Curse

Randomway Ftw · Mar 29, 2007, 12:19 PM // 12:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jessyi

Spikes, skips, and bad opponents drastically cut down the week long waiting period. What do you need utility for when HoH itself is only altar holding? Why do you need it when you can spike down a relic runner and rack up thier dp? You don't even need to pressure another team that much in HoH - a lot of the time the other team will be more than enough help, then you just spike thier ghost. With multiple defensive characters, or offensive characters with defense (ie paragons or bspikers as a for instance) you'd need a lot of shutdown, almost a direct counter or half counter to shut down a holding team, and remember we're trying to move away from the meta, counter and other categories of HA teams.

Your relicrunner will only get spiked if you are bad. If the holding team is bad, I'm sure they can lose 1v1, but a good team will not use an altar 1v1 unless they come againstIts not that hard, its pretty easy to get bspike off the altar now because of the nerfs and they have easy to shutdown support characters. There was only one team that held with bspike nat the end of 8v8 after all the nerfs.

Quote:

lolwut? You only need one person to block a ghost - if you've got three people doing it, say beefy warriors or thumpers it's fairly easy to keep a ghost blocked for a couple of minutes. Ok, you could get aoe owned, but the smart blockers will spread out and let one person block so as not to strain the monks and then move in if that blocker gets killed.

Ummm maybe try moving your ghost, or putting him on the altar early.

Quote:

So substitute "ghost" for "other players". Shutting down multiple defensive characters while at the same time having enough offense to kill a single target is damn hard and often depends on another team for assistance. Plus you'll res on the altar if you die before time anyways - no harm done.

Cry more, and learn to play, "omg its too hard" is not a legitimate reason for keeping halls bad. If you want to be taken seriously don't make it seem like you are bad at the game.

Quote:

Yeah, some point matches become unwinnable. The only change I'd make is to have the match automatically end when it becomes mathematically impossible. lol. The other teams had thier chance to kill and cap, and if they couldn't do it in 4 minutes, what difference would it make if another 4 were added? Recapping shouldn't be effective at all if we're talking about the spike and cap at the last minute method. Desparation and luck ought to be trumped by persistence and ability. Why would soc be nerfed? It's adren cost and cast time are already high. pd that shite.

What about pressuring out the team that capped the altar? recapping usualy not a spike. About SoC what happens if the guy has Sb on him, waht happens if I don't want to bring PD? Guardian is the skilled way of capping, SoC is the scrub way.

The fact is that while you and others such as Patccmoi, are trying to figure out ways to fix an arena that was not broken, actual players rage the game because of stupid changes. I'll tell you right now, as long as the objectives changes remain, halls will stay dead.

Llint · Mar 29, 2007, 01:24 PM // 13:24

Looking through this thread, I still haven't found out what made the old objectives 'fun'.

Patccmoi · Mar 29, 2007, 01:44 PM // 13:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randomway Ftw

The fact is that while you and others such as Patccmoi, are trying to figure out ways to fix an arena that was not broken, actual players rage the game because of stupid changes. I'll tell you right now, as long as the objectives changes remain, halls will stay dead.

It's funny cause i played HA for what, 3 hours last night and i didn't get a single skip. That's Halls being dead? I remember skipping like crazy at the end of 8v8...

What we're trying to do is figure out what could be improved to make Halls a better place working with the same thing ANet is. Whining about 'bring it back to the good old days!' does absolutely nothing as it'll never happen. They'd be STUPID to do it, because they DID change it for a reason even though a couple of you are glad to dismiss it and just say 'omg it wasn't broken don't fix it!'. They made mistakes, like 6v6, and we were asking for that to be changed back just as much as you, but they also made improvements like rotating halls objectives which is the ONLY way to prevent seriously favoring 1 type of build. As long as Halls has only 1 objective (unless it's like 1v1 Deathmatch, but that's never going to happen since halls needs to be kept 3 ways) then it'll always favor a specific build type. I mean, as some said before, in theory the best build in the old HA would've been 8 monks getting a skip and a lucky cap (other team manages to kill the ghostly and they managed to cap, i mean you could easily give a monk PD or something). Then they could actually hold doing nothing but healing their NPC and each other with overall ridiculous healing power. Ofc nobody actually ran that, but the thing is such a stupid build WOULD in theory be able to hold for a very very long time. And close variations just kept popping up (Blood spike is some variation of that idea, so was that Mystic Wrath spike that was going on for a little while, etc.). Rotating Halls insures that this can't happen as there's too many objectives to cover to make a build truly centered around HoH holding (or, more precisely, a build centered around HoH holding has to actually be fairly balanced and versatile).

See, that's the kind of arguments that you should try to put up for 'why should we revert to old HoH'. Not 'it was fun and it was unique!'. I'm fine with old HoH AS PART of rotating HA (though honestly i think that the current King of the Hill, which could still use a small improvement like i said in my last post, is actually a better version of the old 'let's try to finish with altar'). But i didn't see a single OBJECTIVE argument as to why it should be the ONLY HoH objective.

Sure, you can keep saying all the tactical depth (such as it was...) of the old holding HoH. And i won't say there wasn't any, there was some ofc. And that's why it or a close variation of it is good AS PART OF A ROTATING HoH. And guess what, it's actually a part of the rotating HoH (close variation. If you want to argue king of the hill vs old HoH to see which would be better as part of rotating halls objective, now that could be a meaningful debate that could actually help ANet improve something). I'm not suggesting at all that the holding objective is bad and pointless and lacks any tactic, i just think it's bad when that's the only objective that actually matters in HoH.

As long as all you do is senseless whining and your best argument is 'i liked it', all you do is pollute the forums with junk that ANet has to scan through to find actually useful feedback. You should learn that in general in life if you want people to do something you want you're MUCH better working along with them to help improve their ideas in the direction you want them to go instead of tapping your foot on the floor and crying like a child and say 'but my idea is fun and unique!', especially when theirs actually is too (and if you're disagreeing on the fun part, as i said that's quite subjective as for me and many others new halls objectives are much funner, and if you want something to change you should provide constructive feedback on WHAT could be improved so that it's more fun, like some of us are actually trying to do). If i was a mod on this forum you would've been banned a long time ago, not because your idea isn't mine that's fine, but because you only say the exact same thing in every single post you make with no objective argument and it adds layers and layers that ANet has to go through to find helpful posts. Add you and a couple of people doing it, and the forum is likely actually ignored in great part by ANet because they'd have to pay 1 guy full time just to filter through the junk posts that offer absolutely no constructive feedback.

When people asked for 8v8, they actually had objective arguments (allows more utility to give more chance to balanced against gimmicks, etc.) so it wasn't just senseless whining and deserved to be said. If you have some objective arguments to offer as to why old HoH is better than a rotating HoH, please bring them forward as i didn't see any. I asked you to answer 3 questions earlier as a starting point and they were happily ignored. If you can answer those 3 questions with something credible, at least you'll have an argument. It won't mean that it's right or not and in a sense that doesn't matter, at least it'll be an objective argument that can be debated on and then it's worth debating. 'It was fun' isn't worth debating cause it's fully subjective and there's people on both side that can say that each is more fun and it'll absolutely never lead anywhere.

I don't actually expect you to reply to this as most posts that can't just be flamed are usually ignored.

Ronin Rangerin · Mar 29, 2007, 03:01 PM // 15:01

Relic runs in halls do kinda suck. You dont even have to pay attention to whats going on until the last 45 seconds of the game, as the 3 way blocking will usually balance the score, then its a test of who can cap last in the final 10 seconds.

Alleji · Mar 29, 2007, 03:05 PM // 15:05

Ok, time for my one monthly well-thought-out constructive post.

Ideally, I'd like halls to be 100% no rotation new King of the Hill.

The main advantage over the old King of the Hill is that the matches actually start when they start, rather than when the timer hits 03:00-02:00. Even when halls was changed to a 4-minute fight (which was bad, imo, but that's another discussion), some teams waited until 2 mintes to engage.
The new game hinges on holding, rather than capping. Bodyblocking enemy ghosts is no longer an option, neither is interrupting for 2 minutes.
Teams have time to recover if they're losing. New holding offers more opportunities for comebacks and shifting the tide of battle back and forth.

Now, why (and how much) the other objectives suck:

Retardball
My main beef with HoH is actually the relics, not the kill count. Every time I played relics in halls I wanted 7.5 minutes of my life back, because out of the 8 minutes only the last 30 seconds (or less) really matter. Whenever a team gets ahead on relics, every snare on both enemy teams gets thrown on their runner and their runner basically grinds to a halt. Let's say that happened to blue. Now, blue's warder/water emo/thumper/whatever else is snaring/KDing one of the other runners, say yellow. As a result, red gets ahead on the relics and blue and yellow both get on red, stopping their runner. What do we learn from this? The score is going to be basically even throughout the entire game and the best strategy is to not be ahead of the competition near the end. Now, what kind of game encourages that? If your answer is "a f*cktarded one", you are correct.

There's absolutely no RED ENGINE point in killing anything except for the guy holding the relic, because in happy presearing land people don't get DP and res every minute. Of course, you're never going to kill the guy holding the relic other than in a pure spike because if the monks on his team have more than 3 brain cells, they'll be paying all attention to him. It makes no sense to pressure the monks because a) you're not blocking the runner, b) the monks res at full every minute, c) the third team is happily running relics.

Oh yeah, there's a RED ENGINE third team in this game! Who's gotten three points ahead because we were busy trying to RED ENGINE kill something! In fact, even if someone does kill the runner, unless it happened in the last minute, it's completely irrelevant. So we have a retarded objective where the first 7.5 minutes are an illusion of competition or "keeping up appearances" and in 90% of the matches this time does not decide anything. Attacking is discouraged, the only thing people do is run back and forth like f*cktards.

Anet: If this objective is staying, the time limit should be reduced to 20 seconds, change the mission description to "Be the last to capture your relic to win" and have a giant green "GO!" sign flash at the start of the fight accompanied by a revving engine sound.

Kill count
The main problem everyone seems to have with kill count is constant "farm the weakest team" behaviour. Sometimes the weakest team isn't even the weakest, but simply got attacked at the start and lost their ghost or a couple people. Then the third team just joins in the gank.

The obvious solution would be to make kill counts 1v1, but that would lead to a different problem: score one kill and run around the altar like lamers for 2...7 minutes. Anyone remember fighting old style bspike? In a tough match-up, the spike team would hit a target and then run around the map for however long they pleased until they stabilized sufficiently to go for another spike. 1v1 kill count has the potential to be like that, minus the spiking. (Yes, I know I was often on the bspike side of the fence, but even from that side I realized that it was 100% gay)

The solution?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Add an altar (circle drawn on the ground, w/e) that you cap as you do in kill count atm and which gives +10% damage AND 1 point every minute for the holding team (this is to force engagement and not score 1 kill and kite all around the huge map).

This is actually very good imo. /signed. Kill counts should only be 1v1 and only with this condition. Which means no kill count in halls.

Alliance Battles
Now, I don't have anything against the game type, especially in 8v8, where you will have more people for organized splits, but HALLS IS A BAD MAP FOR THIS. Look at the real AB maps: they're all open and have multiple paths to each capture point. Halls doesn't. So what if they widened the corridors? It's still ONE relatively wide path (hallway) followed by ONE more narrow path (bridge) and if you're trying to cap a point, there's no way for you to retreat. Redesign the map or put this on another map, imo. Broken tower, as Pat suggested would be a better idea.

Ronin Rangerin · Mar 29, 2007, 03:07 PM // 15:07

How about they bring back alter holding for broken tower and courtyard, instead of the lame kill count, while keeping the 3 objectives in halls. That way the bloodspike noobs can have their broken tower but halls would remain in the hands of real players.

Alleji · Mar 29, 2007, 03:15 PM // 15:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronin Rangerin

How about they bring back altar holding for broken tower and courtyard, instead of the lame kill count, while keeping the 3 objectives in halls. That way the bloodspike noobs can have their broken tower but halls would remain in the hands of real players.

How about no?

In fact, how about reading the above post for clarification as to why.

Byron · Mar 29, 2007, 03:38 PM // 15:38

My idea to fix HA:

The objective is to kill the enemy Ghostly Hero. Each team starts out at a base, with some guarding NPCs. The ghostly hero remains in the middle of these NPCs. At the center of a map is a flagstand that can be captured by either team by placing a flag into it. If a team holds that flagstand for 2 whole minutes, they will recieve a 10% morale boost. Etc.

Patccmoi · Mar 29, 2007, 04:10 PM // 16:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Byron

My idea to fix HA:

The objective is to kill the enemy Ghostly Hero. Each team starts out at a base, with some guarding NPCs. The ghostly hero remains in the middle of these NPCs. At the center of a map is a flagstand that can be captured by either team by placing a flag into it. If a team holds that flagstand for 2 whole minutes, they will recieve a 10% morale boost. Etc.

lol

@ Alleji:

First, it's good to actually see some meaningful post. I still disagree with it being good if King of the Hill is the only HA objective. In fact, i think it'd be worse than the old holding was. Why?

Because to win current King of the Hill you must hold the altar for a much longer time than before. While before you just had to cap in the end to win (which means even builds like IWAY with no holding power whatsoever could win it by capping at the end) now you'd have to hold for as long as possible. This would imo generate an even MORE defensive build formation than before. Now to hold you'd have to be able to hold for a long time. You will need a lot of endurance, and the only kind of backline i can imagine for 8v8 will be some soul reaping abuse akin to 2 N/Mos + 2 N/Rts + spirit spammer and a small spike or something like that because those can throw big heals forever (and even if you shutdown their spirit spammer, with 3 teams there'll be enough death from other teams spirits, pets and possibly players to keep your energy level up). And not only that, but the starting team starts with the altar and just has to hold for X time before it's impossible for the other teams to win. Imo it would create a very degenerate meta where people will really have to pack a LOT of defense and have very good endurance healing. Interrupts wouldn't matter much anymore, actually nothing would really matter except staying alive for as long as possible. Before, balanced setup had a chance because they had decent defense but also interruption and some offense, but now i don't see how they could actually compete in a holding contest with a team packing huge defense because they can't just take 3-4 min to kick them off altar and cap at the end and win by interrupting others. If it's not the only map type, then it's not as much of a problem because you still need to have something for other map types and teams will not come with all defense (or those that do will get screwed when another map objective comes and will be kicked from HoH).

Honestly that's why i'm actually favoring something like Kill Count in HoH. Because then it forces teams to have BOTH good offense and defense, and this means they have to be fairly balanced. But then it favors spike teams too much (because in general they have both quite high), so you need an objective similar to capture points which seriously disadvantage them because it favors splitting and mobility.

The interesting part of your post though is highlighting the weaknesses of other current map objectives, and i think it'd be helpful to actually suggest improvements to them (or new objectives) so that they're better instead of just saying 'thrash that and only holding plz', because as i said above only holding will bring back a very boring meta.

For relic run, the obvious problem is that as you say you're not really advantaged to try to get ahead early AND the winner is the last one to cap (i agree that this is seriously stupid, i was slower so i win wtf?). So first thing they could do is change it so that the 'leading team' is the first one to reach a certain level, not the last. I'm not too sure atm what could be done for the other problems though and i gotta say it's slightly worrying to imagine this game type when 8 people will be there (so much bodyblocking potential). Will have to see how it turns out, but a different system might need to be put in place to replace that one. One thing that'd need to be done though imo is to add DP. One thing that would likely help Murder Ball is give it a secondary objective. For example, capping a relic gives 2 points, returning a relic gives 1 point. This means that you can also win by killing relic runners and you can try to get an advantage earlier and distance other teams by killing their runners and returning relics. This might not be the best idea (just imagined that in 2 sec) but another way to get points beside giving relics would likely make this much more interesting. You could also just do something like killing someone gives 1 point, capping a relic gives 3.

For capture point, i'd rather see how it turns out with 8 people first. I think that with more people to split and everything, it can actually work quite well even with HoH design. I mean sure, the design isn't perfect for it, but i don't think it's that bad either. I prefer Broken Tower's design for it though. I also think that DP should be added there.

For kill count, one thing they could possibly do is make the Ghostly unable to move and leave him at starting point but make them give say 5 points and respawning every 2 min if dead. Then there'd be a slightly different objective, which is trying to kill others but also trying to reach their ghost for a big boost. With an altar in center giving 10% damage + 1 point every 30s to the team holding it so that teams don't just spend all their time in their base defending their ghost. Imo this could make it much more interesting, it wouldn't just be a kill count anymore. For this one i wouldn't add DP cause it just favors double-teaming a team and feeding on them even more. An objective like that would greatly discourage purely defensive crap and also discourage spikes as they'd have to split a lot (if they want to try to kill someone else's ghostly + try to hold altar + defend their ghost it's gonna be a nightmare for them). There would likely be a lot of tactical depth in a game type like this since there is multiple objectives/control points and ways to win (mass killing, raiding ghostlies, holding in center, etc.).

Imo any single match objective is bad if it's the only one there, but you can likely make different interesting objectives. If the current ones aren't up to par, then the idea is to improve them or replace them, but not thrash them all and go back to holding only.

Ronin Rangerin · Mar 29, 2007, 04:15 PM // 16:15

I hear theyre going to nerf soul reaping so its not affected at all by spirits... Bout time too as theres been a huge imbalance in that department since the introduction of rits.

elektra_lucia · Mar 29, 2007, 04:20 PM // 16:20

King of the hill hmm. Your team just has to die before the minute. So many players don't do that. If you're dumb enough to monk the whole match without dying or purposely dying for energy + such. Then you deserve to lose. I played in one team and they res'd up the warrior, healed an ele... This was like 15 seconds before we we would have res'd anyways. Is just clueless...

King of the hill really isn't that much pressure :].

I honestly think kill count would help if the ghostly was just used for the instant recharging of skills when you kill him and not double point.

Relic run with 2 teams is ok, relic run with three is just retarded in my opinion. It's also boring for the most part (for the 2 people running) and it's the one thing that if you lag and get body blocked, rubber band or something - it can really screw up the match. I think players positioning is important for kill count and is often why one would lose, but for relic run... Things can go real bad from lag.

Death_From_Above · Mar 29, 2007, 04:49 PM // 16:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by OneArmedScissor

Were you not the guy who implied pluto did not exist because we haven't been to it yet? Not to mention that post was deleted by the mods by virtue of its stupidity. Hey... remember that time you actually posted something intelligent? Yeah, me neither.

Wow do i have to spell everything out for you. Please put your brain in gear. I implied it did not exsist to show a point, i know pluto exsists sorry if you took it literally. Never knew people were so gullable. And what post that was deleated by the mods. im not aware of any posts. Kinda funny how you call randomway the official ................. when clearly i believe you've won that title hands down. Ye i remember when i posted something intelligent to, you may not because you obviously seem to have hit your head to much and lost so many brain cells. If you want you can find it on many threads such as share your thoughts on heros accent. But i guess ull want help finding that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jessyi

oloololoolllolollolol I can always count on this place for sass, lip and willful ignorance. A post is made and the first three people to reply are Randomway, plzkthx and tomcruise jr - the trifecta of stupidity in this forum. Excuse me if I've gotten used to tuning out everything you say.

Here's the bottom line. I've heard lots of reasons for why the new HA is bad, but I've not heard one reason for why old altar holding was good. Come up with some or shut up forever. I might be just as abrasive as you guys but I'm at least trying to explore the issues and discard the trash options. Old altar holding is a trash option. Please tell me why it isn't - and no excuses please. No "this has been discussed before" or "use search" whatever because I haven't seen it before. If you're taking the time to insult me, then you've got the time to answer my questions, so do so or gtfo.

On an unrelated note, while I used to despise shard, there's no denying his ability as a player and if I had to make excuses for his behavior, I'd suggest that like myself he got sick of sensibly explaining things to clueless idiots and instead resorted to the same heavy-handed abrasiveness that I have. More and more I sympathize with his frustration. I mean, look at me, I've only been here 20 minutes and I already feel an ulcer growing.

Are you being serious, iv heard many. Take a deeper look i say, dig deep my friend, dig deep. As for you btw, ye anet are trying to improve halls, i have no problem with that. My problem and the other players problem comes when they impliment stuff, see it doesnt work and then decide to keep it. Im all for a more and improved halls as long as it has actually improved and it doesnt take 1 year to figure out. Other wise no ty just leave us what were happy with whiles you think of ideas and when its fully furbished and polished then bring it out. Dont drag us along with you during this testing proccess.

You also clearly live in denial, i suggest you stop getting people to lie to you. Its not healthy. HA with alter cap was enjoyable to play. If it was not as you claim and kill count is slightly better why have a large majority of the HA population disapeard. You obviously have an anomily hidding in ur brain, please sort it out. Also were not clueless, if you look at the time when we were giving our feedback 2 anet which was thrown back at us u would see it was all rather sane. Making irrational statments again, sigh when will people learn *shakes head* Many of the players aka randomway have looked at both sides of the argument. They have evaluated and seen 8v8 owns 6v6 for these reasons, its not there fault your blind and you havent seen this reasons and construtive posts.

Fact of the matter is, less people play now more people have quit ect because HA sucks. So if anet want to make changes give the people what they want whiles you try make something succesful. You cannot deny these facts, if they were not true i believe nurse wouldnt be saying shes not trying to draw back many of her friends being 8v8 is back and that she hasnt played tombs for a while or as much, which ever it was. Its bascailly common sence. If 1 + 1 is 2. Why are you trying to say 1 + 1 is 3. Basically 8v8 alter map is the way forward at the moment rather than more testing and if you evaluate all the evidence for this you would see 1 + 1 = 2 and not 3.

coleslawdressin · Mar 29, 2007, 05:01 PM // 17:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronin Rangerin

How about they bring back alter holding for broken tower and courtyard, instead of the lame kill count, while keeping the 3 objectives in halls. That way the bloodspike noobs can have their broken tower but halls would remain in the hands of real players.

Bloodspike sucked at old broken tower because they have zero or very few interrupts. Who let you in here?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronin Rangerin

I hear theyre going to nerf soul reaping so its not affected at all by spirits... Bout time too as theres been a huge imbalance in that department since the introduction of rits.

Where did you hear this? Izzy's recent interview made it sound like they wouldn't do this nerf ever. They should take Ensign's suggestion of 1 "death" at 10 soul reaping = 10 seconds of +3 pip mana regen instead of 10 instant energy, so there is actually some cap.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

....
See, that's the kind of arguments that you should try to put up for 'why should we revert to old HoH'. Not 'it was fun and it was unique!'. I'm fine with old HoH AS PART of rotating HA (though honestly i think that the current King of the Hill, which could still use a small improvement like i said in my last post, is actually a better version of the old 'let's try to finish with altar'). But i didn't see a single OBJECTIVE argument as to why it should be the ONLY HoH objective.
....
When people asked for 8v8, they actually had objective arguments (allows more utility to give more chance to balanced against gimmicks, etc.) so it wasn't just senseless whining and deserved to be said. ....

I am sick of this too, they are almost as bad as the people who want 6v6. All I wonder about is how well they did at improving the objectives. If they do that I am not even going to waste my time arguing with these morons that want 6v6 or old altar only HOH unless they have something good for once.

Not saying that you stole my idea or anything, but I said the same thing about a way to fix kill count with the point boost for holding so that people wouldn't just run around the map spiking etc etc. Kill count still has some major flaws though. They could just make tower some sort of hybrid or capture point instead of kill count and accomplish the goal of it not being evil altar holding. Old altars weren't that bad, I will kind of miss it on courtyard, but really they might come up with something better than we have seen before.

Alleji · Mar 29, 2007, 05:34 PM // 17:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

I still disagree with it being good if King of the Hill is the only HA objective. In fact, i think it'd be worse than the old holding was.

To be honest, I haven't given much thought to the idea of new holding with old holding builds simply because we never had the chance to see that. You outlined some plausible scenarios, but I don't think it would be quite as bad.

Assuming halls doesn't suck and we don't have many skips, you need to go through 8 maps with different objectives to get to halls. If none of them are holding, these teams will have a harder time getting to halls.

Let's take blood spike, for example. It's a known fact that spike doesn't run relics well because it doesn't split well and it can either choose to run or spike. If spike chooses to run, it doesn't have as much utility as balanced. If spike chooses to wipe the enemy team and then run unchallenged, they're fighting against the clock. So unholy and sacred are unfavourable maps, as they have always been. If broken and courtyard are changed to AB, as you suggested, spike will be at a disadvantage there as well. Once again, because it doesn't split well. That would be 4 maps where spike/holding teams are severely handicapped.

I said "king of the hill only" in the first place because I don't like any of the other objectives. If we were offered some other choices, maybe some of them would be acceptable, but as it stands...

Murderball is irredemably retarded.
Kill count would be viable in 1v1 as long as the altar gives extra points, but assuming anet doesn't want to restructure the whole tournament, halls needs to be kept a 3-way map.
The layout of halls doesn't support AB well. (Although courtyard would be great, with multiple walkways all over the place) Of course, I'll have to see AB HoH in 8v8, but imo the map needs to be either completely redesigned, or take the cheap way out and put four 2-way teleporters in the central room that would lead to old red, yellow, teal, and purple starting areas. Distances from altar to "red" and "yellow" cap points would have to be approximately equal to altar-->teleporter + exit--> cap point, so teleporting doesn't save time and only provides an alternative route.

Patccmoi · Mar 29, 2007, 05:56 PM // 17:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alleji

To be honest, I haven't given much thought to the idea of new holding with old holding builds simply because we never had the chance to see that. You outlined some plausible scenarios, but I don't think it would be quite as bad.

Assuming halls doesn't suck and we don't have many skips, you need to go through 8 maps with different objectives to get to halls. If none of them are holding, these teams will have a harder time getting to halls.

Let's take blood spike, for example. It's a known fact that spike doesn't run relics well because it doesn't split well and it can either choose to run or spike. If spike chooses to run, it doesn't have as much utility as balanced. If spike chooses to wipe the enemy team and then run unchallenged, they're fighting against the clock. So unholy and sacred are unfavourable maps, as they have always been. If broken and courtyard are changed to AB, as you suggested, spike will be at a disadvantage there as well. Once again, because it doesn't split well. That would be 4 maps where spike/holding teams are severely handicapped.

I said "king of the hill only" in the first place because I don't like any of the other objectives. If we were offered some other choices, maybe some of them would be acceptable, but as it stands...

Murderball is irredemably retarded.
Kill count would be viable in 1v1 as long as the altar gives extra points, but assuming anet doesn't want to restructure the whole tournament, halls needs to be kept a 3-way map.
The layout of halls doesn't support AB well. (Although courtyard would be great, with multiple walkways all over the place) Of course, I'll have to see AB HoH in 8v8, but imo the map needs to be either completely redesigned, or take the cheap way out and put four 2-way teleporters in the central room that would lead to old red, yellow, teal, and purple starting areas. Distances from altar to "red" and "yellow" cap points would have to be approximately equal to altar-->teleporter + exit--> cap point, so teleporting doesn't save time and only provides an alternative route.

Hoping that Halls become popular and there's no skips, etc. is kinda wishful thinking atm. There's always dead hours, etc. I think it's a bad idea to rely on 'let's hope they won't get a skip' when the possibility is there. Especially when an alternative solution is just to design other objectives that don't suck, which i'm convinced is very possible.

Teleporters isn't a bad idea in capture points. Well positioned, they could be quite interesting and would have even more tactical depth. It's also much more likely than a map redesign as it's quick and easy to implement on their side AND they can just be inactive in other objective matches while a new map design is a lot more work.

I agree that the other objectives can and should still be improved. Personally i do like Murderball cause i find it pretty fun to play, but the problems you highlighted are real and can't just be ignored. Possibly once the 'newness' factor of Murderball is gone i'll find it somewhat annoying too.

I think that kill count would just need to be a part of something, like the suggestion i gave above where you can kill ghostlies at their starting position, etc. Pure kill count is likely a bad idea, it showed its failures already. But i'm pretty sure you could mix it up with something else and have it be quite interesting. Even as i said just 'Murderball', but make it that relics give 2 points and killing someone gives 1 point. Then it becomes more interesting as relics aren't the only way to win at all but they're also a valuable objective so that teams like spikes couldn't just ignore it. Say they try to mass bodyblock your runner in the end, throw a Splintered warrior/assassin in their face and either they let your relic through or give you even more points by standing there and dying. I'm not saying this idea is particularly good, but a secondary valuable objective mixed with kill counts or relic could make them work well in HoH, they just fail when it's the only objective there is. There is a lot of tactics in the movement and map awareness of 3 ways kill count that i think is worth keeping somewhere.

Totally new objectives could be envisioned too, but as they're less likely to be implemented in the next year at the rate ANet goes on this, i think it's better to suggest improvements to the current ones =p

Nurse With Wound · Mar 29, 2007, 07:20 PM // 19:20

Stop trolling this thread please. Post only relevant, on topic posts. I have to clear it every hour because flamebaits and pointless posting keep on apprearing here.

Thanks to Alleji and Pacctmoi, for actually contributing to the discussed problems.

Death_From_Above · Mar 29, 2007, 07:53 PM // 19:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alleji

Assuming halls doesn't suck and we don't have many skips, you need to go through 8 maps with different objectives to get to halls. If none of them are holding, these teams will have a harder time getting to halls.

Let's take blood spike, for example. It's a known fact that spike doesn't run relics well because it doesn't split well and it can either choose to run or spike. If spike chooses to run, it doesn't have as much utility as balanced. If spike chooses to wipe the enemy team and then run unchallenged, they're fighting against the clock. So unholy and sacred are unfavourable maps, as they have always been. If broken and courtyard are changed to AB, as you suggested, spike will be at a disadvantage there as well. Once again, because it doesn't split well. That would be 4 maps where spike/holding teams are severely handicapped.[/list]

If you think about it too, old ha aka alter cap was quite succesful, as although people where complaining about holding builds. If you think about it as you stated, holding builds found it hard on relic runs. Therefore maybe if anet thought of a way to exploit this a bit more and think about it. It could be the solution to holding builds with alter capping which i personaly dont believe there is a problem with, but others do. Also although some of your ideas seem inventive and could be succesful. I would think you would want to be careful about overcomplicating HA wouldnt you. Due to the fact some of the fun factor came from actually playing on an even playing field placing skills and tatics in, inorder to defeat your opponant if you understand me. This is because if you make the actual map itself have play a huge role in who wins, i think you will start having problems if you understand what i am getting at.

I would also say get rid of kill count maps for all the reasons stated 1tril times. I really dont think they can work in HA along with the capture points. What anet need i believe is originalitY, along with something that works. Rather than adding things from other formats like ab i believe originality would work best, it seperates tombs from other areas in the game. As for HA, i think 3 maps may be a bit to much. Maybe reduce it to 2 map rotations. However i feel relic running really has no place in HA. It relies to much on actually playing defensive if you understand me an possitioning along with body blocking rather than skill. Although skill plays a part i dont believe it plays as much as a part as alter capping did.

Anyways my proposed changes then.

Bring back scared

Get rid of kill count

Bring back alter maps

Alter map with a map rotation of something which has the same concept of what tombs basically is about. Implimenting tatics and build awareness to win (although i personaly would prefer having ha as it was for now in fear we have to go through a long wait again to get a better one).

Think of a way to stop hall jumping as holding builds are not very versitile when taking all the maps in HA into account.

Get rid of relic running in HA

Think of something original not used in gw before. Just like when they came out with the AB capping for alliance battles. It was original. However it should be something good suited to HA. Erm let me think, i got some ideas but cant put into words. Ill get back to you on that. The fundemental thing is all new implimentations must fit in wit halls and promote skill still like 90 percent.

Last thing, maybe change the map styles, aka the look. If HA needs a refreshing its the maps, were going into 4th campaign maybe use that to influence the look.

Alleji · Mar 29, 2007, 09:50 PM // 21:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Personally i do like Murderball cause i find it pretty fun to play, but the problems you highlighted are real and can't just be ignored. Possibly once the 'newness' factor of Murderball is gone i'll find it somewhat annoying too.

The novelty of murderball dissipated after about 3 games for me... Game 1: "Wow, that was a close fight! 16-16-15!" Game 2: "Wtf we were ahead and got ganked in the last minute and lost. Lame" Game 3: "Is it always like this...?" But out of all the people I know, I'm the only one who hates murderball with a passion (except for Shard, but he hates everything anyway), the rest don't feel quite as strong about it and instead rage on kill counts. Personal preference counts for a lot, I suppose.

The problem with all the suggestions here is that they range from mostly theoretical (i.e. we know approximately how 1v1 killcount with altar giving points would play out) to pure conjectures. On top of that, only a handful of people are discussing these new ideas here. I bet a handful of people at anet discussed 6v6 and introduction of heroes and killcount and thought those would be great... we can see how things turned out. Anet will either need a lot of "test weekends" for any changes in the future, or they can shuffle around the elements the players have already tested i.e. leave halls as king of the hill (and possibly AB) and move other objectives to previous maps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Death_From_Above

I would think you would want to be careful about overcomplicating HA wouldnt you. Due to the fact some of the fun factor came from actually playing on an even playing field placing skills and tatics in, inorder to defeat your opponant if you understand me. This is because if you make the actual map itself have play a huge role in who wins, i think you will start having problems if you understand what i am getting at.

HA is an advanced form of PvP. It has always been complicated and I don't think more varience in objectives on the maps leading up to HoH is any more complicated than four rotating win conditions in halls.

If by "even playing field" you mean a straight-out fight, UW, burial, scarred and dark chambers would still be a deathmatch with minor additional features, which is exactly like the old halls used to be: 4 deathmatch maps.

Randomway Ftw · Mar 29, 2007, 10:05 PM // 22:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

It's funny cause i played HA for what, 3 hours last night and i didn't get a single skip. That's Halls being dead? I remember skipping like crazy at the end of 8v8...

I wonder why that is with less people? oh yeah anet made halls take as long as 5 team halls, with less teams. They even added a completely unnecessary wait time in between matches.

Dinkytowner · Mar 30, 2007, 12:04 AM // 00:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randomway Ftw

I wonder why that is with less people? oh yeah anet made halls take as long as 5 team halls, with less teams. They even added a completely unnecessary wait time in between matches.

A wierd thing happened to me the other night, I got 12 fame for a Halls win. You say, "That's not wierd, so you held." No it was wierd because it was the FIRST win in halls. There has been a significant lack of skips in the rescent past. We are finally getting to see all the maps on a regular basis and the crappy 3 fame Halls wins don't show up very often anymore. So what if I occasionally have to wait an extra min between matches? Whatever they did to prevent skips was a good thing imho.