mechanic that I am unaware of, but that's how it worked a few months ago - and it certainly makes AI far too good at interrupting.

The time in between checks seems to vary, seeing how they aren't capable of consistently interrupting 1 second casts (they'll only reach a 100% success rate with 2 second casts). The AI doesn't really care who is casting what, if multiple targets are casting then they'll select the one closest to them and fire an interrupt, regardless of the actual casting time of the skill they're trying to interrupt. While you can argue that's still too good, I'd argue that it has more to do with interrupts being broken. When Me/Rt heroes miss over 50% of their interrupts and people complain about them being "godly" at it then I'd argue that the real problem is that those interrupts are just too spammable. It's the same with hexes really, the more effective fire-and-forget hexes and mindless hex stacking are the more effective heroes will be.

tisfubar · Oct 03, 2009, 11:57 PM // 23:57

All I can say is, Thank You A-Net for letting a bunch of pve players decide wich pve bars would be great in any PVP format, you couldnt have picked a more usless bunch of skills to force actual human interaction in the game, for instance, what fool is going to take a migrain mesmer henchman that cant be locked onto a single target LOL GG anet!!!

tealspikes · Oct 04, 2009, 12:26 AM // 00:26

actually those bars are quite common in pvp. on humans, that is.

dusty4444 · Oct 04, 2009, 12:33 AM // 00:33

You might even close this thread... Anet will never admit they failed, this WILL happen again, we WILL be ignored and lied to again AND this WILL NOT be fixed because they feel they have to end this project and prove to us they were right.

Scythe O F Glory · Oct 04, 2009, 12:35 AM // 00:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by tisfubar

All I can say is, Thank You A-Net for letting a bunch of pve players decide wich pve bars would be great in any PVP format, you couldnt have picked a more usless bunch of skills to force actual human interaction in the game, for instance, what fool is going to take a migrain mesmer henchman that cant be locked onto a single target LOL GG anet!!!

Ye cuz migraine ownz in pve

Inde · Oct 04, 2009, 01:32 AM // 01:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoom Omer

Neither Regina nor Martin ever post in threads like that. They love to post about stuff that don't actually need their attention, but when the community is really in need of attention they never post.

And now if they post, It'll regard this post instead of actually replying about the topic of this thread.

Oh well.

Yoom, please don't do that. Do a bit of legwork yourself okay?

Regina has posted multiple times in this thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Martin is not here because he's at the EVE fanfest in Reykjavik and I bet that Regina can't do much during the week-end, where most Anet employees are off-duty (anyway, talking scarcely on Guru is a cautious behaviour for any GW CM who knows how Guru works, Guru is definitely NOT the community).

Fril, the response to this contest has been pretty universal in the negative. I don't care what 'community' you are looking at. As I stated earlier, I was glad to see that ArenaNet is continuing to reach out to us by doing community involved events. Yes, this one had a poor outcome but I certainly hope that it won't deter them from doing more. I thought the concept of the contest was indeed a good one, and while it's hard to know the perception and the end result, I'm sure that ArenaNet has noted the criticism. I still appreciate the outreach though.

Auron of Neon · Oct 04, 2009, 02:09 AM // 02:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

I still appreciate the outreach though.

I... well, I don't really. I find it unimpressive considering the entire contest was a fiasco, from beginning to the end. They wasted entirely too many hours they could have spent improving the game in other areas for me to feel warm and fuzzy that they're asking our advice on stuff.

It's nice that they're thinking about the community, except... they aren't, really. Just look at Regina's responses to us in this thread. It was almost as if they included the community to have someone to blame.

It's a nice idea in theory. But reality is something ANet seems to have trouble grasping, and it shows every time they try to do something, big or small.

DreamWind · Oct 04, 2009, 02:12 AM // 02:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

Regina has posted multiple times in this thread.

Of which the first response completely ignored the criticism, and the second response was torn apart. Maybe the third time is the charm?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

As I stated earlier, I was glad to see that ArenaNet is continuing to reach out to us by doing community involved events.

So are we....unless we find out that the community was never needed to begin with and the contest was only an excuse to make us feel involved. The real point of the contest seems to be something completely different than what we thought was intended.

Crom The Pale · Oct 04, 2009, 03:45 AM // 03:45

This contest was flawed from the start since the problem with the Hench has always been the AI more then the skill bars they have, not that those bars didn't need updating badly.

They never thought of one little fact when they came up with this contest. The bars had to be good, usable and yet not so good that the AI would abuse them and become more usefull then live players. This meant that the bars would be inferior from the start, then compounded with the AI flaws you get more useless Hench then you started with.

This should never have been a PvP contest, it should have been a PvE contest where you could create a powerful hench bar, possibly even 'boss' like and have the AI tweeked to balance it out. ie. the hench is offencive so it likes to agro or has a larger agro bubble, if the hench was defencive/healer it might run away if its HP drops to 25%.

Still flawed but in PvE nobody would notice or care.

Giga_Gaia · Oct 04, 2009, 05:05 AM // 05:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

I'm sure that ArenaNet has noted the criticism. I still appreciate the outreach though.

I'm sure they have, but they've already shown that they will feign ignorance about it yet again like in the past; never admitting that they made a mistake, and will only say something like "in the future, we may consider (insert empty promise here)". But, if you're so stuck up to admit that you were wrong, how can you learn? This is neither professional or beneficial.

Regarding the outreach, the idea was good, but the execution was more important. This here from Regina:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

In some cases where multiple people submitted the same set of skills; the winner was determined by a die roll.

pretty much confirms that they weren't thinking of the community at all. Assuming that that they knew PvX existed, they either:

1) Didn't care about those who actually bothered trying to play by their own rules
2) Didn't care about those who actually submitted those "winning" builds
3) Didn't care about this contest, period

The result was not pretty. This wasn't much of a community outreach at all.

Fril Estelin · Oct 04, 2009, 05:35 AM // 05:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

Fril, the response to this contest has been pretty universal in the negative.

Just for the record, I did acknowledge that in the first page of my message, albeit implicitly.

Quote:

I don't care what 'community' you are looking at.

And I do. I know that many people post on Guru but play very little, if at all, the game. I know that there are some people with strong opinions that will not listen to what is said.

It's like for the April update. Guru threads started to show a certain "meh" (at first), but Regina and Linsey said it was a great success. We do not know the server numbers (I bet that they dropped drastically after the MoR nerf in PvE, hence the reversal of this change) but yet feel as we know them because we've read the forums.

Don't get me wrong, it's not to say that Guru is worthless. It's just that for this "kind" of thread (PvP topics? hot topics? ranting topics?) Guru seems like a mess or a Norn arena where you have to fight agains the "wisdom of crowds".

Quote:

As I stated earlier, I was glad to see that ArenaNet is continuing to reach out to us by doing community involved events. Yes, this one had a poor outcome but I certainly hope that it won't deter them from doing more. I thought the concept of the contest was indeed a good one, and while it's hard to know the perception and the end result, I'm sure that ArenaNet has noted the criticism. I still appreciate the outreach though.

I'm not sure that many people do appreciate it as you do. For many people "failed" is simply failed, there's no distinction or nuance. There's no appreciation of the quantity of work behind the scenes (exactly like Guru, who thinks of people managing the server? organising the volunteers?)

People talk about the CMs' abscence. Without thinking for a minute that it's the week-end and they're not really supposed (or even capable, even CM has a process where you ask people's approval in the company) to work OT, although they usually do.

Skye Marin · Oct 04, 2009, 05:54 AM // 05:54

This was a pretty fantastically mis-managed opportunity.

I think the focus of the change should have been giving the heroes builds that are functional, effective, but never better played than most players.

I'm glad that Tainted Flesh is not in the winners because Heroes excel at using it; they are all-knowning. I'm sad that Soul Bind did win for the same reason. You'll see that Hench in heavy use. Using that Hench will become meta, and the only recourse will be to nerf Soul Bind by raising its recharge, or changing the skill bar (which may never happen).

Heros should never have skills that can harm themselves when used without critical thinking. Infuse is silly, Frenzy is bad, and Shock will be very limiting. Skills that can cause excessive exhaustion, lose all energy, or lose all adreniline should never have been allowed to be chosen. PBAoE skills force the AI to get up close, which is bad for casters.

Interrupts are a slightly different matter. Heroes can interrupt like gods, and that's not fair or fun, but it's another place where you can add an effectiveness. Power Spike or Power Drain are fine choices for AI, but skills like Cry of Frustration, Tease, or Power Leak have too great of a benefit or additional reward for completing a task that requires a test of skill. 4 interrupts on one bar is far too many.

If the goal really was to remove the worst aspects of Heroes from PvP, Anet has failed because of the excellent job AI does with Hex stacking and interrupting.

If the goal was to give viable alternatives to real players, Anet has failed because many of the bars are not appropriate for AI use and its limitations.

If the goal was to give the community a sense that their participation is valuable, and to instill confidence that the game is as great as ever, well... you know...

This could have been handled so much better, for many great reasons.

The Dream · Oct 04, 2009, 10:25 AM // 10:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Narcissia

*cough* wrongo. everything can be compared to something similar on pvx, I suppose the only original thing is how the builds are used
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Me/a...7s_Degenerator

Thank you for fixing my post

]HM[ Sabre Wolf · Oct 04, 2009, 12:52 PM // 12:52

So here are the listed facts about this thread to wrap this puppy up... or atleast until a Community Manager would like to add other info...

~ We were told to make original builds abiding by the no plagerizing rule
~ ANET broke this rule to incorperate meta builds widely used on PvX Wiki, a third party site, there by breaking their own plagerizing rule
~ Statistical Data (displayed by Regina) shows that 23 of the 40 builds were only submitted by 1 person. And only 2 builds were submitted by 40 of more people.
~ Although PvX is the center piece for many builds in this game... it is debatable as to wether one can produce a build on their own and have it not be on the site.
~ If ANET wanted to get ideas for builds without the community... they do have the ability to track players online to see what they run, and how to run it.... as per the skill usage tracker
~ There is a wide player base that feels that AI should be taken completely out of PvP areas of the game. Wether the build chossen for the replacement henchmen will be effective or cover the "removal" of AI is debatable...
~ Most of everything else, is speculation

In conclusion... even though builds can be submitted into the contest... the roots or guts of rhte build could be traced back to other third party sites due to its popularity, even though you made the build yourself. This will most likely be the stance of ANET... so I feel this thread basicully done unless a representative from ANET will state otherwise.