Curse

deluxe · Aug 08, 2007, 02:29 AM // 02:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by beltran13579

i do think that they should be banned but to say because its Player vs player isnt a reason its called player vs player because there are 2 teams of actual people not FULL teams of CPUs

Well yeah, there's 2 thumpers in the build everyone plays... that's a real hard build to play: C, Space, Hammer Bash, Crushing Blow, Bestial Mauling, repeat. Oh and yeah, there's a human monk in the build, getting supported by 4 n/rt healers with 4 hardrezzes. You could be braindead and still win matches with this build.

Shmanka · Aug 08, 2007, 02:52 AM // 02:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

There are IRC channels for PuGvG. I've gotten into plenty of PuGvGs with people who have no clue who I am, and these were often good (top 100, top 50) players too.

Great, there are IRC channels. Many of the experienced PvP players to degrees understand about the availability. Although does everyone beyond the readers of this forum know? Do all the newer inexperienced players know? Do all the casual players know?

I am not attempting to be negative agaisnt the people who try to make more options available for everyone, its difficult to advertise these kinds of things ingame. It is also possible that these Pug Chans are also down at points in time. I just don't see this as a greater convinience then using Heroes more then half the time.

Skye Marin · Aug 08, 2007, 05:19 AM // 05:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seamus Finn

So that if you were dying to just grab 8 and go you can but you would clearly be worse off doing so. Since you are clearly just playing for fun it shouldn't matter. To play in an arena seriously should require having real players for each role. Henchies allow new players to play, at the cost of being competitive. Why should players be allow to bring heros that, if brought instead of a realy player, increase their odds of winning? What do heros accomplish that henchmen don't in PvP other than enabling AI abuse?

Interesting points. I made the assumption that most medium/high end players could beat Heroes without much of a challenge. I came to this assumption because an admin threatened to temp-ban anyone saying otherwise.

It's true I like to play for fun, but setting up isn't really playing. I guess it's part of the game, but it's far from the fun part. I know I have my limits skill-play wise, and I probably won't ever win halls unless I'm having a really good day with a really good team. Like you said, me using Heroes concedes that. I get to play at the cost of being competitive. That's perfectly fair.

What's not fair is when a Hero can do things that they aren't meant to. Like Death Nova, for example. You'll find it's been addressed in the update notes.

There's some pretty interesting things about what makes a Hero build run particularly well. The folks over in Hero Battles know all about this, as do I. It takes experimentation and testing to see what skills work well, and which simply don't. Shield of Regeneration is excellent because it's semi-spammable and it decent against Assassin spikes, but ZB refuses to be self-cast, and Resilient Weapon will never be cast on an other ally. Heroes, for the most part, are only as good as their energy pool, so their builds must be altered to take that into account. They suck at energy management, basically. This is why SR is so popular.

To answer your last question, compare an overpowered AI routine to an overpowered skill. Both are available to be abused. Both exist in the game. Both have the option to be nerfed down a notch (Steady Stance), nerfed down totally (Ether Renewal), or deleted from existence. Great thing about Heroes is, if you nerf a skill usage a touch too much to be used on Auto-pilot, you can micro it in many cases.

My idea solution would be to give the AI nerfs and buffs as it properly deserves, which would really help Hero Battles. I'm not saying to make them better players, but to actually give them more viable options for their skill selections. Dozens of skills simply never activate ever, and plenty don't work right. Increase the rewards for microing by making the Heroes more responsive to commands. Folks don't like HB it because they think it sucks. Make it not suck so much, and people will come around.

TheOneMephisto · Aug 08, 2007, 11:02 AM // 11:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shmanka

Great, there are IRC channels. Many of the experienced PvP players to degrees understand about the availability. Although does everyone beyond the readers of this forum know? Do all the newer inexperienced players know? Do all the casual players know?

I am not attempting to be negative agaisnt the people who try to make more options available for everyone, its difficult to advertise these kinds of things ingame. It is also possible that these Pug Chans are also down at points in time. I just don't see this as a greater convinience then using Heroes more then half the time.

Considering that a pure PuG channel was pretty heavily advertised when it first came out, having a sticky (I think), a thread or two, and a post on the front page of guildwarsguru, I should hope that people know about it. Also, it used to be that every time someone posted a "How to get into GvG/PvP" thread then the most common response would be "Get to know people, get on IRC, PuG through #gwp." It might not be as heavily promoted now, but in the near past almost anyone who read these forums should've known about it.

I do have to admit that the average non-forum-lurker player wouldn't know about these things, but it's not like it's hard to find out. And the pluses of playing with PuGs over heroes are so much higher that it's worth being slightly less convenient, especially if you PuG with players at a higher skill level that you a lot.

rii · Aug 08, 2007, 11:11 AM // 11:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nurse With Wound

Player versus player, or PvP, is competitive interaction within a game between two live participants

Hero participation needs to be toned down but according to your definition... the situation is fine, since even if the rest of your team is heroes/hench you at least need 1 person, making the game at least between 2 participants =.-

As for CS, there are regularly servers that contain bots, and if bots didn't suck so bad in DOTA and ET I'm sure there would be versions containing them.

OFC, the main difference is that in those you can choose whether you play with bots (if not just switch server). Due to the nature of GW that's not really a transferable situation, so just reduce the numbers allowable.

deluxe · Aug 08, 2007, 11:24 AM // 11:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by rii

As for CS, there are regularly servers that contain bots, and if bots didn't suck so bad in DOTA and ET I'm sure there would be versions containing them.

Well it's the same with CS or other fps'. When i connect to a server and i notice there's bots, i'm outta there.. what is the fun of killing a bot or trying to "outsmart" them.. they will still gonna insta-shoot you in the head without even knowing u were around the corner. Same is with heroes in GW, they suck at a lot of things a human can do, but at other things they are 10x better than humans.

God Apprentice · Aug 09, 2007, 12:30 AM // 00:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skye Marin

Yes. They are trying to get into PvP. This is the best way for them, as it avoids set up time, skill bickering, guild drama, wasted time, ragequitters, and in the case of HA, rank discrimination.

Wow what a fail. People who don't want to spend time trying to better themselves because of the possibility of failure? When most of us did that? Cry more.

Quote:

A few points here:
-if you were having problems with them, what are the odds that they were also micromanaging their heroes? Doesn't that form of player skill deserve respect?
-if they were playing "that one Heroway Build" wouldn't a call of nerfs to that one build be more appropriate?

1. No
2. Yes, then another skill set will be found and exploited.

Despozblehero · Aug 09, 2007, 05:00 PM // 17:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skye Marin

**snip**

Time and again I see you stick up for heros in HA and PvP and you have some really bad reasoning on why they should be there to boot, before you were rocking the helping new players bit and now youre going the "they got personal drama" route. Dude get a guild its, freeking GUILDWARS! If youre guild is full of retards and assholes, well work harder on picking your friends and try again! (I made sure my guildmates didnt ride the short dark windowed bus to school)

Youve provided no GOOD reasons why heros should be allowed to stay in high end PvP, and in all honesty there ARENT ANY (imho they should remove the epic fail that is HvH and Heros from PvP all-together keep them in PvE, where they belong). Dont bother splitting hairs trying to think of something, whatever you can possibly think of theres already 5 Better reasons NOT to keep them.

KebabVan · Aug 12, 2007, 04:47 PM // 16:47

There should be 0 heros allowed in GvG or HA.

Why anet reduced heros allowed in HA to 2 and not in GvG is totally beyond me. they think that HA is more important than GvG? In GvG people can use guests if they dont have enough, in HA there whole districts of people LFG. There is absolutely no need for heros at all in either. Using heros is not a way to get past rank discrimination, if you're unranked then you can play with other unranked people. if you are ranked then you have np finding groups or finding players for groups unles you require a certain rank in which case you're placing the restriction upon yourself, the game is not.

If people want to use heros in PvP there is herobattles. isnt the entire point of HB to allow heros vs heros. so why do we have heros vs heros in GvG and HA too.

Ec]-[oMaN · Aug 12, 2007, 07:03 PM // 19:03

I've never really been hard headed against the use of heroes, never really thought heroes were better players than the average top100 gvg player. It's just certain builds in which the heroes are used in are probably way better at micromanagement than the average player, which leads to these builds being really difficult to be played against. Although I would agree that in both HIGH LVL PVP formats heroes should be of 2 max in a party. Or maybe Anet could pair up the use of guilds entering HA/GVG with other groups using heroes.
On another note. I think it's far too late whatever Anet decides to better their game HA/GVG wise, lack of skill balance, use of 7 PVP AI in PVP has gone on for far too long and the dmg has already been done, the current state of HA is a joke, and the wait times+skilled oppenents within american play times are really a joke.

Shmanka · Aug 16, 2007, 06:12 PM // 18:12

Just recently played against heroway in pug gvg, it was ridiculous. Only reason we won is because the build was splittable. Not accounting player skill involved as a frontliner I don't have much time to see everyones mistakes but I still think Heroes need to be absolutely removed from GvG. Keep points coming.

erk · Aug 16, 2007, 11:38 PM // 23:38

I would like to see Heroes banned from GvG but still have the option of including hench to make up team numbers. That way the gimmick builds that Heroes were able to do well would disappear from the meta. eg. the talentless Tainted flesh N/Rt thing that's going around, the heroes are much better at keeping up Tainted flesh, death novas, jagged bones etc. than humans, as the AI know exacctly when a spawned creature is going to expire. I have even seen them interrupt insanely short skills like 1/4sec. with a bow regularly.

czart · Aug 17, 2007, 03:12 AM // 03:12

I do not know if allowed number of heroes should be 4 or 2 (I would prefer 2), but I think that totally banning them from GvG would be a mistake.

Heroes are not bad
Heroes are not bad, bad is situation that their AI is programmed too well in a few areas (of course in another areas heroes are really "stupid" in comparison to human player). One example: Tahlkora clears hexes immediately after they are casted on a target.
There is simple solution: Anet may slower hero reactions to average human timings, including also average net connection ping and this should solve out the problem.

Heroes are very useful in some areas of GvG
1) You do not have 8 people, but 7 or 6 - you will take hero and you can play (your build, not sth funny with henchman). This is probably good for beginning guilds which can have problems with organizing full team.
2) You play in automatic tournament, one of your players cannot continue. You take hero and you can still play (again - your build, not sth funny with henchman). I suppose you hate forfeits ...
3) They are very good for training purposes

Heroes allowed in not-ranked games
If Anet decide to ban heroes from GvG, I'd like them still be allowed in not-ranked games. We have found heroes very useful for training purposes. For example when you do not have full team you may easily take hero monks and train some variants of defending base against split.

Olias-way in practice
As a guild we have faced olias-way problem from both sides. We fighted against it 6 times in our history, we have lost 4 times and have won 2 times. And we have tried this build by us, too.

Summer time to be a reason for so many hero teams?
We have now vacations and there is not enough players to play normal GvG in top ladder region. From the same reason there is low number of available guests (from alliance, friend list, etc.). In our case those who stayed at home still wanted to play GvG, so the best solution was making a "smerf" guild and play different builds, including those with heroes.

Overview from top2000 to top300
From that I have good look over the whole ladder from top 2000 to top 300 (we have met opponents from this range). We have played 38 battles with olias-way build (of course modified from HA version to GvG purposes).

We played 6 players + 2 hero or 7 players + 1 hero, sometimes we played the same build by 8 players (and zero hero). It massacres almost everything below top200-top300. (games: 37, won: 32, lost: 5). Less experienced guilds usually die in about 2 minutes and their lord before 10 minutes.

Conclusion is one: overpowerred are not heros, but a build.

We faced 3 times another olias-way, usually 4 people + 4 hero, 2 times we won, one we lost (by dc - tnx Anet for "no reconnect event").

Olias way like previous overpowerred builds
This is similar situation like it was with rt-spike or para-way or like is with dancing daggers assasins in TA. The difference is that olias-way is not so popular. See table below.

Some statistics
period: from 2007-08-10 to 2007-08-16 (7 days)
total: 47 battles
olias-way: 3 opponents
ele-fire heroway: 1 opponent

So heroways were in 8.5% battles and olias-way in 6.4%. Much more popular there are turtle spikes and builds in schema "2 x melee, blindbot, mesmer, necro/paragon/ranger".

Byron · Aug 17, 2007, 08:36 AM // 08:36

From ATs, yes. From GvG, no. If people have fun playing heroway, let them.

Winning with heroes in HA is pretty hard (save for underworld), so thats its own deterrent.

Oni Firestarter · Aug 17, 2007, 09:34 PM // 21:34

The "PvP not PvH" argument people trot around is absolutely horrible. i never knew the GL was controlled by someone at Anet. Same with the knights and bguard.

The reason that hero's are a problem in GvG and HA is their ability to run degenerate builds, and always the risk of another discoard dealio.

That said, their ability to enable games amongst low rank teams is great. The key to starting out in GvG is just to get tons of games in. The henchman are TERRRIIBBBLLE. You are effectively just going into the gvg 6v8, how is that al earning experience? Charge + Hamstring...... Determined shot and Kindle Arrows. Those are some leet bars. And who can forget putting RESTORE FRIGGIN LIFE on the healer henchie. Great idea.......

Heroes let you still run a sembelance of your regular build which give people experience with it. And you can always just throw in a Morgahn and get some decent games in.

I dont know how to fix HA? (dont let teams with hero's enter halls? that would be pretty funny, and fair IMO - you can farm fame, but not enter HoH) but for GvG, just ban Heroes from gvgs where both teams are ranked over 1015-1020 ish. Easy fix. Teams that are sitting at negative or close to even win ratios can continue to learn with heroes, and degenerative buids can only get so many wins before they are forced to play themselves.

Servant of Kali · Aug 21, 2007, 09:38 PM // 21:38

Hmm I'd say keep 1-2 heroes for GvG. NO MORE in any case. I am tired of losing to gay heroway just because heroes have insane reaction time and ability to TAB targets like there's no tomorrow!

Im not for no-heroes-at-all, because a lot of guilds can't find 8 people online at some moment, so 1-2 hero replacements are good. The MAIN problem of heroes is using them on purpose to run lame builds where heroes actually fit better than humans (of course, not against top10 guild but still).

Andrew Patrick · Aug 21, 2007, 10:26 PM // 22:26

This is frequently a topic of discussion amongst the designers. They are open to both sides of the argument so please don't think this topic is being ignored.

Just a real quick informal poll, how many of you are against heroes because they create imbalance (or they are better or more effective than humans at certain roles) and how many of you are against them because you do not feel NPCs have a place in Player vs Player environments for philosophical reasons? Both are perfectly reasonable complaints, I was just curious.

Seamus Finn · Aug 21, 2007, 10:47 PM // 22:47

I would say both. I hate to reiterate(spelling) my earlier post, but I basically feel that NPCs should only be around to fill a spot for a non-competitive guild that "just wants to play." I don't think that NPCs should ever be remotely close to competitive with even a decent player in a GvG situation. I can't think of a good reason why they should be. Thus for me, the henchmen fill that role perfecty.

Servant of Kali · Aug 22, 2007, 07:51 AM // 07:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

Just a real quick informal poll, how many of you are against heroes because they create imbalance (or they are better or more effective than humans at certain roles) and how many of you are against them because you do not feel NPCs have a place in Player vs Player environments for philosophical reasons? Both are perfectly reasonable complaints, I was just curious.

My guild (japanese heh) GvGs almost daily, and it sums up to quite a lot of matches per week. Now, they do use heroes quite often when players go to sleep and the remaining ones (from alliance too i guess) just want to keep playing no matter what. I am not against heroes in this case, If they are limited to 1-2 per team. I feel that more than 2 heroes certainly creates a PvE like feeling. To be honest, even a single hero creates pve like feeling but it can be handled. I don't think that gameplay should be encouraged and promoted, even if it means using 1-2 heroes. It allows for more guilds to participate in battles, which means lower wait times. I'm OK with that at this point.

As for imbalance, Im strongly against it. I don't know if you've seen those N/Rt heroes running rampant in GvG, but it has become a joke. Guilds running heroes *on purpose* with the exact known overpowered (well, for heroes) builds just ruins the gameplay. I've watched a battle between a guild cca #150 vs a guild cca #50, and heroway guild (150 one) first smacked #50 guild hard, killed almost all NPCs and battle continued around guild lord. In the end, guild #50 won, but only because guild #150 seemed to have a complete lack of communication (not even written one), and I was quite amazed at their tactical failure.

So.. I'm not quite sure how to fix this, as even 2 heroes can give an advantage to non-top50 guilds, because a hero can TAB instantly, heal with zero reaction time so to speak etc. But when you face an enemy who plants down 10 spirits, uses pets, plus all the players, guess how difficult for me would be to interrupt someone, or target the appropriate person etc.

I can't think of a decent solution to benefit both sides. Maybe if +rank points arent given to teams using a hero if they win. Yes, that means a single hero/henchman disables the ability to climb up ranks. However would this make some teams use a hero on purpose and just fight low-end teams for fun? I don't know, but to be honest, you can do that now as well no? Just forfeit few games and there you go (but that would take time so.. hmm). I don't know. I don't think nerfing hero AI on purpose is the solution either.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Aug 22, 2007, 01:50 PM // 13:50

Just limit the amount of heroes you can bring in GvG to 2, like they did with tombs.

Additionally, remove soul reaping energy gain from spirits and minions that you don't control COMPLETELY, the main reason that hero build is so strong is because the necros have unlimited energy.