Curse

Martin Firestorm · Oct 05, 2009, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by El Presidente

Uh, not quite. Their contest is bound by the laws of the states and countries to which it was offered to players. It's one of the reasons they offered it to only select states/countries... Read what they'd have to do to let those in Quebec participate, as one example, and you'll see why Anet opted out.

Yeah, they can't offer it in places with bizarre concerns about gambling without jumping through some hoops. But where they do offer it, they are the final arbiter. Go ahead and take this "case" to court. You can sue over anything, but should expect consequences when its something frivolous, as this is. The point is you're blowing this hugely out of proportion, as are so many others. The bars are the problem, not the legalities.

Quote:

Originally Posted by El Presidente

If you even followed what I replied to, it was in reference to the prior "legal jargon" comment, meaning ~ even a lower court's opinion/interpretation is subject to reversal...all the way to the Supreme Court.

But not beyond. Anet is GW's supreme court. I followed you--it was a terrible analogy.

JR · Oct 05, 2009, 11:09 PM // 23:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

In simple words: AI may be difficult enough for a player with "average" skill; you're not of average skill, thus complain about this AI, which is fine for most players. Better now?

So your argument is, essentially, that the hench bars are 'good enough for most people'.

It's a fair point, but I'd like Anet to aim higher.

]HM[ Sabre Wolf · Oct 05, 2009, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pheenix Down

Then explain the discrepancy between these two facts.

~ PvXWiki for starters is not the only source for builds... there are plunty of other sites out there that have builds listed on them and have been noted to be a source for builds (Gamependium and Team Builder are just a couple.)

~ From the PvXwiki page: "PvXwiki was never intended to serve as a GuildWars Database such as GuildWiki. Rather, PvX was created for a single purpose: retaining Build Articles." There for, they only hold information about builds as articles, but do not claim ownership of those builds.

~ Gamependium Copyright Info: "Site design and source code is owned by Gamependium. All comments and forum posts are the responsibility of their respective authors. All games we support are copyright of their respective owners, all rights reserved. Guild Wars is ©2005 ArenaNet, Inc. All rights reserved. NCsoft, the interlocking NC logo, ArenaNet, Arena.net, Guild Wars, Guild Wars Factions, Factions and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation." The skills sets that we called builds are owned by ANET, not Gamependium. Gamependium only claims the website host and layout.

~ Since ANET is the only party that can claim any ownership of information, and PvXWiki and other sites do not claim ownership of the builds held on their websites because the skills are the properity of ANET. And since the contest was hosted by ANET, owners to the rights of the skills... NO RULE IS BROKEN.

DreamWind · Oct 05, 2009, 11:18 PM // 23:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed U Man

In reply to people saying that "every build is a wiki build", yes. But some non-mainstream builds should have been given priority over mainstream ones.

True...but what I find even more disturbing is the SPECIFIC wiki builds that Anet picked. If Anet had picked builds that AI is competent running off the wiki, I would have less of a problem with it.

As it stands, the builds picked only show serious signs of not knowing how the game works by both the players who submitted the builds and the people who picked them as winners.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenobra

This means that entries should be original to the extent that they do not violate another person's copyright or trademark. The skills used in Guild Wars are owned by ArenaNet, the sponsors of this contest. Using those skills and putting them into particular combinations is not violating a third party's rights. That is what's meant by "originality".

HAHAHA. You have got to be kidding me. Fortunately I don't have to respond to this...because Kisuro already did so in today's "post of the day":

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kisuro

Really? Gosh darn it, and there I was, using WoW and War skills in my builds, thinking that that'll be reeeally original. Now I know why I didn't win anything, I clearly broke the originality rule.

Are you serious? You really mean to tell us that the originality rule was there only to enforce the fact that we need to use only skills that are in GW and nothing else? Congratulations, you may have just found the lamest excuse ever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

If Joe Kimmes said that they'd work on Infuse and look at Frenzy if necessary, there may be things possible. He even said "[AI is] one of the easier things to tweak" and "Compared to a lot of things in the game, skill AI is often easy to update". Sure, players do see the results of this code every single day and many know the limits better than programmers.

Excuse me if I'm not convinced. They had HOW many years to fix the AI in HB and they didn't do it? Why remove HB if they planned on tweaking the AI and it is easy to do? I thought the entire point of this contest was to make original AI bars that they could use properly. The logic being used here is so ridiculous. Does this scenario sound familiar:

A. Anet implements a format with bad AI and never fixes it or even tweaks it much over the course of years

B. Anet removes the format mostly because of A

C. Anet makes a contest to pick original skillbars that the AI can use properly

D. Anet picks skillbars the AI can't use properly

E. Anet claims they are going to fix the AI. Repeat A anyone?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

In simple words: AI may be difficult enough for a player with "average" skill; you're not of average skill, thus complain about this AI, which is fine for most players. Better now?

No.

Karate Jesus · Oct 05, 2009, 11:18 PM // 23:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by ]HM[ Sabre Wolf

~ Since ANET is the only party that can claim any ownership of information, and PvXWiki and other sites do not claim ownership of the builds held on their websites because the skills are the properity of ANET... NO RULE IS BROKEN.

Sabre, I think people are confusing the "guidelines" for the "rules". Obviously, it was impossible to break the "rules" because it was impossible to use skills that exist outside GW in a contest using GW's UI.

What people are upset about is the fact that the "guidelines" asked that we not use "niche meta" builds...and the word "original" was used about 4 or 5 times.

And obviously, several people are upset at Regina's recent post because she seems to be implying that players are upset because the contest winners disobeyed the "copyright laws" of the contest, which is obviously not what any of those players mean. They mean that the builds weren't "original" as was stated.

Now....can we get off the whole "breaking the rules" thing? It's a bullshit excuse and has no validity in any of these arguments. We know Anet owns their own skills. Move on.

]HM[ Sabre Wolf · Oct 05, 2009, 11:24 PM // 23:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karate Jesus

And obviously, several people are upset at Regina's recent post because she seems to be implying that players are upset because the contest winners disobeyed the "copyright laws" of the contest, which is obviously not what any of those players mean. They mean that the builds weren't "original" as was stated.

I am just dealing with the complaints of the copyright laws and PvXWiki copy over with the posts above... this rule was not broken, so we can move on about that...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karate Jesus

Sabre, I think people are confusing the "guidelines" for the "rules". Obviously, it was impossible to break the "rules" because it was impossible to use skills that exist outside GW in a contest using GW's UI.

What people are upset about is the fact that the "guidelines" asked that we not use "niche meta" builds...and the word "original" was used about 4 or 5 times.

KJ... I am with everyone else on the fact that the guidelines set were to be original and non-meta based for builds... and ANET used meta for the winners... that I am still bent out of shape about. And I have said that 14 times in this thread...

moriz · Oct 05, 2009, 11:25 PM // 23:25

sabre is correct, the originality rule clearly states that no build should infringe on other people's copyright. it in no way states that the builds have to be original, in the sense that nobody had ever seen them before. since none of the builds in PvX wiki are copyrighted, the winners did not cheat.

however, i too consider it a rather sneaky way for anet to cover their butts.

Karate Jesus · Oct 05, 2009, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

however, i too consider it a rather sneaky way for anet to cover their butts.

Exactly.

12 chars

Regina Buenaobra · Oct 05, 2009, 11:40 PM // 23:40

A lot of people are still concerned about the fact that some of those builds are on external databases like PvXWiki. Folks are concerned that the winners haven't followed the rules of the contest because some of the winning builds are available for public viewing on websites like PvXWiki.

Let's look at the relevant sections of the official rules:

Quote:

"Originality: Entries must be the submission of the contestant and cannot be taken from any other source. Your submission must not infringe on any patent, copyright, trademark or other intellectual property right, or any privacy, publicity or publishing rights of any third party, or be libelous, obscene or otherwise contrary to law."

Quote:

"you warrant that your entry is your own original work and that it does not violate any rights of any third party".

This rule specifically cover violating another copyright holder's rights, which is a standard rule for contests where you submit information. People who enter the contest, upon doing so, basically state that they aren't breaking any copyright laws by entering the contest.

ArenaNet, the company that owns the copyright to those skills, gave folks who entered the contest the right to use those skills to create builds that they would like to see incorporated in the game. By entering the contest, winners have given us our word that they came up with the skill combination they submitted.

Linsey explained things a little further in terms of why she and Robert picked the skills they did for the winners:

Magic: The Gathering has a similar situation to Guild Wars: good decks are good decks. Individual players do not hold exclusive copyright or trademarks to use those decks. Lots of people play the same kinds of decks (i.e. those decks are popular), sometimes with slight variations, for one reason: they are effective. There are sites out there devoted to Magic: The Gathering strategies, on how to build the best decks, what cards to put in those decks, etc. This information is available to the public.

Likewise, in Guild Wars, good builds are good builds. Linsey was looking for builds that would be competitive and effective for GvG and HA. This is why the contest rules asked players to "devise potent, effective skill bars for the new henchmen in GvG and Heroes Ascent" and to come up with "great, competitive, henchman skill bars". There are certain builds that meet all of the design criteria that Linsey and Robert were looking for. Linsey and Robert had to balance a lot of needs and wants when judging the entries for this contest. Because there are certain builds that are more appropriate for this than others, one expects a certain amount of duplication. Many of those builds and strategies are publicized on places like PvXWiki, but also in guild forums, alliance forums, strategy guides, etc. They are out there in public for a reason: players have found them to be effective. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that there's no room for innovation or imagination. Only two of the winning skill bars had more than 50 duplicate entries. All the rest had less than 10 others submitting the same bar, and 23 winning skill bars were completely unique in the contest. Keep in mind another fact: Linsey and Robert wanted those henchmen to be equipped with skills that they know players will know how to use and will want to use.

Linsey and Robert had to keep in mind a lot of different needs and goals for this contest. I've been keeping them in the loop with your comments and concerns.

FoxBat · Oct 05, 2009, 11:40 PM // 23:40

I knew the contest rules was legalease crap, I'm surprised anyone fell for that.

What was misleading was when martin posted here and said they didn't want cutting edge meta or gimmick builds, that it had to be something useful in a wide variety of teams. In fairness they also said don't be held back by the AI, but most of us know that they can't possibly improve the AI enough.

Karate Jesus · Oct 05, 2009, 11:47 PM // 23:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

A lot of people are still concerned about the fact that some of those builds are on external databases like PvXWiki. Folks are concerned that the winners haven't followed the rules of the contest because some of the winning builds are available for public viewing on websites like PvXWiki.

This rule specifically cover violating another copyright holder's rights, which is a standard rule for contests where you submit information. People who enter the contest, upon doing so, basically state that they aren't breaking any copyright laws by entering the contest.

ArenaNet, the company that owns the copyright to those skills, gave folks who entered the contest the right to use those skills to create builds that they would like to see incorporated in the game. By entering the contest, winners have given us our word that they came up with the skill combination they submitted.

Linsey explained things a little further in terms of why she and Robert picked the skills they did for the winners:

Magic: The Gathering has a similar situation to Guild Wars: good decks are good decks. Individual players do not hold exclusive copyright or trademarks to use those decks. Lots of people play the same kinds of decks (i.e. those decks are popular), sometimes with slight variations, for one reason: they are effective. There are sites out there devoted to Magic: The Gathering strategies, on how to build the best decks, what cards to put in those decks, etc. This information is available to the public.

Likewise, in Guild Wars, good builds are good builds. Linsey was looking for builds that would be competitive and effective for GvG and HA. This is why the contest rules asked players to "devise potent, effective skill bars for the new henchmen in GvG and Heroes Ascent" and to come up with "great, competitive, henchman skill bars". There are certain builds that meet all of the design criteria that Linsey and Robert were looking for. Linsey and Robert had to balance a lot of needs and wants when judging the entries for this contest. Because there are certain builds that are more appropriate for this than others, one expects a certain amount of duplication. Many of those builds and strategies are publicized on places like PvXWiki, but also in guild forums, alliance forums, strategy guides, etc. They are out there in public for a reason: players have found them to be effective. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that there's no room for innovation or imagination. Only two of the winning skill bars had more than 50 duplicate entries. All the rest had less than 10 others submitting the same bar, and 23 winning skill bars were completely unique in the contest. Keep in mind another fact: Linsey and Robert wanted those henchmen to be equipped with skills that they know players will know how to use and will want to use.

Linsey and Robert had to keep in mind a lot of different needs and goals for this contest. I've been keeping them in the loop with your comments and concerns.

Wow....just wow. Are we still ignoring the main reason the community is upset by this contest? Alright, fine then. I'll guess we all just have to let it go. Apparently, it was just copyright jargon....and something about Magic:The Gathering......and Linsey and Robert wanted the henchmen to use player builds......

Everyone move on about your business now. Nothing to see here.

Still Number One · Oct 05, 2009, 11:54 PM // 23:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karate Jesus

Wow....just wow. Are we still ignoring the main reason the community is upset by this contest?

What that they didn't win and are now trying to make up excuses that other people weren't "Original" and therefore don't deserve to have won?

I can understand people being upset that they misinterpreted the rules here, but seriously, the majority of people are only complaining because they are butt hurt they lost to wiki builds. You can try to deny it all you want, but the more people complain about the contest, the more convincing it becomes that people are just upset they lost to the wiki.

snaek · Oct 05, 2009, 11:54 PM // 23:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by regina buenaobra

By entering the contest, winners have given us our word that they came up with the skill combination they submitted.

in other words... you have no real way of enforcing your rule other than to hope the submitter is telling the truth. i hope you do realize that the only reason this rule is being questioned is because the bars exemplify that the submitter has very little gw knowledge or has put very little thought into them. any experienced gw player can tell this; however, it seems that the dev team can not tell this because they chose them as winning builds.

Quote:

Originally Posted by still number one

the majority of people are only complaining because they are butt hurt they lost to horrible builds that are not effective

fixed

Still Number One · Oct 06, 2009, 12:01 AM // 00:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by snaek

fixed

Not really. Maybe a few, but the majority are just upset that they were trying to be creative and a build that anyone could put together in less than a minute won instead of theirs.

And so what if bad builds won? The whole point of removing heros is to remove AI from competitive PvP. If you actually give the henchmen effective bars, then we just went full circle and the whole thing would be pointless now wouldn't it?

Henchmen should be there for emergency purposes only. They should not be a warranted substitute for a real player. Making them good makes them a warranted substitute. Making them bad or mediocre, makes them undesirable to use. Which is good. We don't want people using them. so make them suck.

Magikarp · Oct 06, 2009, 12:01 AM // 00:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

sabre is correct, the originality rule clearly states that no build should infringe on other people's copyright. it in no way states that the builds have to be original, in the sense that nobody had ever seen them before. since none of the builds in PvX wiki are copyrighted, the winners did not cheat.

however, i too consider it a rather sneaky way for anet to cover their butts.

This hahaha.

I would have more to say, but this is basically the best way to sum it up :P

Motoko · Oct 06, 2009, 12:01 AM // 00:01

The rules won't change. The people who submitted successful bars won't be punished.
I don't see the point in further speculating and complaining about such problems.

Regina is obviously looking at these comments and she is even nice enough to respond to the many complaints (however rudely they may have been put) that probably should have been ignored due to the rude nature they were delivered in.

Appreciate the integration ANet is trying to create within the Guild Wars community. Certain rules weren't apparently clarified enough to satisfy the entire community. That will happen, and ANet will learn from it. They have to learn, this forum isn't comprised of 100% morons... (although some people may be happy to disagree with this statement) and ANet will have to keep up with the intellect that which it is trying to appease/entertain.

From looking at those bars, you should notice the bars that have been applied are familiar copies of what you might called "balanced" format.

It isn't like there are 3 mesmer heroes with tease and resto weapons or ritualist heroes with the same concept. You don't see a plethra of smite monks joining the ranks of henchmen either.

While I will agree with something said by someone over on teamquitter... (The use of company resources to improve henchmen AI is a waste in comparison to the other pvp formats that need attention...i.g. halls map, HB, TA, GvG tiebreaker)...

I think you are all better off not complaining and in fact utilizing this guru forum resource to offer suggestions in relation to the future updates the development team has planned to implement to correct the effectiveness of the bars.

Karate Jesus · Oct 06, 2009, 12:06 AM // 00:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Still Number One

Not really. Maybe a few, but the majority are just upset that they were trying to be creative and a build that anyone could put together in less than a minute won instead of theirs.

And so what if bad builds won? The whole point of removing heros is to remove AI from competitive PvP. If you actually give the henchmen effective bars, then we just went full circle and the whole thing would be pointless now wouldn't it?

Henchmen should be there for emergency purposes only. They should not be a warranted substitute for a real player. Making them good makes them a warranted substitute. Making them bad or mediocre, makes them undesirable to use. Which is good. We don't want people using them. so make them suck.

I didn't even enter. Therefore, your argument is both invalid....and ridiculous. Go away.

FrostymcPewPew · Oct 06, 2009, 12:09 AM // 00:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina Buenaobra

A lot of people are still concerned about the fact that some of those builds are on external databases like PvXWiki. Folks are concerned that the winners haven't followed the rules of the contest because some of the winning builds are available for public viewing on websites like PvXWiki.

Let's look at the relevant sections of the official rules:

This rule specifically cover violating another copyright holder's rights, which is a standard rule for contests where you submit information. People who enter the contest, upon doing so, basically state that they aren't breaking any copyright laws by entering the contest.

ArenaNet, the company that owns the copyright to those skills, gave folks who entered the contest the right to use those skills to create builds that they would like to see incorporated in the game. By entering the contest, winners have given us our word that they came up with the skill combination they submitted.

Linsey explained things a little further in terms of why she and Robert picked the skills they did for the winners:

Magic: The Gathering has a similar situation to Guild Wars: good decks are good decks. Individual players do not hold exclusive copyright or trademarks to use those decks. Lots of people play the same kinds of decks (i.e. those decks are popular), sometimes with slight variations, for one reason: they are effective. There are sites out there devoted to Magic: The Gathering strategies, on how to build the best decks, what cards to put in those decks, etc. This information is available to the public.

Likewise, in Guild Wars, good builds are good builds. Linsey was looking for builds that would be competitive and effective for GvG and HA. This is why the contest rules asked players to "devise potent, effective skill bars for the new henchmen in GvG and Heroes Ascent" and to come up with "great, competitive, henchman skill bars". There are certain builds that meet all of the design criteria that Linsey and Robert were looking for. Linsey and Robert had to balance a lot of needs and wants when judging the entries for this contest. Because there are certain builds that are more appropriate for this than others, one expects a certain amount of duplication. Many of those builds and strategies are publicized on places like PvXWiki, but also in guild forums, alliance forums, strategy guides, etc. They are out there in public for a reason: players have found them to be effective. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that there's no room for innovation or imagination. Only two of the winning skill bars had more than 50 duplicate entries. All the rest had less than 10 others submitting the same bar, and 23 winning skill bars were completely unique in the contest. Keep in mind another fact: Linsey and Robert wanted those henchmen to be equipped with skills that they know players will know how to use and will want to use.

Linsey and Robert had to keep in mind a lot of different needs and goals for this contest. I've been keeping them in the loop with your comments and concerns.

Thanks for the wall of text about legal jargon that we already know about. Ofcourse we all know that there is no legal foot hold against Arena-Net, and even if there was I doubt anyone would be all that bothered however you see to be missing the point that most of the community is enraged about.

Despite what martin said, meta builds won (Primal Rage, Dev hammer etc etc), gimmicky builds won (Thumper etc), builds which are probably going to be affected by future metashifts/skill updates won (which tells me VoR isn't getting a nerf, yay

)

Despite what we was told, builds that are commonly knowledged as meta/gimmicky etc won, many people actually put in a lot of effort to find bars that henchmen would use well, would adhere to all the so called rules, and would be balanced. And for all they did, they could have just chosen what was obvious builds for people and just clicked submit, and had a better chance at winning.

There is no way that AI is fixable to a level that most of those Builds will be properly usable by a henchmen, even to a low level of usability. If updating AI was that easy then Hero Battles would have seen many updates and would possibly be staying, but it isn't. You will never be able to program AI to work anywhere near on par with a human with some of those bars, simply because AI cannot understand when to use some skills (I think any of the bars with KD or KD prevention in them are a joke since AI has pretty limited response to KD, let alone how to properly use it).

If meta-esque builds had been chosen with adjustments to AI, then no matter how OP/lame the build would have been, I think people wouldn't have minded, since it is a viable option for them to take in PvP. But instead we have about 36 useless henchmen, and the other 4 will only work in very gimmicky builds (hexway notably).

If you wanted people to simply not take henchmen (which is all I can make out from the chosen builds), why didn't you just remove Heroes and Henchmen, and let PvP be PvP?

Anyway back to the point that you missed, bars that are meta/gimmicky won despite being told they most likely wouldn't, and bars that won are going to be very poorly run on henchmen, too poor to actually consider taking them in PvP.

/rant over since Reggie won't even read this :/

snaek · Oct 06, 2009, 12:09 AM // 00:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by still number one

And so what if bad builds won? The whole point of removing heros is to remove AI from competitive PvP. If you actually give the henchmen effective bars, then we just went full circle and the whole thing would be pointless now wouldn't it?

oh...i get it now...the point of this contest was to make horrible skill bars...why didn't i realize this earlier? i would have submitted my echo mending bar.

for reals though, a bar filled with mediocre skills that ai uses effectively is a far less of a crime then what anet seemingly intends to do: improve ai so that they can use great skills effectively. even if they leave the ai as is, i'd rather have a mediocre hench, then a useless broken hench.

Karate Jesus · Oct 06, 2009, 12:13 AM // 00:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by snaek

oh...i get it now...the point of this contest was to make horrible skill bars...why didn't i realize this earlier? i would have submitted my echo mending bar.

for reals though, a bar filled with mediocre skills that ai uses effectively is a far less of a crime then what anet seemingly intends to do: improve ai so that they can use great skills effectively. even if they leave the ai as is, i'd rather have a mediocre hench, then a useless broken hench.

Well, apparently Joe Kimmes is working to get the builds to work the way they're supposed to. So the henchmen wont be entirely worthless.

He's even said that he almost has one of the sin kd-chains working like it's supposed to....so hopefully we'll see that stuff work.