Curse

Gaile Gray · Dec 22, 2006, 02:18 AM // 02:18

Hey, there,

I just came from a short visit in Heroe's Ascent where I promised players that I'd create a thread for players to share their thoughts, opinions, and suggestions about Heroes' Ascent. past, present, and future. We've made a change to the number of Heroes that any team can bring into the map, as you're aware, and the designers are looking at other changes as well.

I know this is a heated topic. Believe me, my ears are still smoking! :P But I also know that there is a lot of good, constructive feedback to be had from the community of experienced as well as newer players of HA, and we'd love you to share your thoughts here. If you've posted in other threads, well, understood, and we've probably already read it because many of us are here reading every day. So instead of a repeat, or a full 9000-word treatise on the subject, could we get a few bullet points, with a little backup reasoning? (For instance, saying "8v8" isn't real valuable. Saying "6v6 because" and giving a brief explanation is great.)

Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts!

Chris Almighty · Dec 22, 2006, 02:27 AM // 02:27

I think Anet should go back to 8 v 8 because many people would rather play HA than gvg and anet is restricting them, and many people left the game just because of this change. Also i think gvg and HA should be kept at the same level , not that one is better than the other. If you take a look around in the HA section more, you will see that alot of people will want 8 v 8 back ,even the people that are new to the game.

Shendaar · Dec 22, 2006, 02:54 AM // 02:54

I think you should be sent to a different HA depending on your current rank. I just think that getting a group is way too hard when you are rank 0 as nobody wants you and the group you get in(if you can even find a group) are almost always doomed to failed in the first battle.

I consider myself a fairly good PvP player, but I was not interested in HA at the time the rank system was added to it and I find it excessively hard to get anything done there. I sort of feel like I missed boat and it just gets harder and harder to catch up.

luilui · Dec 22, 2006, 02:58 AM // 02:58

-8v8. Don't really have a reason just that i like it more (probably the majority too).

-new maps. You don't really expect people to remain interested on the same 8 maps for 18 months right?

Faer · Dec 22, 2006, 02:59 AM // 02:59

Wha... you mean I can actually play HA now instead of mindlessly grinding through hordes of Heroes spamming Searing Flames until their AI finally bugs out?

I must say I am quite pleased with this change. I've been much too caught up in the Wintersday activities to really play too much HA since the updates, but from the few hours I did spend there I saw that once again, I could enjoy the experience rather than curse at the stupidity of such a bland, uniform society of AI opponents. However, one thing did strike me in a bit of an odd way. With the limits to AI party members, not only has the dreaded Heroway been "nerfed", but so has that old kicks-and-giggles pastime of playing Henchway. While I do not have any real problem with the way HA is currently set up, I would like to see a slight change to the system to allow players the ability to play Henchway and yet still restrict Heroway. You see, while Heroes can be given a very specific, very specialized set of skills and controlled by a player in a precise and often dangerous manner, the best you can do with Henchmen is to call targets and flag them to a specific section of the map. Heroes turned HA into a joke (which I feel is slightly ironic, simply because of the name of the location

), but henchmen never harmed anyone and never really stood in the way of a half-way decent team of players, be they competent or not.

In short, I'd like to see (at some point in the future, but not necessarily soon) a slight change in the system to allow a team of four to five Henchmen while still maintaining the limits on Heroes as to avoid future AI spike fads.

Clinically Proven · Dec 22, 2006, 03:14 AM // 03:14

Two quick thoughts:

* 6v6 - Have 8 ---> GvG, Have 4 ---> TA. 6v6 is perfect in the middle and easier to organise 6 people over 8.

* New maps - variety, adding a 'freshness' to the whole place. GvG battles are updated with new halls every chapter why isnt HA? Furthermore, the maps and/or order of maps at present have some undesirable characteristics that work against exciting, fluid gameplay (holding builds, farming builds et al).

Randomway Ftw · Dec 22, 2006, 03:17 AM // 03:17

8v8 should come back, hopefully soon, 6v6 is far too limiting toward builds and strategic options
Change song of concentration, this skill makes capping way too easy
Don't cave and make in to complainers about rank elitism, as of now their are hardly any groups forming, the improved party formation should help them anyways. a comparison, should you ecpect to get into high end gvg without any experience?
I've heard talk of people supporting variable objective Halls, I don't like this idea, I think it would damage the flavor of HA. It's like removing the Guild Lord from GvG.
Relic map tiebreaking is stupid, but could be worse.

tacitus · Dec 22, 2006, 03:29 AM // 03:29

First off thanks for limiting the number of heros i feel this is a great change

No doubt people in this thread will start on two main issues

1) roll back of fame/rank.
I dont want this to happen and believe it would be unfair for this to happen, people have spent a lot of time building up there fame and rank. There are times when getting a pve group is hard and people wearing FOW armour or have pve titles get in groups easier does this mean we should roll back all armour and pve titles? Obviously not and this applies to the pvp titles as well it just wouldnt be fair.

2) 6v6 vs 8v8
I would like it restored to 8v8 because I feel it allows your build to counter more types of builds including the gimmick builds out there. (both 6v6 and 8v8 have gimmicks to say otherwise is wrong). The main difference is 8v8 allows more counters to these builds and therefore the balance between players skill and choice of skills tilts back to player skill where I believe it should be.
6v6(chance of success) = what skills you take in.
8v8(chance of success) = more player skill

PS new mpas would be cool

infymys · Dec 22, 2006, 03:50 AM // 03:50

6v6 gives two options: Pure offense or pure defense. You see much, much more of the latter and hour long fights on the first map or until /roll 100 happens (which is way more abundant with 6v6) for one fame just isn't worth playing Tombs, er, Heroes' Ascent at all anymore.

With 8v8, it at least allows a combination of both offense and defense and more variety to builds. Sure, Blood Spike, IWAY and others will return if 8v8 is reimplemented, but now that we have three campaigns worth of skills to use, imagine the innovation that can be made with 8v8 as opposed to 6v6.

One last thing...new maps and bringing back the rifts would be nice.

Infectious · Dec 22, 2006, 03:53 AM // 03:53

Bring back 8v8 - As the above poster said, with 6v6 its Buildwars not Guildwars.
New maps - Kinda silly really when you think about it ,GvG'ers get new maps every chapter :P
Fixing the bug when you get bodyblocked yet you see yourself as moving...that is untill your 10 feet from the ghostly and rubberband all the way back (I think even PvE'ers will love this)
Last but not least, an easy one, make the chest drop from HoH drop 6 items that EVERONE in the team gets 1 item.

Alleji · Dec 22, 2006, 03:53 AM // 03:53

First of all, thank you for paying attention to us Gaile. I'll try to leave my cynicism at the door and simply give an objective account of what's happening in HA right now.

No offense to you, because I realize you are not making actual changes, but the development team had made some really horrible decisions in regards to HA recently. For proof, just compare the number of people playing one year ago and today. Popularity of HA obviously plummeted.

Therefore, in my opinion, the easiest solution would be simply to undo all of those changes. You've done a lot of damage, but I think many players will come back if the changes are reversed.

8v8
Burial Mounds - I don't understand why you simply removed the map in the first place?
5-team, 10-minute HoH

8v8 - I remember someone on the development team saying Guild Wars PvP was balanced around 8v8, so I didn't understand the change in the first place. 6v6 offers less flexibility. A team has 16 less skill slots and 2 less elites to work with. Maps in HA have different objectives, thus a good team needs to take different skills to succeed at each objective... which they can't do in 6v6. So teams choose to ignore certain maps and basically take a loss if they have to play them in order to excel at other maps, or they can choose to be mediocre at everything, which isn't the best option either.

Burial Mounds - As I said before, there was absolutely no reason to remove it. Furthermore, having an altar map second in rotation is a bad idea. Annihilation is very simple and even a team of new players without much coordination knows what they need to do. Having two annihilation maps as the first maps in rotation was a good introduction. Putting an altar map second makes for some ridiculous games when a clueless team is on the other side. They most likely lose (less fame for new players, who could be winning 2 in a row instead of 1) and mess with the other teams, making the match a lot more luck-based.

5-team HoH - Not that many people are supporting this change simply because they don't care one way or another, and it really is a less pressing issue, but I think the old HoH was better. It offered more flexibility and choices for the holding team. Currently, holding is "fight against two teams for 3 minutes". With 5 teams we had many different scenarios which could occur and an experienced team could use those to its advantage. People would pick entirely different strategies in 4-team and 3-team matches and be rewarded for correct choices. 10-minute timer also allowed a lot more flexibility in terms of giving up and retaking the altar.

What you should NOT do:

Remove/Reset fame - this would be the killing blow. Sure, rank is "meaningless" because of all the IWAY, heroway, spirit spam, etc. But those people still earned their rank, even if it was in a manner others consider cheap. Others earned their rank the "honest" way and will be even more insulted.
Change the objective of HoH itself - making the final map into something other than an altar match basically equates to creating a new arena (and removing HA from the game). While a new arena is nice, removing HA isn't.

Changing HA to 8v8 would be enough to get me and quite a few people I know back into the game, but if you want to further improve the arena, I'm sure people will come up with some great suggestions. The ones I just outlined above require a minimum amount of work for a great effect. They can also be implimented fairly soon, because honestly, I think any changes made a year from now will be building up a new player base instead of recovering the old one.

Thank you for asking the HA community their opinion,
IGN Alleji Atreides
ex-The Legend of Pi, ex-The Zaishen

Sunrah Nubian · Dec 22, 2006, 05:11 AM // 05:11

I would Like to see some of the map objectives changed a bit. Here are a couople of my ideas:

1. Timed Annihilation

One of the later maps should have a timer. Not exactly sure how long a timer, but say maybe 10 mins, where after 7 minutes "victory or death" conditions are present. If 1 team is not reduced to say 4 players or less, then both teams fail. I do not think you could make the requirement total annihilation, or one griefer runner could wreck an entire team's run. Might be nice to see this map be very small and open thereby increasing the pressure. This will hopefully discourage the newer players from boring everyone to death with extremely defensive builds that end up in stalemate. Ideally there would be two of these maps, 1 early and 1 late in a full fame run.

2. Alters

Does every alter map have to be a three way with the exact same timer? I realize there are minor differences (orbs, priests) but they seem so similar and they get very boring. I agree with the above poster that the old 4-5 team hoh fights were a lot more interesting. I understand why it was changed, and I hated the 8 minutes of waiting for 2 minutes of fighting as much as anyone, but maybe there is something in between that can be done?

3. Please remove all npc's from pvp. There is a hero arena and pve if you want to play against computers. If you are that 1 person short for a group, just try a pug. It may not go great all the time (or even very often) but in the long run it will improve the overall play of the entire community. Plus, I always love watching the elitist GW jerks rage at pugs, better entertainment is hard to find.

warriorsmiley · Dec 22, 2006, 05:15 AM // 05:15

Hmm added new maps and chopping the olds one would be a nice start. You should also make HOH itself a 4 team battle and maybe even 5 minutes pushing the teams to play more offensively then just sitting there till 2:30 hits on the timer. Also on the HOH map itself remove the little area across from where the holding team spawns from its just a big platform for spirits to be laid and have the 4th team enter from that side. Bringing back 8v8 will being back more heavy pressure builds so i'm all for that.

JR · Dec 22, 2006, 05:26 AM // 05:26

Change it back to 8v8. The game is simply better balanced for that format, as opposed to 6v6 which forces you into extremely offensive or defensive builds.

FoxBat · Dec 22, 2006, 05:34 AM // 05:34

Wacky Idea: Replace the ghostly hero capping mechanism with waypoint capture like in alliance/hero battles. The ghostly hero would just be an extra NPC that helps you cap then, maybe make him count for 2 or 3 players if you like. Count players/npcs of all opposing teams against the existing holders of the altar. So those rediculous holding builds will lose their altar and won't get it back until they kill off enough of each team. Also, give each team a score, they score points for time holding the altar, you win for holding the altar the longest, not for merely being the last one to cap (this is how king of the hill is supposed to work!). This will stop people spending half or more of the match time sitting and waiting to see who goes in first. (On HoH, would probably need to give holders less of a time advantage, so they don't start with it capped automatically, although they have less of a run than other teams.)

I'm sure this idea could use some more refining, but it's a start. I take 6v6 forcing offensive/defensive split as a syptom of boring "win by not dying" pvp requirements that need to be changed.

Zui · Dec 22, 2006, 05:43 AM // 05:43

- More maps with strategic objectives(like Relic Runs) would be awsome.

- Keep 6 vs 6. Despite what alot of people say, this is a great change. Alot of thier claims that it limits you to either offense or defense are huge exaggerations, as well.

phoenixtech · Dec 22, 2006, 05:56 AM // 05:56

1) 8V8 = More build variations/options. NEW MAPS, seriously, even TA/RA gets new maps with every expansion. NOTE: A LEVER does NOT a map make. Neither does changing the number of teams on an existing map. If 8v8 IS implemented, look at #3, since holding builds such as bspike will come back in full force and something should really be done to prevent uber defensive builds with 1+2 non-elite spiking skill to hold for prolonged period of time.

1b) This is very simple to implement. Put back burial mounds and set broken tower to 2 teams. This will teach beginner teams the basics of altar maps so that when they get to courtyard they won't be totally clueless. BTW, remove the empty space from burial mounds so certain teams can't just RUN around for 30 minutes until you quit. Hell make maps have VOD like effect once a certain time limit is reached to prevent lame RUNNING uber defensive COUGH COUGH bspike teams from wasting other people's time.

2) MUST play at least 4 maps before you get to halls. (Eliminates lame hall skipping uber defensive holding builds).

3) HOH itself needs some changes. The suggestions of rotating objectives are nice and would weed out lame one dimensional builds. I believe the best place to put the often requested "NEW MAPS" would actually be HOH itself. Hell imagine if HOH is a 3-way relic run LOL relic like the snowball arena. If I had my way HOH would be a 1v1 map, possible with new objectives and you would be matched up with the best team out there that actually won their way to the top and fight you. The ONLY extra advantage the holding team should have would be morale bonus, nothing more.

4) Chest drops needs to give everyone an item and better items.

5) SCRAP the favor system. I'm sure PVEers would love this too. Even though it's nice to get my name splashed on everyone's screen and feed my already massive ego, I'm tired of getting spam from random people congratulating me. Hmm, on second thought, keep the spam but eliminate the favor system LOL

6) Totally crazy idea: Scrap the entire HA system and implement new "tournament-style" play where if you win a match you get matched with other winners (winner's brackets/loser's bracket) system using existing maps and possibly new maps. Kinda like GvG style rating but alot faster to setup and get going, anyone who's played in fighting game tournaments would understand what I'm talking about. Tournament every hour and winner receives items + gold + x amount of fame or new title track.

7) Here's the most important part. Evaluate all options with a grain of salt. I'm sure the bspikers here will advocate stuff like 5-man HOH or not changing the HOH objective itself because that would favor their style of play while people that play heavy interrupt builds would say like to change song of concentration to not affect allies and just party members.

8) Why even have the zaishen part, just let everyone go in to first map without any morale boosts. EARN you morale boost by winning + killing ghostly (btw, fix the ghostly not giving morale boost thing please).

DreamWind · Dec 22, 2006, 06:15 AM // 06:15

6v6 vs 8v8 is a strange issue. Personally I don't have any problem with 6v6 and find it just as fun, and sometimes more fun than 8v8 was. My problem is more in the maps not working for 6v6 currently. I think new maps or a map switch would be the biggest addition to HA.

Here are a few things I would suggest for HA:

-Good limiting heros to 2 per team. Personally I would just ban heros and henchies completely from HA though. It should be 100% humans battling it out, especially with 6 man teams where it should be easier to form. One of the better reasons for 6 man was an ease of forming human teams and a leaning towards making HA a more casual competitive pvp area. Leaving AI just goes against the idea of human competition.

-Bring back burial mounds. Why was this good map removed again? Nobody was complaining about it.

-Map changes. Make broken tower back to to 1 team vs 1 team. There are no other 1v1 altar maps now. I think HA needs more of a variety of maps. Give courtyard its longer timer back. It is so short right now that virtually all the strategy from the map has been removed. The priests almost have no impact on the game anymore. What is the point? Putting a lever in scarred was a nice addition IMO. Discourages holding builds and encourages more aggressive builds which I think is something HA needs more of. Speaking of maps, sacred temples isn't good for 6v6. It is I believe the biggest map, and all of its mechanics combined are not great for 6v6 (lever, running, bodyblocking, and killing stuff all at once).

-Remove map skipping. I think if a team makes it to Halls they should be the best teams, not the teams that got the best skips.

-Fix up relic runs. The last team to cap winning ties isn't a great method. If there is a tie it should be something else, maybe the team with the most kills wins the tiebreaker. Something other than last cap wins. As it is now the teams who bodyblock and power run the best almost always win.

-I disagree with leaving an altar as the final map. Personally I think the last map should be some kind of multiway annihilation map with a timer if it were up to me. Having so many altars in HA just leads to holding builds everywhere, and having the ultimate objective an altar map means you have to make your build around it.

-Make some HA exclusive rewards that all team members get when they win the whole tournament. EXCLUSIVE rewards that would make HA worth winning for once.

Ok some of this is just ideas that probably won't be accepted. Basically though I think rebuilding HA starts with the maps. You could go back to 8v8 to please some people, but I'm not sure they would all come back. Besides, bringing back 8v8 would lead to the reemergence of pure spike builds in HA which basically dominated later maps, and Iway dominating earlier maps. Lets face it, the maps are stale and need changes. There needs to be a NEW map or two. I would do that first staying 6v6, then go back to 8v8 later if needed.

Maiyn · Dec 22, 2006, 06:18 AM // 06:18

8v8 - I hate to say it but I think 8v8 was more popular, which kept more people in the arena. The 6v6 change was phenomenal, but it seems as if it was not well received despite some of us really, REALLY enjoying it.
Fresh MapsNew maps, all maps, or less skips, I feel this way because I get tired of the underworld -> scarred earth -> hall of heros run which can end with 3 fame per run despite all that time wasted. The changes made already are spectacular, and definitely the right direction !
Fame Perhaps it is fine to adjust the fame awarded? it has been done before, but I don't really know if that's what the problem is, and I personally don't mind either way. However, it really could bring people back into the arena with fresh motivation

Thanks Gaile, it's nice to know people are trying to figure out how to fix it ^_^

Lykan · Dec 22, 2006, 06:28 AM // 06:28

Firstly, thanks for visiting.

Now the matter at hand.
8v8 Pls~. We all know 8v8 was gimmicky and full of repetetive builds, but among the thorns there were a lot of roses, lots of inventive and original builds.
I look on observe today and I see, Nerco degen (thanks terra

), ranger/necro degen and SF spam eles. 3 solitary builds. 6v6 is more gimmicky and full of more repetetive builds. And there arent even any roses now

And with the new LFG system, filling parties shouldn't be as hard.

Burial grounds~~A few have mentioned Burial Grounds, again I dont see why it was removed, sure a few teams liked to take a jog around the map, but most played fair.

Scarred Earth~Some people like the Lever, I dont think its fair sometimes.

HoH rewards~ Pls do something to make winning hoh worth it again, A few sigils worth 5k a pop? Normally crappy weapon or armour drops? Either reset sigil prices or make the drops better quality.

New maps~GvG and TA/RA get new maps every chapter, How about some love for HA?

VoD~ Lots of stalemates are occuring because everyone is running the same build. Give the deathmatch maps a VoD timelimit. (Although 8v8 might solve that problem)

Please Do Not~ Reset fame or adjust the fame reward system.

Also put us back in TOPK and ermm .. Bring Back The Rifts