Curse

Riotgear · Dec 05, 2007, 03:07 AM // 03:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

Only time gimmicks are a problem is when they hold halls consistently, and they don't. And never will.

Yes, that's why I was watching Spiritway and Ritspike try killing each other in Halls for weeks.

Quote:

Concerning the gap between, HA/GVG and RA/AB/HB has been already filled. Its called TA.

Between dual-thumpers, DA spammers, and now dual-rangers rolling their face on the Magebane Shot key, TA has been a disaster since Nightfall.

Dual thumpers was probably great training for spiritway though, lawl!

brehon pg · Dec 05, 2007, 10:17 AM // 10:17

new pvp players need easy build. pug? iway ? not bad.

go go my Translator!!!!!

Lorekeeper · Dec 05, 2007, 11:34 AM // 11:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

There is this idiotic assumption that 6 districts(HA used to have 9) worth of players who left the game were all good players who cared so much about the delicate balance of the game that nightfalls made them quite. What HA was you playing?

Please dont fabricate inaccurate summaries of what people are saying... i dont see anyone making the suggestion that ALL the players who left the game were good players and cared about the proper balance of the game.

I will make the statement that the players who i used to play with... were the best players around... they cared about balance, and they allowed me to run some great builds. As for the other players who left... i think alot of them left because they could no longer run rubbish like bspike/iway/vimway/spiritway/ritspike etc etc... But these are the builds that ruined HA for the high level community...

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

I say it again, gimmicks don't destroy HA, quite the opposite. Gimmicks make HA playable. No gimmicks, no pugs, no HA. Let me say it again, "no pugs no HA". Let me say it a little louder, "NO PUGS NO HA". Even if you wanted to argue that HA can survive without pugs, check the amount of players in American District 1. then go to ID district. Then start visiting the euro servers. Check how many groups are being formed in party chat then count the districts.

I said gimmicks push away high level competition... gimmick metas promote low level competition. Low level competition is by its very nature... more numerous by the fact that noone is borne good at GW PvP... of course having HA full of gimmick builds might mean that there is quite alot of activity.

But like i said before... i like quality over quantity. And like i said in my previous post... the absence of any incentives for high level competition in HA was its downfall. HA is what it is because of the absence of high level competition. Its a title farming arena in which scrubby title farmers run anything they can to reach their intended rank... after which they most likely stop playing or until their favourite broken gimmick build is nerfed.

The existence of PUGs need not rely on the possibility of gimmick builds. It depends on what type of PUG you are talking about. There are different types... made up of different types of players.

Casual PUG - wants to roll a build in minutes... click enter... buttonmash for 30min and farm a few fame... log off... rinse repeat until rank 6/9 etc etc.

Dedicated PUG - wants to roll a good build with good players... often formed by an experienced leader who gives out builds. This PUG has the intention of making large fame runs and reaching and holding HoH but doesnt want to run a buttonmash build.

without gimmick builds we will have barely any of the first type of PUG... which means that the second type of PUG is the most dominant one. Even inexperienced players will have to play in these teams... because they can no longer rely on buttonmashing gimmicks to win fame.

Why is this a better situation than a gimmick infested HA? Well considering HA is meant to be a PvP arena... encouraging teams to run non-gimmick builds will obviously improve the overall level of competition. All players will start to learn how to compete at good levels because they will no longer be able to rely on broken gimmicks or overpowered skills to farm the first three maps or to hold HoH or to beat the large number of inexperienced PUGs out there.

Ok i admit this isnt casual gamer friendly... but i dont think PvP is generally meant to be casual gamer friendly... not in GW. Sucess in GW PvP is synonymous with skill... experience... dedication... (like in GvG... the highest form of PvP in GW). Players looking for a no brainer type arena have other places to cater for their needs... like alliance battles... hero battles.. random arenas... i dont really care if buttonmashing gamers dont like this type of HA. You dont see them complaining that they cant buttonmash through GvG? Why? Because GvG was never an environment that rewarded scrublike play (at least not for prolonged periods ot time like HA) I argue that HA should not be such an environment either... but is has been... and that was its downfall.

HA should never have been the place where players could expect to enjoy some success no matter how good they are at PvP... in a nutshell that is what broke HA. Why should high level competition exist if low level competition gains almost the same amount of reward? Why bother running a proper balanced build with excellent players when you have just as much success running rit spike with far lesser players? Not to mention the strange attitude some bad players get when they beat you running something like the old rit spike... i remember the rit spike guilds actually keeping a count of their win:loss ratios against certain teams... for some reason... they felt that winning running something as broken as prenerf rit spike was a sign of skill that allowed them to compare themselves to teams running far more balanced builds that didnt rely on imbalances. This is the attitude that ruined HA. The attitude that inexperienced players have when they are riding on the strength of their broken builds. They cannot acknowledge the true nature of their success... and their perceptions of what HA should be like gets blurred.

So i come back to the point i made in my first post in this thread... about the adverse effect that gimmicks have had on HA.

They broke the fame system... they broke it because bad players could gain fame and ranks by running broken imbalanced gimmicks. This broke the system of PvP because 'player skill' was no longer the requirement for success. HA became an arena synonomous with scrublike players farming titles running buttonmashing gimmicks... high level competition just doesnt thrive in an environment like this.

no high level competition no proper goal for new players...

only apparent goal in HA is title related... and dont we all know how relevant titles are in PvP?

supa tim · Dec 05, 2007, 12:48 PM // 12:48

I think this ranking district system doesnt sound so bad...
lemme explain: what u do is, u cna go to any distric of ur rank and below (for example ur rank 8 so u can go to ID 8-1) then when u finished zaishen, based on ur average team rank u face thesame team aproxx... which will make the first battles way more interesting for both higher ranked and lower ranked teams, because bad teams will winn more, and higer ranked teams will have a good fight, and based on skills and PUG or organised the best team will winn... eventually the low-ranked teams will face the higer teams but at least the low-ranked teams got some fame (in the current system u will face high ranked teams even when ur low-ranked anyway).

This also contributes to disstimulates (dont know if thats a word:P) the fame farming groups because they will find themselves to fight against equal ranked group which might be better organised or guild groups etc.

Tho this idea cannot be realized yet because theres just not enough people in HA atm.

tell me what u think...

Grz,

TimmeH!

Ps: sorry for my bad language im not english :P

elektra_lucia · Dec 05, 2007, 01:42 PM // 13:42

Problem is, if you do that, and try to put equal skill together too. Then you will find there's only a 50/50% chance of winning. Which maybe cool for people wanting 10 fame for their rank3.

It is not cool for people like me wanting another 11k fame...

Div · Dec 05, 2007, 01:52 PM // 13:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by supa tim

Tho this idea cannot be realized yet because theres just not enough people in HA atm.

And there never will be, if this state of the game keeps up.

Tamuril elansar · Dec 05, 2007, 01:58 PM // 13:58

what? seriously dont inplent something like HA ranking districts, i dont get experienced by fighting people who are as good as me, they dont learn me anything. I always learn from playing against the more experienced people.

wuzzman · Dec 05, 2007, 02:53 PM // 14:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

Please dont fabricate inaccurate summaries of what people are saying... i dont see anyone making the suggestion that ALL the players who left the game were good players and cared about the proper balance of the game.

I will make the statement that the players who i used to play with... were the best players around... they cared about balance, and they allowed me to run some great builds. As for the other players who left... i think alot of them left because they could no longer run rubbish like bspike/iway/vimway/spiritway/ritspike etc etc... But these are the builds that ruined HA for the high level community...

I said gimmicks push away high level competition... gimmick metas promote low level competition. Low level competition is by its very nature... more numerous by the fact that noone is borne good at GW PvP... of course having HA full of gimmick builds might mean that there is quite alot of activity.

But like i said before... i like quality over quantity. And like i said in my previous post... the absence of any incentives for high level competition in HA was its downfall. HA is what it is because of the absence of high level competition. Its a title farming arena in which scrubby title farmers run anything they can to reach their intended rank... after which they most likely stop playing or until their favourite broken gimmick build is nerfed.

The existence of PUGs need not rely on the possibility of gimmick builds. It depends on what type of PUG you are talking about. There are different types... made up of different types of players.

Casual PUG - wants to roll a build in minutes... click enter... buttonmash for 30min and farm a few fame... log off... rinse repeat until rank 6/9 etc etc.

Dedicated PUG - wants to roll a good build with good players... often formed by an experienced leader who gives out builds. This PUG has the intention of making large fame runs and reaching and holding HoH but doesnt want to run a buttonmash build.

without gimmick builds we will have barely any of the first type of PUG... which means that the second type of PUG is the most dominant one. Even inexperienced players will have to play in these teams... because they can no longer rely on buttonmashing gimmicks to win fame.

Why is this a better situation than a gimmick infested HA? Well considering HA is meant to be a PvP arena... encouraging teams to run non-gimmick builds will obviously improve the overall level of competition. All players will start to learn how to compete at good levels because they will no longer be able to rely on broken gimmicks or overpowered skills to farm the first three maps or to hold HoH or to beat the large number of inexperienced PUGs out there.

Ok i admit this isnt casual gamer friendly... but i dont think PvP is generally meant to be casual gamer friendly... not in GW. Sucess in GW PvP is synonymous with skill... experience... dedication... (like in GvG... the highest form of PvP in GW). Players looking for a no brainer type arena have other places to cater for their needs... like alliance battles... hero battles.. random arenas... i dont really care if buttonmashing gamers dont like this type of HA. You dont see them complaining that they cant buttonmash through GvG? Why? Because GvG was never an environment that rewarded scrublike play (at least not for prolonged periods ot time like HA) I argue that HA should not be such an environment either... but is has been... and that was its downfall.

HA should never have been the place where players could expect to enjoy some success no matter how good they are at PvP... in a nutshell that is what broke HA. Why should high level competition exist if low level competition gains almost the same amount of reward? Why bother running a proper balanced build with excellent players when you have just as much success running rit spike with far lesser players? Not to mention the strange attitude some bad players get when they beat you running something like the old rit spike... i remember the rit spike guilds actually keeping a count of their win:loss ratios against certain teams... for some reason... they felt that winning running something as broken as prenerf rit spike was a sign of skill that allowed them to compare themselves to teams running far more balanced builds that didnt rely on imbalances. This is the attitude that ruined HA. The attitude that inexperienced players have when they are riding on the strength of their broken builds. They cannot acknowledge the true nature of their success... and their perceptions of what HA should be like gets blurred.

So i come back to the point i made in my first post in this thread... about the adverse effect that gimmicks have had on HA.

They broke the fame system... they broke it because bad players could gain fame and ranks by running broken imbalanced gimmicks. This broke the system of PvP because 'player skill' was no longer the requirement for success. HA became an arena synonomous with scrublike players farming titles running buttonmashing gimmicks... high level competition just doesnt thrive in an environment like this.

no high level competition no proper goal for new players...

only apparent goal in HA is title related... and dont we all know how relevant titles are in PvP?

I would argue the flaw in your logic, but the matter is LoreKeeper thinks "This is the best HA been in 2 years" thus not much more I can say to argue against such a brain dead philosophy. But if you were serious about making HA a place were players don't farm fame, then something like a real rank system, like actually losing fame per lose would have been the intelligent approach. But you don't care about the real quality, just making sure certain builds aren't being played. Which is shallow and does more damage then good.

supa tim · Dec 05, 2007, 03:12 PM // 15:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tamuril elansar

what? seriously dont inplent something like HA ranking districts, i dont get experienced by fighting people who are as good as me, they dont learn me anything. I always learn from playing against the more experienced people.

so ur saying with this system YOU will always winn?

in the current system u have a much higher chance of playing vs bad teams at the start, and the more consecs u gain, the better teams u face. in my system its the other way around, u first play vs better teams, and eventually u will face a lesser team, but whats the difference between facing a bad team at the start or at lets say golden gates?

Quote:

Originally Posted by electra_lucia

Problem is, if you do that, and try to put equal skill together too. Then you will find there's only a 50/50% chance of winning. Which maybe cool for people wanting 10 fame for their rank3.

It is not cool for people like me wanting another 11k fame...

this is perfect example of fame farmer?

assuming u play gimmicks... GO PLAY DIFFERENT BUILD, which is basicly the idea of my system...

asuming ur not playing gimmicks: like i said be4 u will face lesser teams later, and if ur rly good u can beat the first teams with same rank anyway...

Lorekeeper · Dec 05, 2007, 03:18 PM // 15:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

I would argue the flaw in your logic, but the matter is LoreKeeper thinks "This is the best HA been in 2 years" thus not much more I can say to argue against such a brain dead philosophy. But if you were serious about making HA a place were players don't farm fame, then something like a real rank system, like actually losing fame per lose would have been the intelligent approach. But you don't care about the real quality, just making sure certain builds aren't being played. Which is shallow and does more damage then good.

Wuzzman... i dont know who you are... nor do i care... but if you really want to be taken seriously and discuss things with me i suggest you paraphrase me correctly. Find a post of mine where i actually say ''This is the best HA been in 2 years'' and then your above post with have ANY validity...

until you do that i suggest you edit your post before i request its deletion... and read the sticky where Nurse simply says ''think before you hit that reply button'' and i would be more than happy to quote him/her on that. When you engage in a discussion with other posters it is common courtesy to accurately portray their ideas...

Suggesting that i dont care about real quality competition in HA is another baseless accusation. If you failed to understand my ENTIRE post its basic message was... I want more quality competition first not quantity of competition.

for the benefit of everyone here please think before you hit that reply button... i know you might find it hard to respond to my posts... but it doesnt excuse baseless/invalid/inaccurate comments like the ones you just blurted out.

Lorekeeper

Kyp Jade · Dec 05, 2007, 04:33 PM // 16:33

Lorekeeper, I agree that wuzzman is just skimming a post, assuming something was said, and then saying your a retard, but you would have done better to have simply report to nurse instead of making half of your post calling him out on it, and the other have summarizing your last post which was good.

In any case, I suspect he misinterperted several posts that were discussing gimmicks, and then decided were all idiots, so I'll clarify what most of us have been saying.

Every community has a pyramid structure, bottom full of noobs, middle of intermediate, and toped with the elite. And its a pretty good distribution too no matter the sample size, and you can even see this in GW, the same people more or less are winning halls the most (the elite). Were the pyramid structure not followed, you would not see a team hold halls 5+ times in a row as there would be more likelyhood of another good team taking it away from them. In any case, people started leaving, and it wasnt just the good players like so many assume, a few good players quit here and there, and MANY scrubs quit as well. The end result is that we still have the same distribution of skill, however the population is so much smaller than it used to be.

MY post, argued that it is very very difficult for the build meta (gimmick wars) to change with a small population, and for a health HA, you need a self-changing meta (not an Izzy changing meta, but he helps when things are imbalanced, as was the case with iway giving super attack speed buff). Lorekeeper, the elites shift thier meta as well when the scrubs change around the elite adjust to beat both the meta and each other. (although today these guys rely on a mesmer to do most of the work so they dont have to spec too much outside of building against the meta)

In anycase, if you didnt feel like reading all that, the mid - low level players are the backbone of HA, quite the opposite of gvg since in gvg only the people at the top get any rewards, without loads of teams to play against the meta will be very very slow to change, and there were NEVER a million top players.

elektra_lucia · Dec 05, 2007, 05:24 PM // 17:24

The pyramid is now made with diarrhoea though.

When I think of good HA players, I do not think of the current players that win halls the most. Things have changed now though sure the districts have got smaller but the game has gone to hell. It's all due to people, not the game itself.

LifesRestorer · Dec 05, 2007, 06:01 PM // 18:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektra_lucia

If people had the drive to improve.
If people had the drive to play balance and lose a few times (but later improve).
If people had the drive to make their own builds.

Flames of balthazar after you just won a match is NOT COOL. I used to think 'yay, wonder what I'm going to get in the chest'. At present if I don't get a flame of balthazar I think I'm going to have a heart attack from sheer shock of it anyway. Please remove these damn things. Have them as a reward from winning five or ten RA matches. Not HA. Sigils are near worthless too. Make the chest give decent rewards. If it is going to give an ugly weapon, at least have the game such that it gives you perfect mods. Don't get me wrong, if I got a sigil for every flame of balthazar I would be happier.

Some things I recently got:

Ancient axe. 19% (not even 20 ffs) chance of higher axe mastery. Highly salvageable. Now you may think highly salvageable is bad. Actually it's pretty damn good, because if you aren't getting a flame of balthazar or a worthless sigil you are getting a weapon which needs salvaging anyway. I say you, maybe it's just me with this rotten luck. Break hammer: 14%^50 29+ HP. Would an extra point of been so hard? Rune of superior energy storage. This is great. I think I am going to crash GW's economy with such an expensive item. Need not put any more of the worthless things I get, but this is just a demonstration.

Not really looking at the main portion of the problem, but i think this is one of the many, many reaons people are leaving HA. Around the start of guild wars, HoH winners were umong the richest in the economy. These rewards were one of the reasons people were attracted to HA: to reap the rewards of the halls chest. This Drive influenced me to pick up HA at the start and before i knew it i was in there every day of the week, whether it would be for the money, the fame or the fun that the format provided.

Look at the rewards HA players are given today. a sigil, wow 10k. Shitty skinned, imperfect items... FLAMES OF BALTHAZAAR: thanks i have an item that no one wants, i cant sell to the trader and i can't even use, gfg. Put PvPers back on the pedestal they once stood upon. Give other players something else to look up to.

To try and create a bigger HA community, you have to try and retrieve this from the game's larger communities, and the largest community of them all is the PvE community. To do this, you have to attract them in a language they will understand. MONEY!

Bigger community = more diversity in builds
More diversity in builds = a more fun environment
A more fun environment = players staying as well as joining, instead of no players joining and many players leaving.

Avatar of Odin · Dec 05, 2007, 06:09 PM // 18:09

I agree strongly with the above post. Attracting more players is a must if HA is going to become a likeable arena. Though I hope there are others ways of making this possible than offering money to pvers.

LifesRestorer · Dec 05, 2007, 07:03 PM // 19:03

don't get me wrong, to a competitive or even causal pvper, money is not really much of an issue.

but people are are not even giving the arena a chance because it has absolutely NOTHING to offer to them.

at the moment as it stands, PUGS are hard to form without rank, PUGS are usually epic fail, HA is, believe it or not, a hard arena to get the hang of and the reward if this all goes right is just too small to bother with.

If rewards from HA go up i predict a huge boom in HA activity, both within guilds and within pugs. this makes it easier for pugs to form and less likely for them to go up against the regular HA players, getting rolled in about 2 minutes. It will be more likely to play people of a similar experience because more new players are forming groups. This will give new players a higher chance of winning and therefore getting over the barrier of 'omg i cant win i suck at this, back to pve for me' line of thinking.

The drive to get something out of that halls chest will keep them going until they begin to just enjoy HA for the sake of it, eventually making them better players who play on a regular basis.

wuzzman · Dec 05, 2007, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

Wuzzman... i dont know who you are... nor do i care... but if you really want to be taken seriously and discuss things with me i suggest you paraphrase me correctly. Find a post of mine where i actually say ''This is the best HA been in 2 years'' and then your above post with have ANY validity...

until you do that i suggest you edit your post before i request its deletion... and read the sticky where Nurse simply says ''think before you hit that reply button'' and i would be more than happy to quote him/her on that. When you engage in a discussion with other posters it is common courtesy to accurately portray their ideas...

Suggesting that i dont care about real quality competition in HA is another baseless accusation. If you failed to understand my ENTIRE post its basic message was... I want more quality competition first not quantity of competition.

for the benefit of everyone here please think before you hit that reply button... i know you might find it hard to respond to my posts... but it doesnt excuse baseless/invalid/inaccurate comments like the ones you just blurted out.

Lorekeeper

wasn't that entire wall of text, boot the gimmicks, so that everyone runs balance, Quality over Quantity. Didn't you not make a thread with the title "Is this the best Ha has been in 2 years" and even defended your view with the same note "Quality over Quantity, boot the gimmicks they are f'ing ruining the game?". I don't need a wall of text to reply to that. Are you so man that I suggested that, that will fail miserably. Something just aren't good for HA, lack of builds to play is clearly one of them. I prefer the community grow up and start playing the game, thus they will play balance builds more, then the force crush them into submission by restricting the meta to a handful of builds. I don't think we will agree on that, by this argument is like a warrior explaining to me the benefits of mending. I don't care what the benefits are, mending is a piece of hot sh**t regardless.

elektra_lucia · Dec 05, 2007, 07:16 PM // 19:16

http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showt...php?t=10221237

He didn't make it. Frank did. Damn, you only had to look.

Lorekeeper · Dec 05, 2007, 08:09 PM // 20:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektra_lucia

http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showt...php?t=10221237

He didn't make it. Frank did. Damn, you only had to look.

/sigh

if you wanna flame me

at least do your homework

thanks for pointing out his mistake elektra!

LifesRestorer · Dec 05, 2007, 09:21 PM // 21:21

actually i agreed with him too. but after 2 weeks, as i said, the new meta was formed and it was back to the same old, lame HA.

anyways keep that to another thread, seeing as the threads oppose each other.

Andrew Patrick · Dec 05, 2007, 10:15 PM // 22:15

Can you honestly say the players of the past were better? I'm not saying you can't, but it sort of sounds like the "what if Mohammad Ali fought Mike Tyson" sort of argument. I played in the alpha with the *original* meta players, and I also play with a lot of well known HA teams now, and all I can say is they are different people. Not better or worse per se, just different. And if you did have a "battle of the ages" it would be hard for me to predict the outcome.

As for the builds people use, they have changed quite a few times. Players have adapted to balance updates and the addition of new skills, but personally, I still have loads of fun in HA. I know there are tons of others who do as well. There are gimmicks now, but there were also gimmicks since, oh, 2004. That is something that really cannot be controlled since players will always look for the easiest way to earn the most reward as quickly as possible. You ever play an RTS where lots of people use a certain strategy because it works most of the time? *cough* zergling rush *cough* Or an FPS where players grab the sniper rifle for a bunch of one shot kills? Both are prevalent, both are effective, but most importantly, both are counter-able. The same can be said about most gimmicks in Guild Wars.

If everyone is picking Rock, you can either get upset that your scissors are being smashed, or you can start picking paper. Most of the gimmick builds I have seen have huge flaws that are easily exploited to shut them down. And I'm not saying you need to take a perfect counter for that build to beat it, a lot of times it is as simple as having someone pick a different target than usual (such as designate someone the spirit-slayer) or slightly alter their bar. As I said, most gimmicks have, essentially, a huge "beat us" button on them and all you need to do is push it. If enough people push that button, the gimmick ceases to be effective, and people will stop using it.

And in cases when it is indeed over-powered, that's what Balance Updates are for.

I still enjoy HA, and I have been playing it since it was added to the game back in the alpha as Tombs. I have seen every stage, every meta, every FotM, and I still love it to death today as much as I did back at the beginning. Maybe I'm easy to please, but I can't get enough of it.