Curse

moriz · Oct 03, 2009, 03:45 PM // 15:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trytan Voorhes

I've always given ANet the benefit of the doubt in most all of their blunders....but this is just ridiculous. Either they have no idea how the hench/hero AI actually works (a frightening thought), or they just did this contest as a way to remove NPC's from high level PVP. They are already saying all the time that their resources are spread fairly thin, I can't see them even thinking about tackling something like hench AI in order to use some of these builds semi-effectively.

Either way it was a huge miscommunication on their part as to what this whole contest was actually about. This has to rank up there as one of the biggest blunders in ANet history.

it's been proven that anet (and especially the live team) have no idea how GW actually works. listen to the live panel discussion, more specifically, that robert guy they just hired. what's the first thing he said? well, he wanted to see "if empathy triggers once or twice with dual shot". well no duh it triggers twice! i don't know if he's being sarcastic or just trying to pull an example, but that's been known for years. he supposedly have been playing GW for years.

anet has no idea what their game is about. they have no idea how to play it. therefore, they should never make decisions on how it should be played. they need to get the Test Krewe thing going with the best people available, and listen to them. or, fire the entire live team and hire devs who actually play this game.

Jarus · Oct 03, 2009, 03:46 PM // 15:46

What sort of bars do you think Anet should've picked, then?

Some examples would be good. Post the builds you submitted but didn't win, like Lex did.

I still think any choices the dev team could've made would have been met with this much criticism.

tealspikes · Oct 03, 2009, 03:46 PM // 15:46

It wasnt an easy choice for them,
1 choose META bars that are proven to WORK with heroes (teasebot, taint),
2 choose ORIGINAL bars that WORK with heroes (what i think every wanted/expected),
3 choose META bars that DON'T WORK for heroes (what we got instead),
4 choose ORIGINAL bars that DON'T WORK well with heroes (but are still 'original')

Choices 1 and 2 are obviously out of the question for Anet because that's exactly what they were trying to get rid of by removing heroes - their usefulness in PvP.
So what it comes down to is which these nonfunctional bars they pick would appeal the masses: meta or original ones? My guess as to why they went with 3 is that would demonstrate they at least know what works well in the meta (with humans) - what people recognized people like. Having picked option 4 they would probably have gotten more angry players accusing them of completely randomizing the selection. Imagine trying to pick an original build that people will like when you know it also has to suck. They really cornered themselves with this contest.

moriz · Oct 03, 2009, 03:57 PM // 15:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jarus

What sort of bars do you think Anet should've picked, then?

Some examples would be good. Post the builds you submitted but didn't win, like Lex did.

I still think any choices the dev team could've made would have been met with this much criticism.

i didn't bother submitting any builds, but i'd pick builds that the AI can run. this means, generic casters, N/Rt healers, ranged fighters (paragon and ranger). the AI is notoriously bad at playing warriors and assassins, so i'd leave them out and just add in a few dervish builds.

what's the most effective out of the henchmen of old? the elementalist. why? because it does damage, it's straightforward, and the AI runs it quite well. it wasn't overpowered, and it was very useful in the right situations. the builds for this contest should've been picked on this criteria. unfortunately, anet thought otherwise. their loss.

Killed u man · Oct 03, 2009, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jarus

What sort of bars do you think Anet should've picked, then?

Some examples would be good. Post the builds you submitted but didn't win, like Lex did.

I still think any choices the dev team could've made would have been met with this much criticism.

For HA:

[Double Dragon][Flame Burst][Flame Djinn's Haste][Glyph of Elemental Power][Aura of Restoration][Fire Attunement][Channeling][Resurrection Signet]

Perfectly viable on a hero, does more damage than a player SH does, and with some AI tweaking can be further improved.
It can support itself on energy, and even has some healing in it.
Not ripped of wiki, original and simply better than other ele builds submitted.

[Tainted Flesh][Rotting Flesh][Putrid Explosion][Well of the Profane][Deathly Swarm][Signet of Lost Souls][Smite Hex][Resurrection Signet]

Perfectly viable on a hero, just as good as a human taint. Sure, it's a well known build, but that doesn't change the fact that this is the ONLY necro bar a hero can run effectivly in just about any team build. They clearly said they wanted build who can survive meta shifts... Taint has been around since prophecies, and is still going as a pressure powerhouse. WHY DID LC, which is probably still going to be subject of nerfs, WIN OVER TAINT?

The bars they selected simply suck compared to mine. As pointed out a million times, ever bar will have AI issues, and are hardly "meta shift"-resilient.
People will always need a nuker, and/or a taint is optional aswell.

My bars > 99% of the bars who won...

Wuhy · Oct 03, 2009, 03:59 PM // 15:59

@tealspike: they wanted to remove heroes to get rid of their rupts, ench removals and hex stacks and replace other stuff they can do with hench.

tealspikes · Oct 03, 2009, 04:16 PM // 16:16

exactly. they are replacing things they know heroes CAN do with things they know heroes CAN'T do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by capashen

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

JR · Oct 03, 2009, 04:24 PM // 16:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

it's been proven that anet (and especially the live team) have no idea how GW actually works. listen to the live panel discussion, more specifically, that robert guy they just hired. what's the first thing he said? well, he wanted to see "if empathy triggers once or twice with dual shot". well no duh it triggers twice! i don't know if he's being sarcastic or just trying to pull an example, but that's been known for years. he supposedly have been playing GW for years.

He was talking about things he had experimented with in the past.

Oct 03, 2009, 04:26 PM // 16:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jarus

What sort of bars do you think Anet should've picked, then?

Some examples would be good. Post the builds you submitted but didn't win, like Lex did.

I still think any choices the dev team could've made would have been met with this much criticism.

True the Dev Team were on road to nothing with this contests. So many QQ about the winning bars.

So what most people are saying for example that the heroes should just run with less than 8 skills since their A.I can't handle 8?

As for the PvXwiki and CTRL+V comments, and the odd skills changes here and there.

Did anyone actually sit and think why did they change the skills around? A standard wiki bar is what everyone runs, change the odd skills and it becomes non wiki!!!!

Stop griping because A-Net screwed up with the Henchie bars, the choice is simple don't use them in GvG or HA, use your own cookie cutters builds on your own heroes!

By the way my LS bar won.

Shall I explain why I chose some skills:

Remove Hex over Holy Veil - Heroes can't pre-veil, hence Remove Hex faster recharge. Cure Hex or Spotless would be nice, but recharge time sucks.
Gift Of Health over RoF or Patient Spirit - Needed a direct heal since GoH offers more heals than Dwayna Kiss assuming that they are not hexed, PS offers good heals, but you have to wait 3 secs for the heal or 4 secs with +20% enchantment. Yes there are other good heals, but preferred the 3/4 cast time.
Shielding Hands over Shield of Absorption - Liked the idea of -15,-18 damage reduction with extra heals at the end, down side recharge time. SoA offered -5 over 8 seconds and faster recharge went for the great damage reduction and faster cast time.
Spirit Bond over Protective Spirit - Negates some damage and heals.
Power Drain over Aura of Stability - Simple, heroes can't predict who is going to get knocked over. As for pre-proting how? Ever seen a hero interrupt?

So before you start saying the winners used PvXwiki and cut and pasted and didn't use original builds, ask yourself why didn't you submit ones that have been proven, but need a slight tweak?

No more ranting now, was getting sick of all the negative comments.

Congrats to the other winners by the way.

Giga_Gaia · Oct 03, 2009, 04:30 PM // 16:30

And here is another problem: given Anet's track record in the past, we all know that their excuse for delaying their next update will be "we were so busy with this contest". Gawd...

Bobby2 · Oct 03, 2009, 04:34 PM // 16:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blocksofwood

Stop griping because A-Net screwed up with the Henchie bars

I'm griping because ANet fails to admit their failure.

tzonach · Oct 03, 2009, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jarus

What sort of bars do you think Anet should've picked, then? Some examples would be good. Post the builds you submitted but didn't win, like Lex did.

Below is a pool of what I thought were eligible builds. HA builds I submitted are appended with a white dash, GvG in black.

Bug John · Oct 03, 2009, 04:50 PM // 16:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

I'm griping because ANet fails to admit their failure.

true

but, on the other hand, they did exactly what they wanted to : remove heroes and henchmen from pvp

Quote:

Originally Posted by tzonach

Below is a pool of what I thought were eligible builds. HA builds I submitted are appended with a white dash, GvG in black.

some of your builds have the same problem that those that were chosen

a snare, or any form of shutdown is useless, as long as you can't control or lock it on a target

Minami · Oct 03, 2009, 04:52 PM // 16:52

EDIT: nevermind....

By the way, last time I posted, I forgot to say congrats to Pansy Malfoy.

So congrats!! ^_^

Dwaynas Hot Friend · Oct 03, 2009, 05:12 PM // 17:12

ANet screwed up bigtime....All that time wasted....All that time they'll waste completing it...All that time they'll waste actually getting it to work...

Bad decision. Doh.

dr love · Oct 03, 2009, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Blocksofwood your bar is one of the best, if not the best. it will definitely see plenty of play. I can't say the same for many of the other bars however.

Still Number One · Oct 03, 2009, 05:24 PM // 17:24

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. They don't play PvP at a significant enough level to understand it. The only person working for A.net that had somewhat of a clue of how PvP worked, was Izzy, and some of his ideas of how the game should work were still complete garbage. A.net will never get it right until they do one of two things, hand over all decisions to a selected committee of PvPers (all decisions that revolve around PvP) or actually spend the time learning how the game works (by spending the humongous amount of time learning how to actually play it).

A.net saw the builds submitted and they chose them because they thought they were good. They didn't how certain skills were used and why they were on the bar. All they saw was that people use similar builds and the skills description and thought to themselves, that could be useful. They really don't have any understanding of why things work.

The second thing I don't get is why people are upset that the builds aren't good. I understand the whole PvX argument because of their rules. I understand the whole this won't work with AI argument because you don't want the henchmen to be completely useless. But here is the catch. Ideally, you don't want henchmen to be used at all. They shouldn't be something you want to use in replace of a human player. The only reason henchmen are essential is for emergency situations (similar to the Dirt situation in the monthly last weekend). If you are in a tournament and the lag bug hits you, chances are you could end up taking a forfeit that was beyond your control. Having henchmen allows you to add them at the last second and click join so that you at least avoid the forfeit. Sure chances are you are going to lose because you now have a henchmen instead of a real player, but at least you don't get a forfeit and can take a loss and move on. I guess the Dirt example isn't the best considering it was the finals and adding a hench (even one of these new bars) would have ended in a loss anyway, but the point is that it could help in earlier rounds.

Say it is the first round of the mAT. About 10 seconds prior to starting one of your players lags out. He doesn't have enough time to reconnect and get back to the guild hall to join the party. Instead of taking a crap forfeit and ruining your chance to play the tourny before it even starts, you can add a hench, save yourself from the forfeit, and move on from there. Chances are you will lose but at least you can still play the latter rounds and hopefully overcome the loss.

That is the only reason why Henchmen should be in the game and why they shouldn't remove them completely. Henchmen should not be a substitute for real players.

I have no idea why henchmen should be in HA, so don't bother bringing it up unless you have a good reason why.

Lex · Oct 03, 2009, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Still Number One

I have no idea why henchmen should be in HA, so don't bother bringing it up unless you have a good reason why.

Good reason: when one of your team members got dc on your run to HoH, GW will put random henchmen as replacement on next map. I'm not saying henchman is the best solution in this case, but it is still better to have additional AI controlled party member than 7/8 team. And that's primary reason why I would like to have some useful henchman available than useless ones.

Draikin · Oct 03, 2009, 05:41 PM // 17:41

There do seem to be a few misconceptions about the AI here. First of all the hero AI knows how to cancel frenzy, Joe Kimmes already changed the functionality after I submitted a bug report about it. The way it works now is that the AI will use Frenzy like usual, but if they drop down to 50% health they'll immediately use any other stance available to cancel Frenzy. This change has been in effect since the AI update in June 2009. A Primal Rage hero is by far the best PvP warrior hero, since PR effectively dumbs down warrior gameplay. Secondly, AI interrupt capability is greatly overrated. The AI is only good at interrupting when they can mindlessly button mash interrupts on recharge. I've done a lot of testing on this and could only determine that the hero AI is no better at interrupting than an average player (with a good ping). They rarely succeed at interrupting a 1/4 cast (I'm talking about a 3% success rate here) and even miss 3/4 casts more than 50% of the time, and that's on a mesmer hero with 10 fast casting. A ranger hero is worse at interrupting since the AI can't predict skill casting. I can only conclude that most of interrupts on 1/4s skills happen because the player is chain casting or because of AoE interrupts.

What's broken on heroes is their ability to multi-task, switch targets instantly and their ability to gather information which real players do not have access to (like which particular enchantments/hexes are active on a player). The problem with the result of the contest is that there may still be henches that have skill bars that can use those advantages and find their way in certain gimmick builds, in which case they'll have to be nerfed to make sure none of the henches see play. That's also why I don't understand Anet's intention to upgrade the skill usage AI for these henches. After being told there was no time for AI upgrades for HB so they had to delete the entire format, why is there time to upgrade it for PvP formats where people don't want the AI to be useful to begin with?

Lex · Oct 03, 2009, 05:51 PM // 17:51

Did not notice this earlier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blocksofwood

A standard wiki bar is what everyone runs, change the odd skills and it becomes non wiki!!!!

Yes, but two things as I said before:
- standard good build for human IS NOT standard good build for hench because of flaws in AI.
- ANet's rule was originality - for me it IS NOT copying bar from outer source, including wiki.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blocksofwood

Stop griping because A-Net screwed up with the Henchie bars, the choice is simple don't use them in GvG or HA, use your own cookie cutters builds on your own heroes!

How will we be able to use heroes as this contest's aim was to replace heroes by more customised henches and remove "own" heroes' usage from HA/GvG?