Curse

Kyp Jade · Dec 05, 2007, 10:24 PM // 22:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

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.

But when you take that "beat us" button away they go straight back to it (see todays Zergway since heroway disappeared), its like the meta went backwards in time lol instead of moving along like it usually does.

In anycase, I dont think we are really arguing that all the players of the past are so much better, (at least im not), but saying that the population has died down to the point where little problems like skill balance dont matter as much, and huge problems such as skipping maps do matter. In all honesty most of the teams that make it to halls today should NOT make it that far, but they skip from underworld. (the sad thing is that they can win sometimes and still not have a clue how they did it, just watch observer a lot when your bored), yes this is a problem, and players are yelling and screaming that

GANKING IS BAD!!!! but really half the time it happens its because a new team has no idea what to do and just says ok ill attack <some team>. THis has ALWAYS existed, but it is much more prevalant today because of the skips. And the ONLY way to fix skips is to increase the population.

edit -- spelling

elektra_lucia · Dec 05, 2007, 10:36 PM // 22:36

Yes I can honestly say that they were better, and it's glaringly obvious as to why. More people, more excitement (new game). More drive to be good and win. If there is more battles to go through, to get to the end game, you will want to push yourself more to win. If the game is exciting and new, you will want to learn it. When the game becomes stale, people don't want to learn new tricks. Kind of like the 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks'. They think they are the old dog, except they aren't. What's more, when a game has been out so long, people begin to make enemies. If people learn new things, they will be insulted when they lose. So they stick to what they know, never really improving too much. If you can play every profession well, you will be a better player at the profession you want to be primarily involved in. Clarence found it hard going to mesmer. To begin with he wasn't that good as he never really played it much, but people would be first to insult him because he had rank12.

When the game was fresh, you could learn everything. Some did so, some stuck to IWAYing. If you think about it. The current players who win halls the most, a lot of them have got their fame from lame builds. They would go offline when the good Europeans would hold, and come on at like 5AM GMT. Now the Europeans have gone to GVG or quit the game. So they play earlier. They haven't really improved at the game, people have just got worse.

Quote:

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

Indeed, but they are usually illogical from my point of view. They buffed a lot of the healing spells recently for example. If you take something on a graph.

Skill A: |---------|------|
Skill B: |----|-----------|
Skill C: |----|-----------|
Skill D: |----|-----------|
Skill E: |------|---------|

Skill B, C and D were buffed. Skill E (boon signet) was left alone.
Skill A was nerfed (lod).

If you buff skill B C D and E you end up with this:

Skill A: |---------|------|
Skill B: |---------|------|
Skill C: |---------|------|
Skill D: |---------|------|
Skill E: |---------|------|

They are powerful skills, but they are balanced. With that in mind, when you nerf A, you end up with this:

Skill A: |-|--------------| LOD.
Skill B: |---------|------|
Skill C: |---------|------|
Skill D: |---------|------|
Skill E: |---------|------|

Is this your idea of balanced? You can argue that you want to change LoD out of the meta, but you would of done that by simply leaving the other skills buffed.

Quote:

Or an FPS where players grab the sniper rifle for a bunch of one shot kills?

Except a sniper can be counted by anything with skill. The advertisement for guild wars is that this is also the case; however, it is not always the case. Especially when you're being shot at by 16 sniper rifles, and you in the middle of a field with a blunt knife.

At the moment fear me in my opinion is over powered. It does a lot of e-denial think of all the energy it drains and it is instant casting which means no matter how skill full a monk is. They can't always weapon switch while the enemy is using it. when I see a mesmer using an ELITE skill e-surge weapon switch to my low energy set. With fear me the only time you can use it skill fully is if you watch when the enemy weapon changes and they have no chance of weapon switching while you use it (unless they stay in their low set for a long time). Apart from that, you wait for it to charge up, you press your button to activate it. For effort put in, and damage given, it is over powered.

From a monks point of view, I look at the warrior and I will know his skill bar. I would of played that skillbar, and I will know how quickly he gains adrenaline, I'll see how many times he has hit me or someone (to know his adrenaline) and I'll know when to weapon switch before it. Then if I'm lucky, I can switch to low set, he uses it, then I go to normal (of whatever mod I want) cast, then go back to low set.

This is a possible counter, but do you notice something here? I have done a ridiculous amount of manoeuvre's, for what? He presses C for Vendetta and then presses 8 every time the skill has charged? How on earth is that balanced? How does it promote skill from the warriors point of view?

Lorekeeper · Dec 06, 2007, 12:54 AM // 00:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

Talks about shifting metas in an ideal PvP environment

I agree Andrew Patrick, as far as theory goes that is ideally how things should go... a certain gimmick becomes dominant... and over time players have the opportunity to exploit the general dependance on that gimmick... this leads to gimmick being countered by counter builds.

And you would expect that after losing to their respective counters the gimmick build players will change their build. But they dont.

Why?

Because there is a reason why these players are running their respective gimmick builds... because the overall amount of player skill/experience/team coordination needed to run them is very low compared the amount of player skill etc needed to run the counters.

Because the players who run buttonmash gimmicks run those builds because they want fame... rank... emotes... and they have little interest in the actual value of those rewards... so they run the easiest gimmicks that require as little skill as possible to farm as much fame as they can without the stress of truly competing in a PvP environment. I compare their approach to HA to how PvE players play PvE.

Take a gimmick player out of the gimmick build and you have a rather sad sight of a PvPer... you might think them capable of adapting their builds if they come across too many counters.

But are there enough... 'good' teams left who actually still enjoy wading through the numerous gimmick eras running perfect 'i win'' counter builds? Of course... before there were many... but did it make a difference? No. Its not a mystery that wards and spiteful necros made mincemeat of iway... it was no mystery that cg rangers and migraine mesmers with cry countered bloodspikes... but both iway and bloodspike are two of the most widely spread and well known gimmicks ever to grace the halls of HA.

Ive mentioned the reasons why and ill summarise the ones ive already mentioned... and add some more.

1) running perfect counter builds to gimmicks requires more skill than is required to run the gimmick builds - therefore alot of players shy away from running these builds because they take at least a modest level of skill and understanding to be played well... players who care little about developing this sense of PvP stick to running mindless gimmicks because they can still get fame towards their rank titles stomping over the really really bad teams in HA.

2) running perfect counters get boring after a while... especially if the above 1) happens. You run the perfect counter, you beat the dominant gimmick all the time... but the gimmick remains... the gimmick remains because the gimmick players dont care that you know how to counter them with your perfect gimmick build... the vast majority dont.

3) gimmick meta becomes stale... good teams who are able and willing to run perfect counters get bored because of the lack of any decisive shifts in the meta. Boredom sets in. Rewards become disproportionate with the effort required to achieve them. Good dedicated PvPers get frustrated with the meta and game balance and with the overall level of diverse competition in HA. HA competition becomes similiar to PvE competition... predictable skill bars... predictable behaviours.

Things would be different if there were enough teams who were capable of running perfect counters effectively enough to push the gimmick players to adapt their builds accordingly... but for whatever reason this never happened. So either there werent enough or the gimmick players just didnt care. There would have to be an overwhelming amount of perfect counter teams playing in order to force such a shift... but that requires there to be an overwhelming amount of good players/teams in HA. There never was. The gimmick players have always outnumbered the non-gimmick players.

This is where balancing has taken its hand in forcing meta shifts artificially... in the absence of a PvP population capable of forcing these shifts themselves... the overpowered gimmicks had to be dealt with through nerfs. iway got nerfed... bloodspike got nerfed... rit spike got nerfed... vimway got nerfed... etc etc

im glad that the changes occured... but they always came too late. For every gimmick that sprouted into dominance the HA population lost another batch of its higher tier players... players who were tired of wading through the relentless waves of nameless gimmick players with faceless names running predictable builds... only 1 guild really made a name running Iway... just 1 guild out of how many hundreds of guilds and teams who noone bothered to know about. Not only did the skill changes come too late... they were never comprehensive enough to prevent the next overpowered gimmick from being discovered. It took two years for soul reaping to get the change players had been asking for since the start. IMAGINE how things would have been if it had been implemented 2 years earlier? Thats just one single example. There are countless more.

To lose lower tier players is neither here nor there... because of the sheer number of them. Only mass migrations of low tier players would really affect HA play in general... which may or may not have happened with the changes from 8vs8 to 6vs6 and back to 8vs8. On the other hand... the high tier population in HA was never that large... and so even a small drop in that population is felt quite strongly by everyone. Top guilds can name a handful of rival guilds who they actually feel threatened in a straight on fight... losing one of these guilds is a major downer for the competitive environment.

This is why i posted in this thread about why the high tier population in HA is important...

however timely and comprehensive skill balance was never really there to support them.

The same happened to the GvG community over the hexway era.

lursey · Dec 06, 2007, 04:35 PM // 16:35

to this point, what is the ideal solution to HA? given that we have so many skills need to be balanced.

What I know at this moment, to answer this question will generally affect every way a player would like to play a game which leads to an endless argument.

and by isolating that fact, the issue will then arise of is it true that the perfect balance is balance around players skill (that is the way they control a certain set of skills effectively no matter what skills they bring)
than
balance around builds (rock paper scissors or even knife and more different weapons type of scenario, that is the best luck wins)
or
somewhere in between some skills and some luck?

players' skills <-----------------> players' builds

in my opinion, if we can draw a clearer and stabler line, then each skill change or meta shifting will not generally result more player lose, because the expectation of how player's play the game has not changed.

by elaborating, if this line is constantly shifting, and resulting uncertainty of where the game is going to head to, then the time investment will become a risk, and this risk may preclude player from staying.

Furthermore, a suggestion or advice could be given is that, to increase the player base in the game, better marketing strategy needs to be placed to increase player joining from the outside of the game than just shifting players horizontally from pve to pvp or pvp to pve or vertically different type of pvp such as gvg or TA RA AB etc.

this may be done by offering more clear and effective free trials for pvp mechanism than just access to certain type of chapters, in order to create more incentive and encouragement for players from outside to look more deeply into the game,

which may in the form of perhaps, a free open trial for limited or full access heroes' ascent skills and weapon choices for a long random periods of time.

by balancing the stress and monetary value on the guildwars server, this may dramatically result the number of players playing in HA increase, and the question will then become how to optimize the number of players playing at the same time in HA, so that there won't be prolong period of waiting time etc.

for example, the optimized number of players playing altogether at the same time in HA, playing means fighting as an example, is 100, while there are only 50 paid priority players playing, by maintaining its optimization, server maybe opened up for 40-50 non-paid players to compete with the paid players equally, and a priority list for other non-paid players to join, and there could be hundreds and thousands of them, this needs careful planning.

However an optimized populated HA will then create a better evolve competitive environment, in my opinion this has to be justified before evaluating changes.

elektra_lucia · Dec 06, 2007, 05:04 PM // 17:04

Drop the price of the first campaign's. I have asked my friends to play, but basically said they need all the games to play. Which is true, and they can't afford it.

Andrew Patrick · Dec 06, 2007, 06:45 PM // 18:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektra_lucia

Drop the price of the first campaign's. I have asked my friends to play, but basically said they need all the games to play. Which is true, and they can't afford it.

Have you checked out the PvP unlock packs? http://www.guildwars.com/products/ex...ks/default.php It's 50% off right now, so you can get a fully UAX PvP account for around $50 I believe.

blood seeker · Dec 07, 2007, 08:30 AM // 08:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

Have you checked out the PvP unlock packs? http://www.guildwars.com/products/ex...ks/default.php It's 50% off right now, so you can get a fully UAX PvP account for around $50 I believe.

I think almost every player starts with PvE and gets interested in PvP as progressing.

defrule · Dec 09, 2007, 03:39 PM // 15:39

I'm going to go against some peoples' ideals here. I actually like the existence of gimmicks in Tombs/HA.

Go back the years, skills were supercharged, you had builds that exploited these powerful skills and they would dominate. Through nerfs and maybe buffs we would encounter a transition where people would "search" for a new gimmick.
We had a spirit spam era back coupled with the ridiculous Nature's Renewal. As multiple copies of spirits and NR was nerfed, we saw a rise in smiting which became almost top of the food chain.
Through nerfs smiting was rendered much less effective and it phased out of the game and after which saw a rise in ranger spike.

This is roughly how I remember a section of the past and it may be inaccurate but regardless it illustrates my point. We the meta shifting after skill changes, Tombs certainly seem alive. It felt as though it was really evolving and active.

Now, it seems like everything gets a piece of the meat and appears to have been like this for ages.

wuzzman · Dec 10, 2007, 01:18 PM // 13:18

I noticed as the game went on that players stopped actually dealing with things. The old shut and pound (shutdown and pressure), doesn't work anymore. Back in the old days, you tried not to keep getting it, you knew they were a spike, smacked around the spikers, shutdown their key skills, and moved on. If they spam their skills, its easier to render it useless. Now a days players can run a spike and its only hope and prayer that keeps the other team from collapsing after 3 spikes.

I mean its almost like players forgot the '3' button on their mesmers (3 is were I put diversion). And it only gets worse, but a lot of midline options have been downgraded to near worthlessness to the point that a guy chucking spears is your best way to fill out the gaps between your frontline and your backline. So even if you do have the strategy to deal with alot of the builds we face in the meta, and its all the same nothing really changed since prophercies tactics wise a spike build is a spike build, pressure only build is pressure only build. You barely have the midline to preform the tasked you need(not knocking on the PD mesmer, but if 2 wars, 3 monks, 1 splinter, 1 pd mesmer, and no one see a problem with that?). Half the time you can design a balance build without a mesmer or even a real midline (besides a spear chucker) and get results. At least if you manage to skip past death match maps, you really don't have to be able kill anything to go to halls after that. I asked this one guy about adding some defense to his build, his response? "I already have defense, look I have 3 monks." That response...well its been a problem even when I could do more with a decent midline back in propherices.

Kyp Jade · Dec 10, 2007, 01:43 PM // 13:43

Wuzzman actually has it correct in that the best midline options are kind of obsolete now. Your best bet is to pack dual paragons and chain DA all day, I mean Wards? wtf is a ward going to do today except help the other team focus thierpressure (fire aoe / fear me). Hexes? Gee I remember back when you could get away with 1 necro hexer to solve super heavy melee problems. Today you almost need two necros.

Some options are still viable, surge mesmers can still really pressure a monk, but those options take far to much time, your better of running more damage today. The biggest hit is taking a ranger that uses a bow. If your ranger is not really really good, then he makes it harder for your team. The amount of skill required to play todays midline posistions properly (at least to get any rewards out of them) is ridiculous. Might as well bring a couple of fire eles and explode the other team rather than play something more fun.

Lorekeeper · Dec 10, 2007, 04:23 PM // 16:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyp Jade

Wuzzman actually has it correct in that the best midline options are kind of obsolete now.

well from what you are both saying... highly effective midline options are obsolete only because there is a lack of high calibre players who can play them properly not because the highly effective midline options are no longer effective. It depends on the build.

Finding 8 great players has been a problem for a while now which is why i think legoway saw such popularity with alot of teams running balanced... because you could almost get away with taking 2-3 relatively inexperienced and talentless players.

On the other hand... powercreep since nightfall has made disruption style play much harder in HA. Especially in the LoD monk era. And in the most recent era... uber buffed woh coupled with rc meaning disruption play can not afford to make many mistakes...

so not only are there less players capable of running old style disruption midliners... these midline characters have become harder to play.

the spartan elite · Jan 04, 2008, 05:30 AM // 05:30

play with the same people alot and ull be better then most other group

Takida · Jan 24, 2008, 06:02 PM // 18:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektra_lucia

Are you playing at nub hour or something? I get timer reset but I don't usually wait too long.

No opposing Party in hoh is allways a 12 minute timer.

elektra_lucia · Jan 24, 2008, 11:16 PM // 23:16

I never said otherwise? Where did you quote that from. I don't usually get NOP in HoH, I meant for other maps I think.

Killed u man · Jan 24, 2008, 11:44 PM // 23:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by elektra_lucia

I don't usually get NOP in HoH, I meant for other maps I think.

You "think" you meant? :s

Either you mean something or you don't

Lol, WHY are we still discussion what the problem in HA is? ^^

elektra_lucia · Jan 25, 2008, 03:09 PM // 15:09

Quote:

You "think" you meant? :s

Either you mean something or you don't

It's past tense. I can't remember what I meant at the time and as Takida only quoted a small bit of text I can't see the text surrounding it which might be important to what I was saying.

Quote:

Today I feel really great because I won one pound on a scratch card and 50 thousand pounds on the lotto.

If you quote:

Quote:

Today I feel really great because I won one pound on a scratch card

It's really nothing to feel great about. What is said after, or perhaps before changes what is written.

With that in mind stop trying to out smart me, it really shouldn't happen.

Quote:

Lol, WHY are we still discussion what the problem in HA is? ^^

We includes yourself. You are not, you are trying to pick holes in what I have written. It hasn't worked very well HAS IT?

Takida · Jan 25, 2008, 07:33 PM // 19:33

Elektra let me explain :P

Kyp Jade said this: The problem with HA, is winning HoH matches 1v1 in 5 minutes, waiting for a 6 minute timer, and then getting

"No Opposing Party"
and a 12 minute timer

You said: I dont usually have to wait that long.. bla bla.

And i said: 12 Mins is the NOP Timer.
Just saying..

elektra_lucia · Jan 25, 2008, 10:33 PM // 22:33

Quote:

The problem with HA, is winning HoH matches 1v1 in 5 minutes, waiting for a 6 minute timer, and then getting

"No Opposing Party"
and a 12 minute timer

...

we should at least get a free chest for that

edit ---

Added again a No Opposing Party
second 12 minute timer

I get NOP in UW and such sometimes. He plays at nub hour so that's probably why.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...e+Search&meta=

.

Now please leave me alone