Curse

slowerpoke · Aug 29, 2009, 02:45 PM // 14:45

sealed deck sounds good on paper but i doubt it'll work as well as people think.

a template of 8 skills randomly selected (costume brawl but with a huge selection of builds rather than 1 per prof) would be better than a random bar of skills, and there are alot of (bad) skills out there.

being forced to use a shitty bar will make this format prone to leavers who wanna reroll for better.

tripplesix · Aug 29, 2009, 03:10 PM // 15:10

Just played twice against shove spike in RA, maybe its not a bad idea to "fix" the sync but removing TA is a shame.

Noxxle · Aug 29, 2009, 03:19 PM // 15:19

How exactly is sealed deck going to work?

HawkofStorms · Aug 29, 2009, 03:29 PM // 15:29

The "cool" thing about sealed deck is it forces people to actually develop their own skill bars. No PvX wiki for this. It's a test of a whole second part of GW, designing builds from scratch. Of course player skill in actual combat will still matter, but this really is a great idea. My only concern is communication and teamwork on this. Ie, who on your team gets to control the skill bars?

Anyway, sounds good overall. I notice pretty much nobody on this thread seems to be mourning the loss of Hero Battles. That should be a sign of how bad the format is when nobody will miss it.

Trytan · Aug 29, 2009, 03:35 PM // 15:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by slowerpoke

sealed deck sounds good on paper but i doubt it'll work as well as people think.

a template of 8 skills randomly selected (costume brawl but with a huge selection of builds rather than 1 per prof) would be better than a random bar of skills, and there are alot of (bad) skills out there.

being forced to use a shitty bar will make this format prone to leavers who wanna reroll for better.

If you get a random bar everytime you enter battle then yeah...it would be a really bad idea IMO.

But the idea of pre made templates would be subject to the same flaws. Over time people would figure out what builds work best the majority of the time and will still quit and re-roll until they get the build that they want.

The only way sealed deck would work and truly be fun IMO would be for it to be completely random and change on a set timeline (daily, bi-daily etc.). That way there would be no point in quitting and re-rolling. Todays bars would be the bars that you and everyone else are stuck with everytime you go into battle that day.

Sure you'd get stuck with really shitty builds somedays, but everyone else in that prof would as well. Only abuse I could see coming from this is the odd time that one profession randomly gets a powerful build and everyone is rolling a full team of that profession for that day.

Some days would be hit or miss but I think doing something like this would be the best bet in the long run for sealed deck play to succeed.

Stolen Souls · Aug 29, 2009, 03:37 PM // 15:37

Very nice. It's good to know what they are working on and have planned. XTH was nice, and hopefully it'll come back, but if it doesn't...meh, was nice while it lasted. Some new stuff for Halloween/Wintersday would be nice, if they get around to it. Sealed Deck might be pretty neat. All in all not bad.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fenix

I'm surprised how many people have NO idea what Sealed Deck is.

I'm more surprised at how many don't bother to read the thread, or at least skim it, to see that it's already been explained multiple times.

Smarty · Aug 29, 2009, 03:47 PM // 15:47

Really nice journal entry there, Linsey. Very good to see so much openness and communication, and kudos for making such a drastic change to the PvP formats. I hope the 2-month skill update works out - you'll really have to stick to getting those update notes released a month in advance, though, and not let that deadline slide due to things not working as planned. Last but not least, welcome to Robert.

Rhamia Darigaz · Aug 29, 2009, 04:08 PM // 16:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by slowerpoke

sealed deck sounds good on paper but i doubt it'll work as well as people think.

a template of 8 skills randomly selected (costume brawl but with a huge selection of builds rather than 1 per prof) would be better than a random bar of skills, and there are alot of (bad) skills out there.

being forced to use a shitty bar will make this format prone to leavers who wanna reroll for better.

neither of the options you described is sealed deck. in sealed deck, each player on a team gets like 20 random skills and the entire team makes builds out of their collective card pool (well, technically you can only make a build from your own pool of cards, but the fact that you can trade cards with your teammates makes the card pool effectively collective). i can see a slight variation for a random pug sealed deck arena where you only get to make a build from your own pool of cards with no trading allowed, although i would like to see the number you get increased from the norm if this is the case; there's a big difference between using all the monk skills out of your team's 80 and using all the monk skills only out of your own 20. alternatively, i could see an arena variation where you get say 12 skills from your primary profession and 8 from any other profession to use as your secondary; this would limit the non-fun of getting only 5 skills from your primary without increasing the size of card pools and creating a chance of getting 25 skills from your primary. i personally prefer my second variation because it limits unnecessary randomness and ensures that each player will have enough skills to play the profession they entered with without the hassle of trading between pugs. ZOMG I WANT SEALED DECK TO PLAY NAOO!!!

Saga DOJO · Aug 29, 2009, 04:11 PM // 16:11

If this sealed deck is gonna work out like Magic The Gathering it woud bring me much joy. The sound vaguely reminds me of Polymock but PVP ^^ Very promising indeed.
Cant mourn for the removal of HB, but too bad they freeze the title IMO. It would be better if ppl could continue the progress of Commander title through sealed deck.

Looks like we have to wait a bit till we see it in action.

PS: Welcome Robert! May you have many joyous days.

Sarevok Thordin · Aug 29, 2009, 04:20 PM // 16:20

Send this thread to everyone who felt like dwindling away from the game, this is a revival!

You just got tomahawked · Aug 29, 2009, 04:25 PM // 16:25

Linsey is the man.

Burst Cancel · Aug 29, 2009, 04:37 PM // 16:37

I'm not that excited about randomized sealed deck; something closer to a rotating pool of fixed bars (with sideboard) would be more interesting and competition-oriented in nature. Part of the problem with sealed deck is the large number of sub-optimal and completely worthless skills; unless the pool is severely restricted to essentially meta skillbars (past and present), and maybe a handful of other skills, the possibility of drawing an "unplayable" or otherwise shit-tier lineup is extremely high. While it's true that this chance is the same for all teams involved, it's not fun to play when nobody on either team has any decent skills, and any team that actually gets lucky with a close-to-optimal draw wins for free. Sealed deck actually has greater randomization problems than RA (i.e., random skills is a higher degree of randomness than random players), and with the death of TA there will no longer be any organized, non-random 4v4 format (maybe AB will see a sudden increase in player skill?).

russiansteven · Aug 29, 2009, 04:55 PM // 16:55

Excited for sealed deck and can't wait till Halloween to see what they have done.

Ele Mental · Aug 29, 2009, 05:25 PM // 17:25

Wait, Wait

lemme get this straight, whatever tier you have in the commander title it will count as a title towards KOABD????

Scythe O F Glory · Aug 29, 2009, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Can't wait to see sync teams getting 100+ win streaks in RA!

On a more serious note, about the HB and TA. I don't give a flying RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO about HB, but TA was always my "We don't have enough for GvG right now. Lets TA". Now that that's gone, no more real PvP from me.

Geod · Aug 29, 2009, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Thanks for the information Linsey. The Sealed Deck PvP sounds like a great and really fun addition. I know I'd play it a good deal

I was never a huge fan of HvH or TA, so good for me. I would like to see the Xunlai house come back up though, or else Z-Key prices are gonna shoot up. If the Xunlai house can't be fixed, you might want to consider reducing the price to get the Z-Keys with Z-Coins.

Overall I'm just glad to get some information, and you delivered.

Lykan · Aug 29, 2009, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Hopefully the "deck" will change weekly or monthly.

BenjZee · Aug 29, 2009, 05:58 PM // 17:58

OH EM GEE, welldone Robert.
I am slightly peeved at the XTH to be honest, its a nice little feature to have not just for free zkeys but as a predicting activity to do outside of the game (kinda unique). Hope it gets fixed otherwise this feature will be severley mocked

"That was a pretty big revelation for us. It meant some big changes were needed. We started working on streamlining our update process with the hope that extra work now meant less work later. We began working on automating the base functionality of holiday festivals, weekend events, the monthly tonic changeover, and the monthly tournament map rotation"

The monthly tonic changeover i always thought was valuable time wasted and could benefit from this. Ofcourse the holiday events doin so would be great especialyl once we ship off to gw2 and less time is able to be spent at say christmas giving both games the support for wineterday.

Not a HB'er however how can you remove the Commander title track this is quite harsh...

FengShuiDove · Aug 29, 2009, 05:59 PM // 17:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scythe O F Glory

On a more serious note, about the HB and TA. I don't give a flying RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO about HB, but TA was always my "We don't have enough for GvG right now. Lets TA". Now that that's gone, no more real PvP from me.

I (and I'm sure ANet) sympathize with the players that actually enjoy TA. Unfortunately, the vast majority of players avoid it because of the stagnation and difficulty of grouping. With any major change they're going to get some negative feedback... I remember when PnH was first buffed someone on here said that ANet had removed the only great Monk E-Management skill.

Following the "critical mass" idea, ANet is going for what's going to appease "most" players. Yes, it may leave some behind, but I think that overall, a Sealed Deck arena will be a great advancement for Guild Wars.

Wynthyst · Aug 29, 2009, 05:59 PM // 17:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

Part of the problem with sealed deck is the large number of sub-optimal and completely worthless skills.

My understanding is that the skills will be divided into several Tiers. Anet understands about the sub-optimal skills. Each team ends up getting identical (collective) decks made up of x number from each tier of skills. So neither team has any great advantage in the skills that are available for them to use, any advantage will be based solely on their ability to distribute/share the available skill cards among their team. So it comes back to skill in overall game play is greater than memorizing a playstyle w/set builds. Even as a PvEr I can see the potential for this, and from those PvP friends I have, their excitement about this has me convinced it is a very positive thing.