Curse

ajc2123 · Sep 10, 2009, 10:24 AM // 10:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by X Black Chaos X

I think Arena Net owes the player base of GW an apology for neglecting their input. Yes GW requires no subscription fee, however that doesnt' give them the right to not listen to how we feel, nor act on it.

Oh yeah, Anet doesn't listen to us at all!

*Ignores zaishen menagerie, more storage, equipment packs, stylists, name changes, thousands of suggested skill updates like ursan.

Yeah those bastards better start caring!

/endsarcasm

X Black Chaos X · Sep 10, 2009, 10:53 AM // 10:53

wow, i can't beleive what i'm reading. Once again. This thread is about lack of gamer to developer communication. HB and TA are examples. Imagine if GvG or HA was removed, because they felt they couldn't fix it, despite given suggestions and inputs from players that could've clearely solved the matter. Many people from HB gave plenty of ideas to fix it, and plent of people from TA gave plenty ideas to fix it. Dont turn this itno another stupid thread about how one person is stupid. Really think for once. Anet has removed 2 play formats, against players wishes. (if you never played HB or only once this doesn't apply to you, and same w/ TA). The main point, is that players put in a large amount of time to coming up w/ ideas to fix this, and those ideas were ignored.

Osiris_sam · Sep 10, 2009, 12:20 PM // 12:20

did you not quite understand what i, and many other people, said... its too broken to fix. its not that people havent offered advice on how to fix it... its just that none of them are viable fixes. ones suggested by people such as yourself, as prior mentioned, are mere band-aids and fail to address the root of the problem. one of the major ones in HB being the primative (yes i know the ai is very complicated compared to some) hero ai.

TA on the other hand, is just extremely under-represented. As i said, most of the player skill balance feedback comes from higher level GvG players (pls, someone correctly me if im wrong), who don't spend considerable amounts if play time in TA (ofc. there are exceptions)

In both situations however, the problem with player feedback is that it usually comes from players (such as myself, and yourself), who are not totally fluent in the game mechanics and sometimes overlook the root of the problem (skills). What you have to understand is, most likely, anet staff are disregarding these suggestions because they aren't viable, or they fail to address the actual problem.

On the other side of this arguement, of course, is the fact that there are a lot of GOOD suggestions comming through. things which would positively effect gameplay experience and the overall balance of the game, a fundamental change to life stealing perhaps.

Anet do, however, sometimes throw caution to the wind and buff random skills which are in no way underpowered. which has an enormously detrimental effect to the state of play; Ranger assassins, old primal rage, warriors endurance to name a few. While I personally totally dislike this kind of update, and in that i am probably not alone, one of their goals, at the end of the day, is to keep the game INTERESTING and one of the ways to do that is to create interesting metas. Granted, they should probably research what kind of effect this will have on gameplay before hand, but it serves the purpose, either in a good or bad way.

To end, i believe anet could possibly pay MORE attention to the pvp community at large, but i dont believe they are doing a particularly bad job, ignoring the stupid buffs.
(pvers dont deserve skill balances... OP broken stuff stays broken and keeps the grindbots happy... end of story)

JaeMi · Sep 10, 2009, 12:27 PM // 12:27

Why do you keep on saying "against players' wishes"???

I'm pretty sure most people are happy that TA and HB are going away for SD.

ajc2123 just listed numerous features, which were influenced through gamer-developer communication, yet you seem to claim that people are not sticking to the topic. Also, unlike TA or HB, GvG will never be removed from the game lol because.. you know... the name of the game is... Guild Wars!

Worf · Sep 10, 2009, 12:37 PM // 12:37

I have a good idea.

Remove PvE.
It isn't balanced. It doesn't take any skill. It isn't enjoyable.

We have three good reasons to remove PvE. The first reason also applies for TA and HB. The second reason doesn't aplly for either. The third reason applies partly for both of them, but fixing the first point would make it not to apply, which isn't the case for PvE unless people generally consider grinding fun. The first point should be rather easy to fix giving the fact that there are many suggenstions from the players how to do so.

Now, after the removal of PvE, the Sealed Deck format can be added without removing HB and TA. And as there's no PvE, ANet will have plenty of time to implement the needed changes for HB & TA.

Everyone is happy.
And no, this isn't sarcasm.

Divinus Stella · Sep 10, 2009, 01:12 PM // 13:12

You would have a point if PvE wasn't full of people and the sole reason 90% of players buy the game.

Aside from being really really dead, even more dead than ascalon arena, TA is just a flawed format thats impossible to balance without screwing with arenas that don't suck.

HB is just a terrible format, the idea of having a team of bots capping points was always destined for failure, most people played 3-4 games when it first came out then realised how much it sucked and never went back, aside from the 6 people who actually take the arena seriously nobody will miss it, infact removing it may make some more room on observer for games that people actually watch.

I'm not sure how good sealed deck will be, it can't be worse than what its replacing.

X Black Chaos X · Sep 10, 2009, 02:22 PM // 14:22

-.- you still miss the point. HB and TA are examples of anet not listening to players input and acting on it. Yes, HB does have bugs in it, however the majority of the HB community feels that those shadow step skills could have been nerfed and that would have bought some balance to the arena. Also why could SD not be introduced in the TA format instead of removing it all together? Also this a pvp forum section of guru. bringing up zaishen menagrie here is pretty null in point.

So for the last time. This thread is about the lack of communication Anet has w/ us, when they make these descions. Players in HB community and i'm sure players in TA community gave anet great ideas to use, and yet they choose to implment none of them, or communicate to us why idea a or b could not work.

this thread is not about the bug format of HB, which we already know exsists. My point was by nerfing those 3 skills the format would be less expoitable than it already is. Also bringing in SD to the format of both TA and HB possibly could've yeiled less work and more enjoyment for players.

Snow Bunny · Sep 10, 2009, 02:28 PM // 14:28

I guess Anet's true justification for removal of HB and TA are that more people would rather have SD, and thus TA is a waste of technical (read - bandwith, etc.) resources.

Byron · Sep 10, 2009, 02:53 PM // 14:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by X Black chaos X"

HB and TA are examples of anet not listening to players input and acting on it.

The game has always been balanced for 8v8 play, which meant that TA and HB were an exhibition of builds imbalanced for 4v4 play. This inevitably led the popularity of these formats to wane, and over the years, become almost dead. It's impossible to balance hundreds of skills for two completely different formats.

Sealed deck is at least something new, and I see no way how it can be less popular than TA or HB.

cloud4905 · Sep 10, 2009, 04:48 PM // 16:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by poasiods

Instead of abandoning HB to its boring-arse format or adjusting perfectly reasonable skills to utter-uselessness just to keep them from being used, they're putting in alot of effort to change it up. That sounds like dedication to me.

After ignoring it for forever and a day. Unfrotunately, most of Anet's "dedication" has come way too late.

It's one thing to say, as in your post, that they can't hang around and make changes based on every forums post on guru. You could even say they should IGNORE players entire, theoretically, because they know what's best for the game. Unfortunately, that idea really is theoretical in this scenario. Anet clearly does NOT know what is best for their game, and they'd best learn from their PILE of mistakes in managing GW if they want any sort of solid player-base for GW2 and its expansions. Anet does NOT understand the concept of managing their game correctly, and when the loyal fanbase tries to help out, they ignore them.

Case in point, both skills AND this format change. PvP-Smiter's boon for example. Hey, why rework a skill and make it useful in another neat, non-OP way, when you can just nerf it into un-usability. Good balancing Anet!

I feel the exact same way about them killing off TA and HB. At this point, I semi-agree with them doing it, but that's only because they ignored them for SO LONG that they truly are no longer salvageable. Had Anet actually given a crap months/years ago when they started to degrade, perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation. And therein lies the problem: Anet is horribly reactive about their solutions, and instead of making small changes over time and keeping an eye on things, they let these formats go all to hell, and are now just pulling a "PvP Smiter's Boon", and removing them entirely.

Again, all I can say is that if Anet wants to see me and a lot of other plays pick up GW2, they need to make sure that its sure as hell not managed like this, because it is completely unacceptable.

urania · Sep 10, 2009, 05:04 PM // 17:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divinus Stella

You would have a point if PvE wasn't full of people and the sole reason 90% of players buy the game.

Aside from being really really dead, even more dead than ascalon arena, TA is just a flawed format thats impossible to balance without screwing with arenas that don't suck.

HB is just a terrible format, the idea of having a team of bots capping points was always destined for failure, most people played 3-4 games when it first came out then realised how much it sucked and never went back, aside from the 6 people who actually take the arena seriously nobody will miss it, infact removing it may make some more room on observer for games that people actually watch.

I'm not sure how good sealed deck will be, it can't be worse than what its replacing.

what! the whole pve population will flock to SD like flies on shit, cuz its new, its interesting, its not broken (well, or maybe!), its erm...available to everyone yada yada.
^thats their reasoning for removing TA and HB, so yeah.

TA was never as flawed as HB and for more possible to balance out and thus at the same time prevent some of the future probs for gvg too.

skaspaakssa · Sep 10, 2009, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Sealed deck seems pretty cool, and I haven't gotten much enjoyment out of TA or HB, but I haven't seen a single convincing argument for why TA and HB need to be removed. I can understand not wanting to put a bunch of resources into formats that they feel are broken beyond repair, but no one has ever said why it's better to remove broken formats than it is to let them stay in the game, even if they are degenerate and broken, because some people still play them and enjoy them (and deleting the formats are more likely to make these players leave rather than just switching to SD). The only reason I've seen is that TA and HB existing splits the playerbase, but this really shouldn't be an issue because of how few people still play these formats (according to their statistics, anyways) and because if sealed deck is as good as the hype is, most players (in TA, at least) should willingly switch over to the more balanced format. Other than that, it's just the server/bandwidth resources that leaving HB and TA open might use up; I'm pretty clueless about servers and things like that, but I find it difficult to believe that these resources that 2 arenas that are supposedly nearly empty use up are significant enough that they need to be deleted to make room for SD.

I played TA for a bit yesterday, and while I didn't play enough games to get a good sample of the TA meta as a whole, it really wasn't that bad at all. Most teams were more-or-less balanced - a lot of hexes and such, but hardly a gimmick compared to the trash you see in nearly every HA match...

poasiods · Sep 10, 2009, 05:51 PM // 17:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by X Black Chaos X

-.- you still miss the point. HB and TA are examples of anet not listening to players input and acting on it. Yes, HB does have bugs in it, however the majority of the HB community feels that those shadow step skills could have been nerfed and that would have bought some balance to the arena. Also why could SD not be introduced in the TA format instead of removing it all together? Also this a pvp forum section of guru. bringing up zaishen menagrie here is pretty null in point.

So for the last time. This thread is about the lack of communication Anet has w/ us, when they make these descions. Players in HB community and i'm sure players in TA community gave anet great ideas to use, and yet they choose to implment none of them, or communicate to us why idea a or b could not work.

this thread is not about the bug format of HB, which we already know exsists. My point was by nerfing those 3 skills the format would be less expoitable than it already is. Also bringing in SD to the format of both TA and HB possibly could've yeiled less work and more enjoyment for players.

Sounds like this thread is going to be more about the lack of communication between you and every other poster. Honestly, you're saying the same shit over and over and over again despite all the other people who are addressing your every point. I could go back and quote other posts addressing what you wrote here, but that would be waste of effort on my part since you will simply add another post reiterating the same shit you've written in three different posts already. I suggest you go back and actually read through the thread and try to see the other posters' argument.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cloud4905

After ignoring it for forever and a day. Unfrotunately, most of Anet's "dedication" has come way too late.

It's one thing to say, as in your post, that they can't hang around and make changes based on every forums post on guru. You could even say they should IGNORE players entire, theoretically, because they know what's best for the game. Unfortunately, that idea really is theoretical in this scenario. Anet clearly does NOT know what is best for their game, and they'd best learn from their PILE of mistakes in managing GW if they want any sort of solid player-base for GW2 and its expansions. Anet does NOT understand the concept of managing their game correctly, and when the loyal fanbase tries to help out, they ignore them.

Don't dramatize what I've written. You twisted what I've written and broke it down yourself. This is not so simple as generalizing it as Developers ignoring players. Dev's do listen to players - players who have many conflicting views on different issues. Of course, it certainly doesn't help that there are so many retards running around either. That is why developers need to be objective while listening to players' opinion and take their time instead of rushing off to please whoever might be pissed off at the moment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cloud4905

Case in point, both skills AND this format change. PvP-Smiter's boon for example. Hey, why rework a skill and make it useful in another neat, non-OP way, when you can just nerf it into un-usability. Good balancing Anet!

I feel the exact same way about them killing off TA and HB. At this point, I semi-agree with them doing it, but that's only because they ignored them for SO LONG that they truly are no longer salvageable. Had Anet actually given a crap months/years ago when they started to degrade, perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation. And therein lies the problem: Anet is horribly reactive about their solutions, and instead of making small changes over time and keeping an eye on things, they let these formats go all to hell, and are now just pulling a "PvP Smiter's Boon", and removing them entirely.

Again, all I can say is that if Anet wants to see me and a lot of other plays pick up GW2, they need to make sure that its sure as hell not managed like this, because it is completely unacceptable.

People bitched about Smiter's Boon and developers did something about it. Now, you're bitching about how you have one fewer skill to fvck around with. When dealing with this customer base, it's fairly obvious that they'll take their dam time for updates to keep the moaning at minimum.
I'm sure you've had some great idea of changing up HB, but you should understand that the nature of HB simply allows for too many exploitations to be fixed without overhauling every other PvP format in the game. So, the format of HB should be changed, you say? Well, guess what the fvck the dev's are doing right now.

Sindo · Sep 10, 2009, 06:01 PM // 18:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by poasiods

Sounds like this thread is going to be more about the lack of communication between you and every other poster. Honestly, you're saying the same shit over and over and over again despite all the other people who are addressing your every point. I could go back and quote other posts addressing what you wrote here, but that would be waste of effort on my part since you will simply add another post reiterating the same shit you've written in three different posts already. I suggest you go back and actually read through the thread and try to see the other posters' argument.

Don't dramatize what I've written. You twisted what I've written and broke it down yourself. This is not so simple as generalizing it as Developers ignoring players. Dev's do listen to players - players who have many conflicting views on different issues. Of course, it certainly doesn't help that there are so many retards running around either. That is why developers need to be objective while listening to players' opinion and take their time instead of rushing off to please whoever might be pissed off at the moment.

People bitched about Smiter's Boon and developers did something about it. Now, you're bitching about how you have one fewer skill to fvck around with. When dealing with this customer base, it's fairly obvious that they'll take their dam time for updates to keep the moaning at minimum.
I'm sure you've had some great idea of changing up HB, but you should understand that the nature of HB simply allows for too many exploitations to be fixed without overhauling every other PvP format in the game. So, the format of HB should be changed, you say? Well, guess what the fvck the dev's are doing right now.

This.

12 char

Revelations · Sep 10, 2009, 09:33 PM // 21:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

I guess Anet's true justification for removal of HB and TA are that more people would rather have SD, and thus TA is a waste of technical (read - bandwith, etc.) resources.

I can't speak for HB, but given the small population of TA this is something of a feeble excuse. Three simultaneous matches at any given time is hardly a strain on hardware. Especially when you compare it to the thousands of (far more bandwidth intensive) PvE instances running at any particular time.

Mikelenn · Sep 10, 2009, 09:35 PM // 21:35

You have to remember that the team that works on GW1 is TINY, there is no incentive for anet to invest heavily in GW1, the sales of it are slumping beacuse bascially almost anyone that wants to play it already has and they bring in no monthly revenue from fees like most MMORPGs, the lack of the fee is why we have not got that much in the way of content updates, unless you would like to pay a monthly fee of £8-10 stop whining, the GW team does the best it can with its limited budget and manpower.

I Jonas I · Sep 10, 2009, 10:34 PM // 22:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darth The Xx

Sorry but the OP's rant really made me have to reply to this thread, the problem isn't JUST Melders. Its not JUST shadow steps its a vast multitude of builds. The PROBLEM with HB is the fact that no matter what you do, players will find a way to exploit something.

You kill melders, those players will just run triple packers if they don't already. You kill packer's they'll just run some triple W/P variant, if you kill that they'll run scythe escape rangers or R/As or something then theres hex spammers, eles etc etc and on top of that you have a lot format where people run overly defensive builds (3/4 of your team is healers) and nothing dies except on the odd successful spike.

But this is not even a problem with skills, even if you fix the skills not much will change. Why? The format relies upon you using heroes and exploiting AI not player skill. Say what you will but there are certain things AI are a hell of a lot better at doing than people, ie Interupting, Wep Spells/prots etc. Then there's the things heroes blow at, such as bar synergies, intelligent use of stances, general pressure all of this contributes to the retardedly overly defensive builds where u see a Mo/A, Mo/N, Rt/N, W/E or A/W teams.

It seems to me the OP fails to see all the things wrong with HB, you think if they could fix it they wouldn't? The fact is the resources required to fix it far outweigh the tiny player base it has, sorry but its a sad fact, therefore they opted to create a new arena which will attract new and old players alike. How is this a problem?

just my $0.02

This is the nature of HB. Just because 75% of your team is defense-oriented doesn't mean that it is a shitty format. It is just the kind of build that does well.

Counter example: 75% of the characters in balanced TA and HA teams are offensive-oriented. Whoaaaa this must mean that there is something wrong with these formats!

Razz L Dazzle · Sep 10, 2009, 10:34 PM // 22:34

I think a lot of these problems have become increasingly severe because the business model fails to generate enough money after the initial sale of the game. A-Net (NC Soft) needs to create overpowered expansions every so often because the game's initial revenue dries up pretty quick. If the business model doesn't find a way to generate more money in Guild Wars 2, I think the game may be good for a year and then i'd better dump it for a new game.

Now there are some things i've seen that could help generate more money for Guild Wars that I hope will create more longevity in Guild Wars 2. They have increased the amount of micro-transacations that if implemented at the beginning could create a greater pool of money. These range from name changes, makeovers, character slots, online store. I'm still not convinced this business model will generate enough money to support PvP. PvP requires a balance team, not ONE person. People who can update maps, bugs, problems (FREQUENTLY) as well as a team to balance skills and mechanics. This requires a lot of money, people, and time. Without a monthly fee i'm curious if this is possible? No other game has been able to do this so i'm guessing Guild Wars is faced with a problem. They are committed to a business model that may never be able to fully support a complex PvP system to its fullest abilities. If the PvP was good enough AND as dynamic as I believe it could be then; I would pay a monthly fee. Assuming the following were included: touraments, championships, a balance team, enlisting community support and better community relationship people to filter this communication and continual updates were made to improve the game.

Another problem is guild wars does NOTHING to attract new players to the game. The community dies slowly after the release of the game. I can't really remember anything (though i'm probably mistaken) that they've done to attempt to increase the size of the PvP player base. I think the world championships (the videos they made about them) were a missed opportunity. The fact that they allowed the Asian, Korean, Japanese population to die out completely is concerning.

Attracting new players takes Marketing. This means dumping money to promote whats good about the game which this business model doesn't seem capable of.

Really my argument is that HB , TA and other PvP formats are doomed to failure in this business model. The fact that their death has been dragged out for a long time has been because of that initial promise everyone saw but was never capitalized upon.

X Black Chaos X · Sep 10, 2009, 11:51 PM // 23:51

True the community does die slowly because of thier buisness model. The thing is though alot of people put in a lot of effort to addres the problems of HB adn TA and anet's descion to remove them from the game doesnt' seem fair or right. For over 2 years they said "we're going to change it" now the completely take it out of the game. I'm not saying HB or TA wasn't flawed, ofc it's flawed that's the reason players submited suggestions on how to fix it. GW1 gets money from pve mostly. not pvp. (all that char makeover etc.) Even so, i still think that Anet owes the players who invested thier time in coming up w/ soultions that were never implemented in HB and TA, also an apology for never coming through on the promise to fix it. SD is another arena w/ a whole diff format. i see a lot of people mentioning 4v4 was imbalanced play, when in reality 4v4 is for beginners. It's for people to learn to play the game and get better. You can't always go GvG or HA. People dont like playing RA w/ nubs who bring nothing but trash on thier bar. TA and HB were places were u could go to play w/out alot of preperation etc. yes HB was flawed, yes TA was inactive, however several players gave anet many solutions on how to fix them or at least make them playable and those players have been ignored by ANET.

Gboy Mesmero · Sep 11, 2009, 02:05 AM // 02:05

well, an update for hb was promised 2 years ago
and now that update has come...

clearly, this is a lack of communication between developer and gamer
These formats wouldn't have become like they were right now if there was even the occasional skill balance for them, but they were completely ignored.