Curse

Katina · Nov 16, 2006, 04:11 AM // 04:11

Why not just limit it to NO heroes, and keep heroes in PvE and in the Hero battle Arena. What is the point of Hero battle arena if you can just HA and bring them all in there? Please, keep them in the hero arena.

The only other improvement I could see for HA (and probably the most repeated) is the 8v8.

Vax · Nov 16, 2006, 04:19 AM // 04:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katina

Why not just limit it to NO heroes, and keep heroes in PvE and in the Hero battle Arena. What is the point of Hero battle arena if you can just HA and bring them all in there? Please, keep them in the hero arena.

The only other improvement I could see for HA (and probably the most repeated) is the 8v8.

Well I had to suggest something :P

But ya I follow what you just said 100% (even though I posted something different

)

The only other thing that I could suggest in this post of yours is that Anet needs to bring back the Rift (because its just so much more awesome)

Kry Onicle · Nov 16, 2006, 04:29 AM // 04:29

I'd suggest removing them completly. TA doesnt have hero's, or AB's, why add them into HA which is generally a higher end of pvp than those areas? At the least I'd like to see a minimum of 3/4 humans per HA team.

Nurse With Wound · Nov 16, 2006, 06:05 AM // 06:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Hey, guys,

Hey Gaile. Im very happy that you decided to post here. Really. We're not so bad out here

So thanks for Your post and concern.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Lately, there have been some dramatic "hand on forehead, "nobody cares about my needs" comments, posts, and PMs on the subject of PvP, and specifically on the subject of HA. Now, most of you are level-headed enough to appreciate how much we obviously care about PvP, and I'm sure that a lot of you wisely have confidence that we're quietly weighing the issues that you present. After all, our objectives, as devs, are the same as your objectives, as players: To have the best, most competitive, and most fun experience possible in Heroes' Ascent.

Lots of us, dedicated HAers lost all hope, many abandoned the game, or Heroes Ascend ( me being the latter, my guild moved to gvg compleatly ). During last two months You've made some very controversial changes to Heroes Ascend, without asking HA players whether they like the change, or not. There was lots of frustration and anger coming from us, I know. But Your silence ( we took it as a sign of ignoring our voice ) wasnt helping the whole issue. Im so glad that You've decided to talk to us, You actually made the old pessimist and sceptic really happy today.

I believe that You really want to make Heroes Ascent the thing its supposed to be - the most competetive high-end pvp arena in Guild Wars ( gvg is totally different style of gameplay, and we all know it ). Im sure some of us here, can give You few advices what to do to make it better. I can speak here for me, and my guild ( once dedicated balanced HA players ).

First of all, with the introduction of heroes, Heroes Ascend became a pve farming place, instead of what its supposed to be - a high end PVP arena. This caused a lot of unrest among pvp players, and not because heroes are overpowered or impossible to kill. Believe me, rank 9/8 guild team has no problems with flawlessing such teams. The issue is : around 80% of groups you're encountering in PVP arena are comprised monsly of AI controlled BOTS. Most of us are playing PVP part of the game simply because we like to face other human teams. Human player ( even unexperienced ) is far superior to artificial intelligence, and the matches against real opponents are much more rewarding and satisfying than bashing koss and the centaur dude for the 1000th time. For me, and my friends the point of playing pvp is to win against other human team in an interesting battle of two builds, two teams, live people. Current Heroes Ascend is almost entirely deviod of such games. Most popular team now is just one guy and 5 AI characters. Heroes Ascend with heroes stopped being team based player versus player arena. back in the day there were dozens of human PUGS forming, starting from unranked to rank 10+ teams. Now HA is deadly silent, devoid of life. Chat, which was once filled of "LFG", "forming team" is now silent. Heroes are killing HA. Day by day, hour by hour.

To put it simple, bring back the player to player vs player .

Like you've written, you're considering the AI limit you can bring to Heroes Ascend. Since HA is supposed to be high end pvp arena, I propose the requirement of actual players to be 2/3 of the whole team ( 4 players in 6v6, 6 players in 8v8 ) - apart of course from disconnects, when AI replacement would be added.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Seriously, we can talk about other things in the future, and despite the fact that the polls (yes, after the event, after the double-rewards!) confirm that the majority prefer 6v6, we may discuss that in the future. For now, let's stick to Koss, Dunkuro, and that lot. Thanks!

I think you're reffering to the poll made on The Guild Hall forums. Yes, I know the results from there, but.... You see, The Guild Hall is forum where high-level gvg players gather. The Heroes Ascend fanbase can be met in HA international discrict 1

( well some of us post here, on guru as well ), but you wont see many of us on TGH. So, the results of this poll werent very representative. To put it simple, if you would make a poll about shutting down PVE servers to free network resources for PVP arenas and gvg matches on my alliance's forums , you would probably get around 90% votes for yes, do it, we dont need PVE. Of course, that would be a huge mistake, simply because PVE fanbase would left the game.

The question is - why the poll results voted mostly by GVG players who DONT play Heroes Ascend made you believe the actual HA players, from HA devoted guilds would want that change? Most of us were saddned by it, many left the game, selling their high-ranked accounts on ebay for lots of money, or left Heroes Ascend, simply because the game mode we loved, ceased to exists for reasons unknown to us. Facts speak for themselves - the number of HA disctrics atm are around half of what it used to be. All top HA guilds either disbanded, or left HA for gvg. The change wasnt good nor welcomed by HA community.

Besides the discontent of Heroes Ascend player base there are more reasons why 6v6 has to go. The change caused holding builds to be highy overpowered by the simple factor that you had to sacrifice two characters from your party. Now there are two ways of playing it - you either go full holding mode with minimal damage, or offence mode with good chance of killing other teams in lower maps but no holding power at all, making it impossible to hold Hall of Heroes. Lots of matches now end in a "roll?" msg, when team leaders type /roll 100 and the one with lower results resignes.

While in 8 vs 8 meta you could pack both strong offence, and decent holding power - now, its impossible.

Another thing - the number of classes , skills and combinations is multiplying from expansion to expansion, while the actual slots you can experiment with is dwindling. Why? Many skills and many builds are now impossible to play and enjoy in HA simply because theres no place for experiment. You have to pack whats necessary and thats it.

Also Heroes Ascend lots all of its former prestige. Most of good, HA dedicated guilds moved away from that arena because of the reasons listed above. Now, no one really cares about HOH victory, while back in the day, wining and holding was really something. Those two changes reduced HA status in PVP community to something totally unworthy of attention, while its supposed to be otherwise. Favour of gods, hall of heroes, 24/7 tournament for the best teams in the game. Now empty slogans, because all thats left is fame farming arena with easy victories and no challenge at all. Koss and Dunkoro running rampart, where once some of the best teams were fighting each other.

I hope everythings will be restored. Human limit in the teams, and 8 vs 8 high end PVP mode. That would bring a lot of joy to many Heroes Ascend players, and lots of us would return there, to make this place live again.

Thanks for reading this, peace.

SilentVex · Nov 16, 2006, 06:18 AM // 06:18

^ word.

Vax · Nov 16, 2006, 06:32 AM // 06:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by SilentVex

^ word.

ur name is to similar to mine
change now

Sertu · Nov 16, 2006, 07:05 AM // 07:05

Imo heroes are not such a plage as some see it. But if u were going to limit the nummer of heroes i'd go with at least 50% real players, so 3 heroes max.

/offtopic
No there are never going back 2 8vs8 so all u igays can again start brainless fame farming . Dont tell me u want 8vs8 so u can play balanced cuz thats crap, balanced works now beter then ever. The less people the more powerfull each class gets. So with 6vs6 each player has a more significant input in the team. With 8vs8 is some lamer hardly did anything u could still win, those days are over now. Not to mention how powerfull mesmers have got now the only have 2 deal with a lower number of players.

borkbork · Nov 16, 2006, 07:30 AM // 07:30

If HA returns to 8v8, I want to see a better variety of maps.

I was under the impression that the new HA changes would be 6v6 and significant map changes.

I suggest making all maps some form of a relic run or 1 v 1 deathmatch, and change the last map to a random rotation to discourage people from running pure holding builds. I really don't see the point of maps like Broken Tower, Courtyard... they're just gankfests most of the time.

If ANET is really hurting on resources, a downsized GvG map would do for 1 v 1 deathmatch.

Lord Mendes · Nov 16, 2006, 08:18 AM // 08:18

Good thread, now for my input… This is going to be a long post so I suggest you suck it up and pretend it is a Sirlin article. :P

Well Gaile I would personally like to thank you for starting this thread. And I would also like to thank Shard for not ruining this thread by posting in it... yet.

Heroes are clearly a problem for many in HA, notably to those that are more experienced in the arena, but they are not the main issue.
Now after reading many threads it is obvious that you have been making many modifications to HA in order to make it more accessible to the newer players. Now this is completely understandable as it was very hard for many of us to get into the HA scene, but I find that instead of going to the root of the problem you have simply been adding features hoping the issues would resolve themselves.

Well why was it so hard for newer players to find PuGs and actually get to play HA? Why is it that a newer player has to play some kind of unoriginal cookie-cutter build or play with bots in a PvP arena, ruining the experience for those that want to play PvP? Why is it that many people are stating that they can't find a party due to "rank elitism" and have reverted to playing HA with bots? The answer is simply in the design of HA.

Most people start HA by PuGing. In order to find a decent PuG (@ Gaile, it means pick up group

) you must have rank (another broken system), and in order to get rank you must find a decent PuG. Do you see the issue?

HA has always been accessible to everyone, and you can find yourself in HA ID1 in no time even with a brand new account. The problem is not it's accessibility to newer players, but that newer players can't find real PvP teams. By making these modifications (6v6 and heroes in HA) you have made it MUCH easier for newer players to find teams in HA, but have also single-handedly turned HA into a huge bot-fest, making HA no longer enjoyable to those that have been loyally playing for the last 18 months.

In my honest opinion the decline of HA started just after the first 6v6 weekend. Many newer players went to HA in the hopes of getting some fame for a new emote, and because there were loads of them, they started unranked teams (spear chucker and dervish-way any1?). These players fell in love with HA and started posting all kinds of requests in Sarderlac Saniterium. What they didn’t realize was that they could still form teams in 8v8.
Now if you compare the amount of unranked teams forming during the 6v6 weekend to the amount of unranked teams forming just after that in 8v8, you will notice that there were much more in 6v6. The numbers are there, these people do exist and want to be a part of HA, but there were no teams forming for them in 8v8.
After seeing the sheer amount of unranked players wanting to play HA in 6v6, instead of adding something basic like a LFG system which can benefit everyone in 8v8, Anet changed the party size from 8 to 6. This, in my opinion, was the first major mistake.

PvP is balanced around 8v8 and this update changed many things for the worse such as build diversity, altar utility vs raw damage and killing power, and character and team balance. I don’t want to get into the details since these points have already been mentioned on countless threads.

Now I went PuGing (which is something I rarely do) as soon as HA was changed to 6v6 and I didn’t see any increase in the amount of unranked parties forming. This change had not solved anything and in a few days HA hit its all time low in number of ID districts during European prime time, which is generally the busiest time of day in HA.

Unranked players were still not finding teams simply because none were forming. A good LFG system or optional separate districts for lower ranked players (districts for those only less than rank 3) would have solved the problem better in my opinion.

Now we saw the introduction of heroes in HA after the release of Nightfall. Since Gaile has somewhat acknowledged this problem I am convinced that Anet is realizing that something went wrong and that HA is at a laughable state right now. HA is no longer PvP, there are barely any teams forming, and there are only 2 ID districts.
Newer players can now start teams whenever they want, since Koss and that centaur dude are always willing to play, but HA is currently a bot/unbalanced build fest.
This high-end PvP arena has turned into an unbalanced elite HvH arena.

The main issue of accessibility has been solved by drastic changes to the game-play. No one that enjoyed HA in the past is happy about these changes, and most of them are quitting HA for the time being. You have destroyed the fun and competition in HA for many that have been loyally playing for more than a year, because you made all sorts of drastic changes instead of addressing the main issue.

Cheers for reading and thank you Gaile for starting this thread and showing us that you know we are unhappy with the current state of HA.

JR · Nov 16, 2006, 08:45 AM // 08:45

This thread is not about the number of players per team in HA, keep it that way.

<3 Gaile

Themis · Nov 16, 2006, 09:49 AM // 09:49

It's hard to explain things better than Lord Mendes.

Imo, the two last drastic changes to HA (Heros and 6vs6) have achieved one objective : HA is not a high-end competitive PvP arena anymore.

It seems obvious that "highly competitive group arena" and "random PuGs" are somewhat contradictory concepts.

DreamWind · Nov 16, 2006, 09:49 AM // 09:49

I'm not sure why people are happy that there will just be a "limit" on heros in HA. Ok lets say there is a limit of 3 heros per team in HA. That still means that 2 humans can grab all heros and henchies and enter. The only difference it would make is that instead of 1 human being able to go in, you would need 2. Not a huge difference to me. You either allow 5 heros/henchies per team or remove them all completely (probably the better choice). There is no middleground in my opinion.

Also in reference to Hero battles, if you are going to remove heros from HA (which should be done), I think the rewards for playing hero battles have to increase dramatically. The only reason people are bringing heroway into HA is because the rewards for accidently winning it are so much greater than HvH, that HvH feels like a waste of time in comparison.

fenix · Nov 16, 2006, 10:05 AM // 10:05

I think it's good that there will be a limit on Heroes, but here's my suggestion: make the limit 0.

The Silver Star · Nov 16, 2006, 10:14 AM // 10:14

Yay thanks Gaile my heart stopped... literally for a sec when i read that your actually going to "limit" the amount of Heroes in Heroes Ascent.

However im sure most would preffer 0 Heroes per team.

Off Topic: I hear you all wanting it changed back to 8v8 even though its not the correct topic to whine, i think that there are to many holding builds that on non holding maps just seem to plan to stay alive until you /roll 100 or /resign +_+. These super defensive teams are no fun to play againt in HA and i feel a nerf comming a long to do with Paragons maybe as what happened to Ritualist after Factions release +_-

NeHoMaR · Nov 16, 2006, 10:19 AM // 10:19

Well, I am doing heroway (in HA) is pure fun for me, at the other hand, I understand that HA is for real people, not henchies, not heroes. IMO, you could simply delete that 4 henchies in HA and/or limit heroes to 2 maximun per real people, or even 1 hero per real person. Anyway, whatever you do, you must know that Heroes Battles are too weak, no title, nothing, if you "upgrade" heroes battles you could even totally delete heroes/henchies from HA.

The only real problem I see in HA right now is not the 6vs6 (I love 6vs6) nor heroes; but the fact that IMO the pugs are dead, the "fame farming" people now doesn't need real people for farm, just heroway (like myself), nightfall and 6vs6 killed IWAY and VIMway, and now there are NOT new "easy to play" new builds anymore because, I repeat, people just do heroway now, so HA is heroway and balanced (normally not pug) 90% of the time. Fame famers don't care about making new builds for farm the first maps.

Divinus Stella · Nov 16, 2006, 10:32 AM // 10:32

Sounds good, anet admitting they screwed HA and trying to do something about it, takes balls to admit that you made such a big mistake.

On the 6v6 issue, id like to see an 8v8 HA weekend that gives double fame, that would be something to look forward to.

Lord Mendes · Nov 16, 2006, 10:54 AM // 10:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divinus Stella

On the 6v6 issue, id like to see an 8v8 HA weekend that gives double fame, that would be something to look forward to.

lol. That would be pretty awesome.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

This thread is not about the number of players per team in HA, keep it that way.

Sorry for straying off-topic in my original post but these updates were quite similar in the sense that they were both implemented to make it easier for newer players to find teams. These modifications were made in order to get more new players to start playing in HA, therefore increasing the number of players in HA. Now this clearly backfired since the "old" HAers have proved to be more than the "new" generation. For proof you simply have to map to HA and see for yourself.
Again going off topic.

Now don't get me wrong I am not saying HA is doomed unless changed back to 8v8. I enjoy 6v6 almost as much as I did 8v8 and wouldn'd mind if it stayed that way.

oRROhr · Nov 16, 2006, 11:04 AM // 11:04

Two ideas:

1) Create a "pvp rank" requirement to access HA (ie. points earned by winning battles at gvg, RA or TA).

2) Set a Victory or Death mode in all arenas where attacks deal more damage and heals give less healing (maybe resurrection not possible too).

EDIT: maybe 1) could be based on Baltazhar points. Btw sorry for the OT.

The Silver Star · Nov 16, 2006, 11:11 AM // 11:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divinus Stella

On the 6v6 issue, id like to see an 8v8 HA weekend that gives double fame, that would be something to look forward to.

Are you insane... do you realise how much fame people like me got on that event? if you did you would not want another one.. trust me... it just srews the rank system even more than it already is. No way shuld they ever do this again.

Kabale · Nov 16, 2006, 11:35 AM // 11:35

I would say remove them (Heroes) completely from HA. Limiting is not going to cut it.