Curse

Gaile Gray · Nov 16, 2006, 12:11 AM // 00:11

Hey, guys,

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.

(And for those who don't mind a little joke, I thought of adding, "Wait a second, we have PvP in this game???!?!" just to play on the silly pigeonhole somebody thought it would be cute to stuff me, back in 2004.

)

Annnyyyway, here's the skinny, and it's brief, but it's timely: The designers have read your thoughts on today's HA, and we are aware that a goodly number of you feel that Heroes are having too much impact upon the gameplay. So, early notice: We're going to take a look at setting a limit on the number of Heroes that can be included in a game in Heroes' Ascent. No numbers, not exact timeline for the decision to be finalized, but there you are.

Now, if you want to speculate on that, and share your thoughts, go for it! Keep in mind that all input is welcome, though none can be guaranteed to be the final solution. But regardless, if you post, we'll be reading.

Thom Bangalter · Nov 16, 2006, 12:13 AM // 00:13

Gaile, prepare for this thread to be flooded by the same people that have created countless threads on this subject QQing about it.

Additionally, Heroes aren't what killed HA, and it wasn't 6 man either. Regardless, you're going to make a lot of people happy, and hopefully this can be the end to all these posts on the subject.

Finally, It's nice to see you pop your head in here, it really does mean a lot to me.

Randomway Ftw · Nov 16, 2006, 12:16 AM // 00:16

A definate step in the right direction, lets hope this leads to the return of 8v8.

tomcruisejr · Nov 16, 2006, 12:18 AM // 00:18

please limit it to 3 people and 3 heroes. its either 1 man controlling 3 heroes or 3 men controlling 1 hero each.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randomway Ftw

A definate step in the right direction, lets hope this leads to the return of 8v8.

we need more quality, on topic replies like this.

Gaile Gray · Nov 16, 2006, 12:25 AM // 00:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randomway Ftw

A definate step in the right direction, lets hope this leads to the return of 8v8.

Geez, Randomway, did you see anything in my post about "We're considering going from 6v6 back to 8v8?" Let's keep the topic on topic, shall we?

This thread is about hearing everybody's thoughts on Heroes in Heroes' Ascent. Please don't use it to beat me/us/them about the neck and shoulders on other topics near and dear to your hearts, hmmmm?

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!

Apple · Nov 16, 2006, 12:29 AM // 00:29

Well i guess this means less easy fame for some of us, but what meaning does fame have anyway

Thanks for the update, Gaile.

phasola · Nov 16, 2006, 12:35 AM // 00:35

#1 Please remove heroes.
#2 I would also like to know how can you tell that the majority of people like 6v6, because HA population is at an all time low.
#3 Don't you think HA was designed for 8v8? Because HoH has never been so defensive since spirit spam days.
#4 It's nice to see someone cares.

Randomway Ftw · Nov 16, 2006, 12:40 AM // 00:40

Not exactly on topic but has to do with the current state of HA, What about something like a VOD on Annihalation maps to deal with those pesky Paragon builds?

Rice Is Good · Nov 16, 2006, 12:42 AM // 00:42

HA should be kept to a maximum of 3 or 2 heroes divided anyway a group likes. This is fair because for the people who don't have NF can also play with heroes.

Thom Bangalter · Nov 16, 2006, 12:46 AM // 00:46

Squidget wins posts on ha:

Quote:

Thread heavily pruned, though I haven't locked it as yet. Let's keep the personal attacks, rants about caps locks, and uninformed assertations out of these boards.

I'm going to mostly ignore heroes in this post. They shouldn't be in PvP, nearly everyone agrees on that, and their presence in HA has made the arena even more ridiculous. There isn't anything else to take about on that front.

I was one of those supporting the 6v6 change when it was released, but it's easy for me to see that HA got a lot less competitive since that change. There aren't nearly as many 'serious' HA guilds and players that can go and consistently win Halls. They all left for GvG, or left the game entirely. Many people would like to attribute this to 6v6 combat being inherently less interesting, but I don't think that's it at all. I've had a lot of reasonably interesting and intense combat in 6v6 relic runs and 1v1s, certainly no less enjoyable than 8v8.

So why aren't there any serious HA guilds since the 6v6 change? Quite simply, 6v6 forces you to make a choice between killing and holding. Since you have fewer skillslots, you have to devote a larger percentage of them to actually killing your opponent and making it through the 1v1 and relic matches. This is in dramatic opposition to the reward system in HA, which rewards teams for sitting in the HoH as long as they possibly can with an ultra-defensive holding build. Good guilds used to be able to run builds that could hold AND kill, now they're forced to do one or the other.

8v8 HA builds didn't have to work in all the utility of GvG (flagrunning, splits, ect.) You also can't expect to face any particularly strong teams before the Hall itself, where a holding build shines. As a result, the good HA teams could afford to pack shit like Spellbreaker and Healing Seed without crippling themselves, because they'd still be able to field a strong enough offense to force kills. Now it's 6v6, you don't get to bring along all the nifty holding tools while still forcing kills on the enemy.

So what happens? You either run pure offense and suck in the Hall, or you run pure defense and have matches that never end on your way to the Hall. The winning team is the team that dicerolls or skips their way to the HoH while dodging all the other maps, since you can't expect to actually beat a team when the object is killing things. Previously, good HA guilds were the ones who could win the pre-HoH matches with as few offensive tools as possible, since they'd make it to the Halls with the best defensive build and be able to go on a long holding spree. Now it just comes down to luck and dice rolls and skips. Not a remotely competitive environment.

Reverting HA to the way it was 6 months ago might draw some of these guilds back, but the core issue remains the same. The HoH gametype is a completely different game than any of the other gametypes in Guild Wars, including the other Tombs maps. 6v6 just exacerbated that problem by forcing teams to choose between surviving further and killing things.

Ultimately, Arenanet needs to decide what they want HA to be. If they want it to be a gametype about defensive builds and holding spikes, they should revert to 8v8 and let people play the way they did for years. If they want HA to be a gametype about killing things and building to be most effective against the other teams, they need to do the following:

-Remove Heroes. Duh.

-Nerf Energizing Finale and possibly some of the paragons other defensive skills. These skills are wrecking every aspect of the PvP game, not just HA. Paragons are basically this AoE prot monk that can't be shut down and makes sure things never die. GvG matches are limited to 20 minutes by the VoD mechanic, but HA can go on forever without teams getting any closer to actually killing each other.

-Change the HoH gametype to be something that's about offense rather than defense. I'm not sure exactly what yet - possibly an Assault style gametype where the teams switch places every 2 minutes and each team gets a chance to hold or take. Possibly make the team holding the altar suffer severe healing penalties and damage buffs. I don't have a real solution to this one, but dias absolutely has to go for HoH to be a serious PvP gametype. Once people playing in the HoH are in the same game as people trying to reach the HoH, 6-man builds will be fine because they won't be stretching around trying to do too many things at once.

Will it happen? I don't know. Arenanet clearly wants to fix HA, and I think they're slowly starting to understand how their own gametype actually works. Time will tell.

I completely agree with everything posted here. I know some of it you're not really looking for in this instance, but I wanted to keep the post intact.

ekamdu · Nov 16, 2006, 12:46 AM // 00:46

heroteams
I would say no heroes at all in pvp. I just got rank 3 in 4 days of which 90% was gained against heroteams. Though they are not hard to beat, it is not challenging and destroys the whole idea of "Player versus Player", which should be hard and let the one with the best teamplay win.

Gimme Money Plzkthx · Nov 16, 2006, 01:55 AM // 01:55

Just make it like GvG sort of where half the team has to be real people. While you're here, would you mind enlightening us all on WHY anet made HA 6v6?

Clusmas · Nov 16, 2006, 02:13 AM // 02:13

Completely removing heroes and/or hench from HA would certainly have it's draw backs.

I don't see a problem however, with limiting the number of heroes/hench allowed to 1. If you can't field a team of at least 5 real people, then why not play in TA?

YunSooJin · Nov 16, 2006, 02:33 AM // 02:33

Gaile, I see several solutions that would work:
1) Remove all heroes from HA. Henchmen only.
2) Make a max # of heroes available. I'd say 2 is an okay number of heroes. Henchmen available as well.

The main problem (as far as I can see) is that Heroes:
a. Make searing flames-way prevalent.

b. This prevalence serves to 'block out' certain builds. What happens is that the normal 4man 2monk build has a lot of difficulty, unless they are backing a lot of damage mitigation in the form of mantra of flames and lots and lots of paragons.
What I'm trying to say is that a bunch of other more balanced, creative builds like a hex degen team for example, is essentially shut out from the meta, because the monks cannot handle the massive pressure from SF spike.

c. Because builds are being shut out, builds that can hold and beat searing flames are much more popular. The only problem is, those builds are difficult to remove off altars, because the builds that WOULD kick them out (ie more hex typed builds) get reamed by searing-way.

d. HA started to be pretty interesting, almost like gvg before heroes were introduced. I could really see the balanced-type builds kicking in. On the other hand, now with searing flames, HA is back to its good old massive-fotm type gameplay. What I am talking about now is:
i. Signet of MW spike
ii. Searing Flames eles
iii. Paragonway + RaO thumpers

Well. There's the particular points I wanted to lay out. HA sucks now, and removing heroes would do a great deal towards making it semi-playable again.

As an addendum, I do not believe nerfing Searing Flames is the way to go. I see that eles are an actually viable damage source as opposed to utility + damage on the side. Please leave elementalists alone ^^.

Brother Redmund · Nov 16, 2006, 02:35 AM // 02:35

Great, feedback was overdue on this and is welcomed. Limiting hero number per team is a sensible step, and at least you have indicated that you are considering reverting to 8v8. GG Gaile, nice to get a response.

Bread Fan · Nov 16, 2006, 02:39 AM // 02:39

Bottom line the heroes need to be removed altogether in PvP. The henches are a last stab at survival if someone gets an err7. I do agree with pretty much everything in that quote/novel from Thom Bangalter. I do appreciate the fact our quarrels are finally been looked into but did it really need to take this long? Doesn't Anet have some sort of way to see how much traffic has decreased immensely?

PS - Don't know why people are suggesting searing flames needs a nerf. It's an elite and if you ball up against any aoe you deserved to get owned.

Lykan · Nov 16, 2006, 03:25 AM // 03:25

Heroes are not allowed in RA, TA, GvG(maybe wrong but havent tried) AB (even thought they slipped in

).
Why were they allowed in HA?
If they have to stay limit it so the majority of the team must be human.

How about a couple of different maps, all the other arenas get new maps with each chapter. Also not sure why Burial was removed, couldn't you have just blocked off the side so people couldnt run?

Oh and reset sigil prices, i'm so poor

(P.s 8v8 Pls

)

SilentVex · Nov 16, 2006, 03:32 AM // 03:32

I 100% agree with everything quoted by squidget (except that I was against the 6v6 from the beginning). It's in my humble opinion that heroes belong nowhere but the Hero Arena. You wanted to make teams easier to set up for the...less experienced HAers, so you made it 6v6. Fine, whatever. You make it a joke by letting 1 person and 5 ai's compete in what used to be a highly competitive player versus player arena. I really, really miss the days of loading into a match and actually trying to figure out the build the other team was running so we could find a way to defeat it. Now if you guess heroway SF pressure, you're right 90% of the time. HA has never been so boring.

I realize removal of heroes from HA completely isn't likely to happen, so I'd like to see at least half human teams (hench being counted as ai, like heroes). Three real players out of six isn't too much to ask I think. The more human players, however, the better.

Edit: 1 hero/player would likely be good, as that would make heroway really impossible to build again (3 heroes + 2 quitters could still do it, though less reliably), and would still push the teamwork element, as 1 person can't control all 3 heroes.

Ruben · Nov 16, 2006, 03:41 AM // 03:41

This is good. A friend said "you get to see more people in TA than in HA, even on Scarred Earth there might be just 4 human players".

One thing though... I don't know if I can trust the Zaishen anymore. Or maybe they should fire Xingha, he gives us wrong information.

Vax · Nov 16, 2006, 04:08 AM // 04:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Hey, guys,

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.

(And for those who don't mind a little joke, I thought of adding, "Wait a second, we have PvP in this game???!?!" just to play on the silly pigeonhole somebody thought it would be cute to stuff me, back in 2004.

)

Annnyyyway, here's the skinny, and it's brief, but it's timely: The designers have read your thoughts on today's HA, and we are aware that a goodly number of you feel that Heroes are having too much impact upon the gameplay. So, early notice: We're going to take a look at setting a limit on the number of Heroes that can be included in a game in Heroes' Ascent. No numbers, not exact timeline for the decision to be finalized, but there you are.

Now, if you want to speculate on that, and share your thoughts, go for it! Keep in mind that all input is welcome, though none can be guaranteed to be the final solution. But regardless, if you post, we'll be reading.

If you are going to be just setting the limit for Heros in HA then I think the number should be 2
Considering that basically all that is being ran is a 2 monk backline... So leaves 2 spots open for the 2 monks. Of course no1 is going to follow that outline lol
they are going to be bring the paragons into battle with them
but I think that maybe 1 or 2 would be a correct choice

but ya should probably just make it 8v8 and then only allow 2 heros