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| View Poll Results: Would you like killcount to be removed from HA? | |||
| Yes, I would like it to be removed from all maps. |
   
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302 | 69.43% |
| No, leave it, killcount is fine. |
  
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46 | 10.57% |
| Remove killcount on Broken Tower; Leave it on Courtyard. |
  
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46 | 10.57% |
| Remove killcount on Courtyard; Leave it on Broken Tower. |
  
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41 | 9.43% |
| Voters: 435. This poll is closed | |||
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Jun 19, 2007, 06:39 PM // 18:39
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#121 | |
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Lion's Arch Merchant
Join Date: Dec 2006
Profession: W/E
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Jun 19, 2007, 06:41 PM // 18:41
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#122 |
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Jan 2006
Guild: Los Chavos Del [ocho]
Profession: W/
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Kill count is awful, even when 3 good teams are playing,no one wants to engage so its 10 mins of running around hoping you can score a kill.
change it to 1v1 or remove it completely. |
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Jun 19, 2007, 07:59 PM // 19:59
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#123 |
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Frost Gate Guardian
Join Date: Apr 2006
Profession: Mo/
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BALANCE SKILLS PLEASE.
I can live with Killcount if there is a skill balance in addition to the crap we just got. Hand Izzy a hard copy of Ensign's list and see if he'll pull his head out of his arse. |
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Jun 19, 2007, 09:09 PM // 21:09
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#124 |
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Apr 2006
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problems with kill count from my perspective
1) kills decided on direct dmg applied to target This problem is abundantly clear when making a build. The biggest restriction on build makeup in HA is its potential for competing on kill count maps. Lets say i make a build with lots of hexes, to shutdown the abundant melee builds out there, or to overload the hex removals the average team brings... what stops me from running the build? Well it cannot compete on kill count unless you bring stuff like fire eles or other sources of direct damage. There is a huge amount of possible builds in GW HA, but kill count has single handedly wiped them out from the meta. My guild [ugly] is one of few guilds stubborn enough to attempt to run the underdog build in search of finesse and uniqueness. However, its not rewarding for our build making efforts if we have to dilute the builds in order so that they can compete in kill count. It all comes down to how you compete for kills in kill count matches. Unfortunately the mechanic rewards builds who can apply a large amount of dmg in a very short period of time. Since the mechanic gives kills to the team who applied the most dmg to a target 10seconds before its death. What better way to target something at full health and inflict 700 points of dmg before anyone else can? This is why spike builds have the upperhand on kill count. Let me make the following bullet points why. 1) spike builds cannot be matched in terms of direct dmg over time, they are designed to spike a full health target out in an instant. 2) in order to carry out this spike, a spike team needs next to zero preparation time. As long as 6-8 members of the team are alive, the spike team can spike someone out the second they come into aggro range. compare this to pressure builds and their methods of killing 1) pressure builds aim to overwhelm a monk backline so that a combination of shutdown, dmg, and spike becomes too much for them and they run out of energy or make a mistake and lose a teammember because of that mistake. 2) in order for this pressure to reach the point where stuff dies, the pressure needs to be put on for a certain amount of time. The amount of time needed to reach this point depends on the experience of the team applying the pressure and the experience of the team under the pressure. 3) pressure builds which have a spike built into them cannot match the raw spiking power of the pure spike team it has become very difficult and therefore highly unattractive for the majority of HAers to even attempt to run a well balanced pressure build because of the favour that the spikebuild enjoys on kill count. Furthermore and equally as importantly, kill count only recognises direct dmg applied to the target befores its death. It doesnt recognise the fact that the target died because its monk allies has been shutdown by another teams mesmers. It doesnt recognise the fact that one team might have snared an isolated target and caught it away from its monks. A mesmer is both a blessing and a bane on kill counts. It is a huge blessing on all other maps as its shutdown abilities are highly valued for a balanced team. However, its shutdown abilities become a double edged sword in kill count. If the pressure team wishes to kill, its mesmers must do the job of shutting down enemy monks. But by shutting down an enemy monk we open that enemy team up to damage from all sources, and not just our own. A spike team would beat us to most kills with the monk shutdown because thats is what they are designed to do. Another problem concerning the dominance spike builds have on kill count is that it takes quite some effort to shut them down 1vs1. One solution to preventing a spike team from gaining all the kills in kill count is to focus your efforts on killing the spike team, especially in situations where it is clearly the favourite in winning the match. If this decision is made, an entire teams efforts must be diverted to kill off the spike team. Its not possible for you to split your efforts between 1 other team and a spike team. There is a huge risk involved in deciding to focus on the spike team to prevent it from winning too easily... thats the risk of the 3rd team attacking you while your attention is on the spike team. In an open 3 way fight, all things being equal, it is impossible for any balanced build, to tackle 2 teams at once... with the aim of shutting the offense of 1 team down and overwhelming the defense of another. A balanced 8 man team is a finely tuned team... the teams overall offensive and defensive strategy comes only from a theoretical encounter with 1 other 8man team. Its impossible for that strategic forethought to be applied in situaitons where two 8 man teams have to be fought. Those are the problems inherent with kill count given that all 3 teams are well experienced in the fight and are willing to engage early on. 2) 3 way match But another scenario that occurs is that all 3 teams... knowing full well what happens if you become engaged in a fight first, just run around and perform a sort of ballet where team A makes a move towards team B who then moves towards team C who moves towards team A... noone is willing to engage first and what ensues is a match of musical chairs. Then it ends in a draw if noone is willing to risk striking for the last minute kill. Or it ends up in a highly messy 20 second brawl where all 3 teams charge eachother. By the time the 20 seconds are up noone really understands what happened, but there is usually a team who were lucky enough to score a kill or two. Last and far from least is the problem of the less experienced. This is the problem where the outcome of a match is not in your hands but at the hands of another teams inexperience. This is the very very bad consequence of the three way fight. 3 teams enter fight... 2 teams know full well that the first kill awards double points and that the ghost awards double also. 1 team is relatively inexperienced and does not know the advanced tactics necessary to avoid losing kill counts. the inexperienced team just so happens to spot team A on the radar before it spots team B. This can happen very often on broken tower and courtyard depending on what routes the teams take. Team A is inexperienced and rushes into a headlong fight with Team B. Meanwhile Team C is making its way from across the other side of the map eager not to miss out on the first kill bonus. Team A overextends itself and loses its ghost to team B... and falls back. Team C has only just reached the area of the battle and is already 4 points behind and because the initial skirmish is over, has no hope of capitalising on the first kill bonus of catching a team from behind unawares. Although scoring the first kill on a ghostly hero is nothing like a guarantee of victory, the point of that example is that points were gained by 1 team where the third team had no chance of gaining any. This is a huge problem with kill count, its outcome is more often than not... out of your hands. This problem rears its ugly head most dramatically when 1 team decides to sacrifice itself to another team in order to ensure that team will win. This happens when 2 alliance teams are in the same fight... or if 1 team holds a particular grudge against another team. What can the third team do in these situations? Almost nothing. And its a terrible experience. 3) map Broken tower and courtyard all have a fundamental flaw in them that makes 3way matches a bad experience. Its the presence of bases with only 2 exits. All teams start in their respective base and when the match starts they can opt to run down 1 of 2 exits from their base. (Yes they can use both but noone really does and theres no point). Because of the possibility of ganking in 3way matches... experienced teams all maneuvre themselves away from the middle of two other teams. Other teams maneuvre themselves in a situation where they can trap another team with their backs to their walls. What happens alot is that an experienced team is pushed back into its base with its back to the wall... with 2 opposing teams occupying the 2 ONLY exits from the base. A stalemate ensues... the team inside the base cannot come out otherwise it will get caught inside a choke point against 2 teams... each other team on the exits cannot enter the base either... to do so would be to expose itself to attack from the front and the rear. So the only solution to the stalemate is for one of the 2 teams on the exits to maneuvre to attack the other team on the other exit from behind. But not all teams have this experience in kill count. Many teams are content to keep the stalemate, thinking falsely that the act of trapping one team inside its base is actually beneficial to them. In this case the outcome of the match hinges totally on the teams who are camping the exits... the team inside the base cannot make any aggressive moves, the risk is far too great. So for the trapped team, its just a waiting game. The same happens on courtyard... there are potentially 3 exits from the base, but usually 1 of them is shutoff because of a closed gate. If a team gets pushed back into its base the remaining two exits are usually occupied by the other two teams... the same scenario as above occurs. 4) influence on HA meta Kill count appears on 2 highly influential maps in the HA map rotation. Because kill count so clearly promotes spike builds... running a good spike build that can be successful on other types of map will serve a team well in HA. It requires very little commitment and investment in terms of build makeup to be successful on relic runs... so relic runs do not affect the meta that much. There are a variety of ways to compete well on relic runs and all the tools needed to do so can be added into almost any build. However, to take advantage of the kill count mechanic a spike build needs to be created. Making a good spike build not only gives a team an inherent advantage on 2 maps in the HA rotation but if the build has enough utility it can be succesful on all other maps too. Theres no practical reason to run anything else. The ritualist spikes dominating HA today are a clear example of this. I commend the people who mod keep modding these builds in order to compete on all maps in HA. But at the very bottom of the build is the basic advantage it holds in kill count. Without this advantage the rit spike would not be as dominant as it is. Why has the balanced build been such a scarce entity in HA? Because its highly difficult to compete against a well run, experienced spike build on kill count. Even if all players on all teams are of equal skill and experience... the spike build should theoretically win. EVEN if the balanced team outweighs the spike team in terms of skill and experience, it needs to play perfectly in order to beat the lesser experienced spike team... not everyone wants to enter a competition as an underdog but many would love to enter a competition as the favoured. The spike build allows lesser experienced players to enjoy the fruits of success that SHOULD come with being more experienced and more skilled. My main gripe about kill count is that it has such a dominant influence on the HA metagame. I want to be able to design a build without having to ruin its concept because it needs to compete on kill count against teams with huge aoe and huge spike ability. Hex and condition pressure builds are so rare nowadays... but they represent a large part of the game. Most importantly Alternatives to Kill Count There have been numerous discussion on this matter. A simple browse through threads started 3+months ago would suffice... i will provide a link to what i think is the best of them... but there are a few more. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10145254 there are plenty of ideas there. What would be great Andrew Patrick is for you to give us an idea of what you are prepared to consider in terms of changing HA in the future. If we know that you will consider big changes some people could spend a bit of time trying to think of what changes could work... then you could perhaps open up a thread asking for these suggestions to be looked at by the design team. Then you could let everyone know what ideas they liked and what ideas they didnt like... and then let everyone know whats ideas the design team have... maybe find a compromise between the ideas provided by the HA community and the ideas the design team have. The best thing that can happen as far as im concerned is that some deeper form of communication occurs so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Lorekeeper |
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Jun 19, 2007, 09:41 PM // 21:41
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#125 | |
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Forge Runner
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Maryland
Guild: Mage Elites [MAGE]
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Quote:
I havent seen GANK's build so I cant comment. But either way these types of builds are just so rare (except the stupid "fear me" builds) and its because of kill count. |
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Jun 19, 2007, 09:43 PM // 21:43
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#126 |
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Jungle Guide
Join Date: Jul 2006
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To add to lorekeeper's extremely good post (forgive me if you already said this, I merely skimmed yours), it is also extremely hard to bring utility into a build for several reasons. First, as he mentioned, it will also benefit the 3rd team on killcount if you are shutting down the second team. Second, bringing utility in your build also decreases your damage and thus your chances of winning on killcount. When you cannot bring utility, it is MUCH harder to shut down spikes as you cannot run dedicated interrupters, etc. Now, highly experienced groups of people who have been playing with eachother a while can accomplish bringing utility and dedicated interrupts, but it is practically impossible to pug this kind of build and succeed at the moment; and also extremely hard to succeed without utility/interrupters at the moment (as a balanced team). And that is why 75%+ of the current HA teams are lame gimmicks.
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Jun 19, 2007, 09:53 PM // 21:53
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#127 |
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Frost Gate Guardian
Join Date: Jul 2005
Guild: Forgot the Ghostlyyyyy [ftl]
Profession: Mo/N
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Before you decide to make changes in HA you need to consider its player base and why they are playing in the first place.
1. PuG - its much easier to play 8v8 in HA than it is GvG because you dont need 4 guild members + guild hall and it is far easier to get online play for a few hours with some people without having to know 7 other people to play with. 2. Because of the PuG nature of HA its a newer players first step to building up a friends list of players that they most likely will later on form guilds with or learn to play GvG with. HA is the #1 pvp recruitment point in the game without a healthy HA you will get less players moving onto the GvG scene. 3. HA is less tactically demanding than GvG you dont have to worry about NPC's as much, defending a base, and running flags the objectives are less complicated. Keeping the mechanics of HA as simple as possible while still having a tactical element allows new players to learn some of these skills in an 8v8 arena that they wouldnt in RA/TA. 4. Arena style - HA is the only arena where you have no option but to stand and fight in order to win its your build and your team vs 8 others this style of game play isnt seen so much in GvG, Ra or TA lots of people play HA for this reason they like that annihilation style of gameplay. ------- Having looked at why people play HA look lets look at the arena itself and make some observations; HA was changed from a fairly simple relic run + Altar holding arena into a more complicated arena that has Kill count, Capture points, relic runs and king of the hill. Doing this doesnt help new players it made it tougher for them to learn the arena and annoyed many of the old player base and now we see the population of HA at an all time low. Lesson = Keep the mechanics subtle and simple. King of the hill and capture points arent even included in the run to hall of heroes this makes it tough for players to learn the correct tactics for these maps. Basically not included a HoH mechanic in the previous maps means newer players will find it hard to learn what they need to do to get better. When new players play new game types they panic, make mistakes and do odd things that can often spoil it for another team. Lesson = Always include HoH game mechanics in earlier maps in the future. Skill balance is crucial for HA more so than most other game types because they have some tactical elements that allow you to overcome those overpowered skills and builds. Overpowered skills/builds often appear here first because testing odd things in this arena means you wont lose things like rating. Allowing these skills to remain too long makes the HA meta boring and often leads to frustration and people quitting the arena or the game. Lesson = Do regular skill balance every month to keep things healthy. Kill count limits build choice because its too much of a race to kill the other teams one of the fun things about the old HA was you could almost run any style of build and win with it. Ganking and luck play too much of a part in this game type very few people like it so really it has to go urgently. Capture points really at times are also far to luck based if a team decides to gank your home shrine you have to defend it this can effect the outcome and it can often give that 3rd team a huge advantage for the rest of the game. Lesson = luck does not equal skill remove or change gametypes that contain luck. HoH relics are also a mechanic that has too much luck nobody wants to lead the match and it often comes down to the last 1-3 relics being run when suddenly you get 2-3 people snaring your runner and a bunch of others body blocking this leads to too much luck being involved. Adding DP may help things here. King of the Hill isnt a bad mechanic but i think it is still flawed a match can be over if the holding team can get 8-9 points really what this mechanic needs is a way to keep teams who are behind from resigning half way through the match. I highly suggest that this mechanic be given a point system that scales with the timer you should get more points for holding the altar in the final 2 minutes than in the opening minutes of the match, we want teams to be competing in exciting gameplay for as long as possible. Rotating objectives in Hoh are imo a good thing the old Altar mechanic promoted holding builds too much although if skills are correctly balanced most of these broken holding builds can be easily be beaten by most experienced players anyway. |
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Jun 20, 2007, 12:25 AM // 00:25
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#128 | |
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Mar 2006
Profession: Mo/N
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Jun 20, 2007, 11:26 AM // 11:26
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#129 | |||||
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Wilds Pathfinder
Join Date: Apr 2006
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think i need to update this post since it was quite some time ago...
Quote:
The Broken tower map is far more conducive towards AB style capping because it has far more routes to various locations than the HOH map has. I think the center should always award more points to encourage a point of convergence for all 3 teams. I would even support a longer rez timer... say 2min. This will make ganking and rushing far less appealing, since a team wipe for 2min will surely spell disaster. A 2min rez timer will promote smarter more tactical play. Quote:
Unfortunately i do not think courtyard is a map for any mechanic other than one that focuses on the altar. Its a huge map... and with 3 teams occupying it... its just not worth it. The whole map is designed towards the center altar... and i think it should be reverted to a victory condition that keeps this in mind. I used to really enjoy the idea of the priest rez on courtyard, it added a highly effective strategy into the map and solo ganking the priest was always a sign of a highly skilled player. What used to happen was that all teams would rush to the center and take up positions near the altar. This would leave the priest unprotected in their base and it was sometimes possible to sneak in and kill the priest before anyone noticed. This would force the team without a priest to cap the altar early otherwise they would face a teamwipe without the periodic rez and if they lost their ghost he wouldnt rez again. This sort of minigame within the game really adds some variety and diversity to HA. After reading through some other posts i think the following point system might be better. The current problem in King of the Hill in HoH is that if one of the three competing teams falls behind in terms of points late into the match, they have no hope of winning and will usually opt to resign rather than waste their time until the timer runs out. This ruins the match for the team who is trying to kick the blue team out of HoH because the blue holding team has a much easier job defending against 1 team than it does against 2. Something needs to be done to give all teams a reasonable chance of winning even until the last couple of minutes of the match. However, i think its quite fair to say that if 1 team sucks completely at the King of the Hill map and fails to score ANY points at all, it shouldnt be a mechanic that lets them win in the last couple of minutes. If that happens noone will bother to cap until the last couple of minutes! It has been suggested already that the points awarded by holding the altar should increase as the timer reaches 0. I think this might work. perhaps starting at the last 2minutes 2.00-1.00 holding altar awards 2 points every 30 seconds 1.00-0.00 holding altar awards 3 points every 30 seconds could be worth testing if the 3 points in the last minute are too much then just make it 2 points in the last 2 minutes. Quote:
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* for every point you are ahead of the other teams your party gains a global buff - hexes and conditions last -10% duration and all party members move +10% faster and skills recharge +10% faster eg if you go ahead by 3 relics, hexes last -30%, party members move +30% faster and skills recharge +10% faster. * Party members acquire -15% death penalty each death this might encourage teams to actually 'race' to run more relics. Under current conditions there is no incentive for actually running faster than anyone else, but surely running relics the fastest is the whole aim of this. Ofc running faster than anyone else will submit you to the combined attentions of the other teams snares and blocks but i think adding some sort of buffs could make that less of a impossible scenario. Could even make the buffs higher. As far as im concerned teams should be rewarded for running relics the fastest... not the slowest. Death penalty is necessary to stop reckless play. Snarers have no penalty for overextending and dying trying to snare a runner, adding death penalty will force players to act a bit more tactical in their attempts to snare. Monks will have to watch their snarers more closely as well as their relic runners. Any thoughts on those ideas? Quote:
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Jun 20, 2007, 12:01 PM // 12:01
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#130 | |
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Forge Runner
Join Date: May 2005
Guild: StP
Profession: R/
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Lorekeepers post is so spot on, all in all the best description of flaws in kill count.
I want to highlight this part again, regarding balanced builds because it is the main problem i have with killcount. Quote:
So many types of character build go unused its just depressing, because they arent efficient for kill count. |
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Jun 20, 2007, 05:52 PM // 17:52
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#131 |
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Jun 2007
Guild: Ray
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killcount advantages:
discourages bunker holding builds. a different aspect of pvp that adds more color to HA. killcount disadvantages: encourages stupid dmg pump builds like SF. discourages interesting, fun and alternative degen-based builds. so, i vote to remove it in one of them and leave it in another. i think that a altar match requires more skill than killcount (USUALLY), so i say CY should be altar and BT should be killcount. Last edited by shoogi; Jun 20, 2007 at 05:57 PM // 17:57.. |
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Jun 20, 2007, 11:02 PM // 23:02
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#132 | |
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Frost Gate Guardian
Join Date: Apr 2006
Profession: Mo/
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Jun 21, 2007, 12:01 AM // 00:01
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#133 |
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Ascalonian Squire
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Ohio
Guild: Elite Angels Of Death [AoD]
Profession: Mo/E
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Even though I voted for removing kill count completely..I've thought it over and i think it would be a better idea if you changed broken tower to holding and left kill count at courtyard. But the killcount should be 1v1. The reason I want this is because it will give more diversity in builds in HA and all of the so called "nub" teams running overpowered builds most likely wont make it to courtyard, so the better groups won't complain because "that nub team beat us because they stole all of our kills etc, etc."
These changes in my opinion will bring large quantities of balanced builds back to Heroes Ascent due to the diversity of the gameplay on different maps...just my opinion..may add more later. |
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Jun 21, 2007, 12:31 AM // 00:31
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#134 | |
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Ottawa, Canada
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Jun 21, 2007, 01:39 AM // 01:39
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#135 |
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Jungle Guide
Join Date: Jul 2006
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1v1 killcount is indeed pointless, but killcount is so deeply flawed that leaving it one map will still be annoying. The useless ganks, losing because another team is worse than you, and good utility or degen builds losing will still be annoying as ever and screw teams up. Of course, it would HAVE to be courtyard to be a viable idea... but it would still suck.
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Jun 21, 2007, 10:35 AM // 10:35
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#136 |
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Desert Nomad
Join Date: Nov 2005
Guild: Im Paper nerf Scissor Rock is [fine]
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1v1 killcount , imo, is the way to go. if not 1v1 then remove it , as in my exp the only problem i have with killcount is being stupidly ganked and/or one team suddenly intentionally feeding the other team with kills ... just to smite you ! it would be fine if they just resigned or raged, but more and more im seeing the loosing team just sacrafice themselfes to ONE of the teams, yes you can get in there and get some kills too but usually before u notice what thye are doing they already have a few or alot of kill from them ><
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Jun 21, 2007, 11:11 AM // 11:11
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#137 |
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Jun 2007
Guild: Ray
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1v1 killcount aint good. it will cause ppl to get a slight advantage and start running away. it also encourages lame builds like somw to launch one spike and then ball on each other and spam all their stuff.
either way, HA needs a serious update asap. refresh the entire system. |
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Jun 21, 2007, 11:51 AM // 11:51
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#138 | |
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Lion's Arch Merchant
Join Date: Dec 2006
Profession: W/E
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Jun 21, 2007, 07:45 PM // 19:45
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#139 | ||
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Jungle Guide
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Derka-Derka Land
Guild: Steel Phoenix (StP)
Profession: E/
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Quote:
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Teams want to run around the entire map? A combination of your 15% speed increase with good use of snares (deep freeze > killcount imo) should take care of that issue tbh. Lame defensive spikes will never work with a multiple objective halls. I don't see an issue with 1v1 killcount if it is implemented correctly. Last edited by Lord Mendes; Jun 21, 2007 at 07:47 PM // 19:47.. |
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Jun 21, 2007, 08:02 PM // 20:02
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#140 | ||
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Krytan Explorer
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Ottawa, Canada
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