Curse

Thom Bangalter · Nov 17, 2006, 04:46 PM // 16:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by qvtkc

I agree, or make it possible to have like only one hero in the team if you can't find a person to fill up the team with (but in that case, remove the henchmen)

I don't agree, I like the greater strategy of having 8v8 (this is supposed to be high level pvp after all), they should make Team Arena 6v6 instead

I again don't agree, the different win condition would be something like Kill Count, Keep The Ghostly Hero Alive, or even worse, Capture X Number Of Points To Win.

The win conditions for altar matches are keep the ghostly hero alive. I'm talking about real win conditions where you can get around rock/paper/scissors setups and win despite not having a convert hexes on your bar or something. New maps would cover this well I think.

8v8 and 6v6 offer the same level of strategy because the win conditions for each are identical. The only difference is you get less characters to either hold with, or kill with.

Oceans Fury · Nov 17, 2006, 04:50 PM // 16:50

Can you please keep this from getting into a elitist argument, you have to understand we all were unranked once, make the push. Im sorry you have no drive to become a better player on your own or with your friends. Losing fame would add some risk to the game but it just doesnt make sence, and would upset EVERYONE in HA. Winning in RA/TA and gaining fame is retarded, dont suggest it, fame is solely form HA and thats how it needs to stay.

Chances are if Anet took your ideas, by the time you actually got all the fame that you want to join ranked groups, you wouldnt have developed the skill to play with those ranked players.

Meta Dervish · Nov 17, 2006, 04:51 PM // 16:51

Another reason why its good to make a non-linear fame gaining system is that fame farmer using IWAY, etc, and those who bought fame would not be able to maintain them because of the amount they will lose on the first map, essentially kill off all gimmick fotm builds. Good players of course should have no problem because they will win a lot of matches and will still gain fame steadily, although it'll get harder and harder to maintain.

Ya, it won't completely solve elitist attitude, but it cut it down to a point where its reasonable. At least with this system a R9 player flashing his emote at me probably is good enough and didn't farm first map over and over.

Add a party formation system on top of that, and problem mostly solved.

Now that I think of it, fame removal isn't necessary. With a non-linear fame system, fame will automatically be removed to a level that reflect skills much more. People didn't seem to need rank as a measuring system back then, but yet the quality of play was much much higher, care to enlighten me why?

Edit: To Oceans Fury, yes EVERYONE was unranked once, not part unranked part ranked, and that was when HA don't have any fotm gimmick build, forming groups take less than 15min. That was the glory days of HA, at least to an old old player like me.

Lord Mendes · Nov 17, 2006, 05:00 PM // 17:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sophitia Leafblade

This would be a betta system of gaining fame/ranks but it wouldnt get rid of the elitist thats in HA since people would still be: LF R3+ players etc. A better way might be to have fame/ranks a Universal to all PvP thing, instead of the Gladiatior, and Guild ones being seperate. Eg gaining small amounts of fame for entering and wining in RA, a little more for TA more for HA and then even more for GvG. Then on currently ranked people would be able to gain ranks without having to fight in the arenas that are very much anto low ranks. The idea of havving to maintain it instead of just having it permently is a good idea though and would actually be a better way of telling peoples actually PvP skills. If they did somelike this idea which allowed my to finally gain ranks ie so i can actually take part in the competitons then id wouldnt mind if they removed Heros

Please get this false notion out of you heads. Rank is NOT the issue at hand and this problem is NOT related to rank. Granted, rank is a poor indication of SKILL but is a decent indication of EXPERIENCE in HA. I am sorry but 9 out of 10 times a rank 3 will PERFORM better in HA than a rank 0.
No matter what build a ranked players played, he still has more knowledge and experience regarding HA. Exceptions exist, but are only 0.1% of the unranked players.
It is hard to find parties because you are unranked, but rank 6 parties often do better than rankless parties for a reason.
The problem is that it is hard for unranked players to find teams and gain rank alongside players with similar experience levels.
I have suggested an optional district for players that are below rank 3 to go to find teams of similar experience level. The higher ranked players would still only have the current districts (no rank 3+ dists) and the rankless players would be able to access both.
Also a decent LFG system would be nice too. It could consist of an NPC you can go to and register that you are looking for a team, what rank you are (this would be optional), what you can play, etc... It could also be a place to form up teams. You could type that you are looking for 1 blessed light and 1 shock warrior for your team, and people that fit the requirements and want to play could pm you.

There are many ways to help unranked players find teams, and none being as drastic as removing rank.

phoenixtech · Nov 17, 2006, 05:06 PM // 17:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by hyro yamaguchi

I say:

8v8 back, restrict heroes to 1 per teammembers, removing them would be contradicting the idea behind them of getting parties more easy and having 3 per team....ehr...isn't that what it's right now? oh and offcourse fix the maps.
But also: reset fame, this to whipe out the Iway/SF/ebayed past, and make everyone equal again, after 1 month of whining HA will be good again.

People who suggest removal of fame are usually the low-ranked ones who are envious. Removal of fame is about as stupid as removal of fow armor to "whipe out" the botted and ebayed past and make everyone equal. The have-nots always want to make everything equal rather than work at something.

B Ephekt · Nov 17, 2006, 05:10 PM // 17:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by qvtkc

I again don't agree, the different win condition would be something like Kill Count, Keep The Ghostly Hero Alive, or even worse, Capture X Number Of Points To Win.

The entire point of new win conditions and game types is to encourage balanced buids and breathe new life into the arena. Kill count, multi-point holding spots, fort aspen wood-type objectives, etc would all make it even harder for pure defense builds to suceed. I don't really see how that's a bad thing. If Anet really wants to reduce the amount of spike or holding gimmicks in tombs, this is certainly the way to go.

The only downside I see to more diversity is that a 6 man team doesn't really have the utility to handle it. Which points to another major issue in tombs right now...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meta Dervish

A person should lose rank for losing, and it should be something like no fame lost for losing at r1-3, lose 1-2 famefor losing at rank 3-6, and lose 4-8 fame for losing at rank 6-12. That would be a much better system because all rank is right now, is how nolife a person is in GW.

And how long do you think it would take for some people to figure out that they'll never be higher than rank 3, and quit? The point is to make HA available to the largest amount of people without being overly frustrating. The reason "rank elitism" is a non-issue has already been covered in other threads; Anet can't fix lazy players.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sophitia Leafblade

A better way might be to have fame/ranks a Universal to all PvP thing, instead of the Gladiatior, and Guild ones being seperate. Eg gaining small amounts of fame for entering and wining in RA, a little more for TA more for HA and then even more for GvG.

I'm sorry, but this is an absolutely terrible idea. I don't know how many times we have to say this before some people get it, but rank is not an indication of a player's skill; it's an indication of their experience in Heroes Ascent. It should be blatantly obvious that you don't gain experience for HA in RA, GvG or TA, so what would your suggestion actually effect? Absolutely nothing.

To gain experience in HA you have to actually play HA... Stop trying to find creative ways to "fix" rank, it's not broken.

Lord Mendes · Nov 17, 2006, 05:11 PM // 17:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meta Dervish

Another reason why its good to make a non-linear fame gaining system is that fame farmer using IWAY, etc, and those who bought fame would not be able to maintain them because of the amount they will lose on the first map, essentially kill off all gimmick fotm builds. Good players of course should have no problem because they will win a lot of matches and will still gain fame steadily, although it'll get harder and harder to maintain.

Newer players are MUCH more likely to lose on the first map than someone who IWAYed his fame.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meta Dervish

Ya, it won't completely solve elitist attitude, but it cut it down to a point where its reasonable. At least with this system a R9 player flashing his emote at me probably is good enough and didn't farm first map over and over.

Would you play serious GvG with some1 who has absolutely no idea about skills/tactics/positioning in GvG. These things are gained with experience, just like fame whether done with IWAY or something else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meta Dervish

Add a party formation system on top of that, and problem mostly solved.

Agreed, that would actually solve much much more than you think.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meta Dervish

To Oceans Fury, yes EVERYONE was unranked once, not part unranked part ranked, and that was when HA don't have any fotm gimmick build, forming groups take less than 15min. That was the glory days of HA, at least to an old old player like me.

Fotms have always existed in HA. Pallyway, air/oflame/ranger spike, spirit spam, smite teams. These Fotms have all been in HA for more than a year.

vapor311 · Nov 17, 2006, 05:29 PM // 17:29

To really address the issue of heroes you have to look at why heroes were allowed in HA to begin with. It has already been pointed out that heroes were banned from gameplay in other competitive arenas so one can reasonably assume that it's not an accident that heroes were allowed in HA. Personally, I believe that heroes are allowed in HA because the population in it has dropped to critically low levels. In all seriousness, I went to get a game last night and there were 2 American districts and 3 International districts at 9PM EST.
Let me elaborate a little on why HA NEEDs people to remain viable, moreso than any other gametype. Heroes' Ascent is a tournament that runs (nowadays) every 6 minutes. The logistics of it are really pure genious considering that at one point it actually worked out. Consider if you will, at any given time, if all the maps are in play and filled with teams you have 21 teams in play. Multiply that number by 6 and you have 126 people playing HA at any particular time. Doesn't sound like alot of people considering that GW has "2 Million Active Accounts". This number of course multiplies exponentially out as you have x amount teams in the UW and y amount of teams playing Dark Chambers, etc. Where the system breaks down is when there are not enough teams at any particular stage and you have teams queued up to advance to the next level. This is what causes a skip. The fewer the amount of teams in play, the higher the likelihood of getting a skip. Skips are what break the system.
To look at why skips break the system we have to get a grasp at what the original vision was for HA when it was created (ignoring the favor stuff and etc). I believe that the vision for HA was to have a tournament system which players had to navigate 3 or 4 differenty gametypes. When teams no longer have to plan on being able to run a relic, or even kill an opposing team to get to the Hall of Heroes all of the sudden your team building strategy changes. This is how you end up with insane holding builds. When your team strategy basically involves packing a ton of defense into a build with just enough offense to kill a couple bad teams in the Underworld, the tournament system has failed.
A-Net knows this. They saw the writing on the wall a long time ago. The problem really has been that they have taken a reactive approach to fixing it, instead of a proactive one. Instead of addressing why people aren't playing it any more, they have instead made changes that make more out of less (ie increasing the frequency of HoH games, reducing team sizes, allowing more NPCs to be used).
Realistically if you removed Heroes from the game as it stands now, and upped team size back to 8, you would have to remove half the maps. No joke. Right now, Heroes provide at least some amount of consistency to HA by filling up the bottom tiers of maps and providing teams to play against. If all of the Hero teams were not out there a run to Halls would look something like UW -> Scarred Earth -> Courtyard -> HoH if even that many maps actually got played. While I am certain that some people would enjoy that, I think it's important to point out that it cheapens the entire game when that happens.
What essentially HA needs is more people playing it. Heroway can go away when it's not the only thing sustaining the bottom tiers of the tournament (or top tiers at this point). You can even have 8v8 again when you have enough people playing to support it. Until you address the gushing exodus of players from HA with something more significant than a band-aid things will continue to spiral out of control.
In case anyone missed the long post I had on how to address that issue, I'll rehash it quickly. There are no good rewards for HA anymore. Sigils have no value, gold items drops are 99.5% worthless and really didn't do PvP-only people any good anyways, halls wins displays are more used to advertise a funny guild name than anything else (I Used Charm Animal On Your [MoM] anyone?) and of course Fame doesn't hold the same credibility that it once did.
If you want to get people back involved in HA, make the rewards something worth playing for. I mean, look what happened during the double fame weekend. People came out in droves to play HA. I'm guessing that if you started an unofficial survey of it, most of the people there weren't there to "try" out 6v6. Obviously you cannot set up double fame as a permanent addition to HA as it would further devalue the only thing people play it for at all. You could however create another reward type that generated as much interest. That my friends is how you fix HA.

Meta Dervish · Nov 17, 2006, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Mendes

Newer players are MUCH more likely to lose on the first map than someone who IWAYed his fame.

Fotms have always existed in HA. Pallyway, air/oflame/ranger spike, spirit spam, smite teams. These Fotms have all been in HA for more than a year.

The system I proposed is never meant as a "newbie easy fame" system. Its a rank shouldn't be continously increasing system.

The problem with rank is this:

You are a rank 0, you decided to finally start working on your rank. However, for every match you won you also have to go through 5+ losing matches. Ok fine, you decided you will be persistent and keep going. Meanwhile, a rank 6 guy is playing HA, and for every match the R0 player win, the R6 player won 6 matches.

By the time the R0 guy finally managed to get to R3, all the R6 guys are now R9, and all the R9 guys are all R11-12. By the time the R0 guy get to R6, R6 guy get to R11-12 and who knows where the R11-12 guy would be at.

What is happening is that HA is divded into time generations. A person can pretty much only play with another person that started guild wars at the same time and played for the same time. You will never be able to realistically catch up to a person who played a year before you. Even when your skill has reached the highest possible, people will still be separated by rank, and with no ability to distinquish fame farmer and good player, R6 will eventually be the noob rank, then R9, and so forth, get my drift?

Thomas.knbk · Nov 17, 2006, 05:48 PM // 17:48

Resetting fame is the stupidest idea ever. It would make thousands of people quit guild wars (the ones who have actually played HA) and also, it does not solve the problem. It just delays it.

Oceans Fury · Nov 17, 2006, 05:48 PM // 17:48

I think your speaking from the point of view of a unranked person.
There is trouble with yoru logic,

\"When your team strategy basically involves packing a ton of defense into a build with just enough offense to kill a couple bad teams in the Underworld, the tournament system has failed.\"

Wrong. If Anet wanted to change this, they would have limited the skills we could use. Whats wrong with players coming up with creative builds to try and they happen to be defensive. Against these teams, its not their problem theyre defensive, its YOUR problem you cant recognize their weaknesses and exploit them.
Example: Paragon Holding Builds- hexes, degen, go after the monks.

Heroes do not make HA into what it is today. All theyre doing is taking up spots that real players could be filling, as soon as Heroes are taken out, those players who spend 40 mins spamming LFG will fill those spots.

And the skips your talking about take place even with heroes in place.

Granted, SOME, guilds and people left because of 6v6 etc, but not a majority left. Your way off.

Please dont waste your time reasearching and posting things you dont KNOW about.

Oceans Fury · Nov 17, 2006, 05:53 PM // 17:53

I think your speaking from the point of view of a unranked person.
There is trouble with yoru logic,

\"When your team strategy basically involves packing a ton of defense into a build with just enough offense to kill a couple bad teams in the Underworld, the tournament system has failed.\"

Wrong. If Anet wanted to change this, they would have limited the skills we could use. Whats wrong with players coming up with creative builds to try and they happen to be defensive. Against these teams, its not their problem theyre defensive, its YOUR problem you cant recognize their weaknesses and exploit them.
Example: Paragon Holding Builds- hexes, degen, go after the monks.

Heroes do not make HA into what it is today. All theyre doing is taking up spots that real players could be filling, as soon as Heroes are taken out, those players who spend 40 mins spamming LFG will fill those spots.

And the skips your talking about take place even with heroes in place.

Granted, SOME, guilds and people left because of 6v6 etc, but not a majority left. Your way off.

Please dont waste your time reasearching and posting things you dont KNOW about.

B Ephekt · Nov 17, 2006, 05:54 PM // 17:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meta Dervish

The system I proposed is never meant as a "newbie easy fame" system. Its a rank shouldn't be continously increasing system.

The problem with rank is this:

You are a rank 0, you decided to finally start working on your rank. However, for every match you won you also have to go through 5+ losing matches. Ok fine, you decided you will be persistent and keep going. Meanwhile, a rank 6 guy is playing HA, and for every match the R0 player win, the R6 player won 6 matches.

By the time the R0 guy finally managed to get to R3, all the R6 guys are now R9, and all the R9 guys are all R11-12. By the time the R0 guy get to R6, R6 guy get to R11-12 and who knows where the R11-12 guy would be at.

What is happening is that HA is divded into time generations. A person can pretty much only play with another person that started guild wars at the same time and played for the same time. You will never be able to realistically catch up to a person who played a year before you. Even when your skill has reached the highest possible, people will still be separated by rank, and with no ability to distinquish fame farmer and good player, R6 will eventually be the noob rank, then R9, and so forth, get my drift?

Incurring fame for losses will only deter people from going in just for fun, testing out new builds, or just going in with horrible w/mo gimmicks for some laughs. Not to mention that this would discourage PUGs - if you were at risk of losing your hard earned fame or rank, why would you feel inclined to play with someone you didn't know? It's a bad idea in general, sorry.

Also, your examples are horribly flawed. Gaining fame is all about how often you play, the amount of consecutive win streaks you get and your ability to hold regularly. A good player, with access to good friends or a good guild can easily get their tiger in a summer playing only a few hours a day. Figure that most half way decent groups can easily get 100+ fame in 2-3 hours or less, it'd only take about a month and a half to get rank 9.

vapor311 · Nov 17, 2006, 05:56 PM // 17:56

Meta brings up an excellent point. What is Fame and Rank other than a Ladder system with no end in sight? What would the GvG scene be like if there was no guild rating and your standing was solely based on your wins and losses, which by the way, never reset themselves?
It would be pretty lame right? How could one compete with teams that have been around since Prophecies release? Why would you bother trying? That's right. You wouldn't. Your motivation for success would be diminished until you no longer thought it was worth playing for. It would essentially wittle itself down to a few hardcore groups who eventually would get tired of playing each other and all go their seperate ways leaving alot of really fancy hardware and oodles of bandwidth to go to waste and collect dust.

phasola · Nov 17, 2006, 06:20 PM // 18:20

Why the hell would you want to reset fame ? Unless you're on your way to the awesome deer, nobody would want that. I mean, think of all the r12+ players... Not all iwayed you know.
And what would that accomplish ? 80% would quit HA, but probably it would be more elitist that it is now. Just think about it. Everyone starts from 0. How would be pugs be formed ? Would you get a dubious looking r1 ? Ofc not. Friends list + guilds = ftw. New players + pugs = ftl.

tomcruisejr · Nov 17, 2006, 06:26 PM // 18:26

YES! Everybody ranked got no fame back then but it doesnt necessarily mean that all of them want others to experience the horrific times of trying to play and have fun.

That's why there are changes. Changes make things not dull and break the old crap cycle.

Revert to the old system and youll see the same crap all over again. Try to move on. Think of 8vs8 as your ex-girlfriend who now enjoys the company of others.

Minus Sign · Nov 17, 2006, 06:45 PM // 18:45

Zero. Get them the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO outa PvP. You want more of my money Gaile, thats my price.

EDIT: Your teams were right about one thing: Nightfall is the end of a trilogy. Guild Wars is finished, imho. My guess is that you've alienated enough of your customer base that a forth game will be econmically infeesable.

Not that it would matter much, but seeing as how this little jaunt into the bowels of the PvP forums suggests just how serious this situation has become over at Anet (ie; someone over there checked the server logs and noticed the number of users dropping like a stone didn't they?) but if you really want to show a semblance of valuing your players opnion I have a mild suggestion:

You have the email address of every active and non-active player in your servers. Its f*ing required to play the game. If you actually--REALLY--want players to think that you want to know how they feel...send them an emial survey and ask next time before and after you screw with it in such a monumental way.

Frankly though, I'll be surprised if you respond to anything in this post. I'll be equally surprised if its not deleted in the next few hours for its less than courtious tone.

Mores the pity. You see; I'm just the person you need to be reaching for right now sweetheart. I'm not one of the forum goers who bashes the QQers over this "change", or the people who stayed and complained (and bought NF anyway).

I'm one of the people who got pissed off enough to leave. If it weren't for my guild, I'd neither have known about this attempt to reconnect with your players...or cared.

In the end, however, I fear even this is little more than that "bandaid on a broken bone" I spoke of so long ago when you started looking for new markets. You've changed too many rules; made too many statements that were later recanted as "not what we really meant". The problem with political doublespeak with teenagers (and adults) is that they get tired of playing the decoder game or listening to it in general.

Even if you fixed this; even if you fixed everything and returned GW to the caliber it once was, I can't trust you not to do it again.

And thats the real problem. We don't trust you anymore.

Sophitia Leafblade · Nov 17, 2006, 06:46 PM // 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oceans Fury

What I want to know is, where did the rank complaint come about? I know in Tombs, you hardly heard any bitching about elitism, now that were in HA, it seems that its unfair that it requires a little bit of work for lower rank/unranked people to get groups together.

I want to know why you unranked people nowadays deserve special treatment when all of us who are higher ranked now did it the hard way?

You know, if your THAT worried about being unranked, Id give you more respect for stop bitching about it and in turn doing something about it (Ex: Getting off your ass and start forming a group instead of writing a especially unthoghtout paragraph on why rank deserves the boot.

Wow thats a great way to encourage new players to join in HA.

Id just like to point out there are an ever increasing amount of high and higher ranked people, its actually ALOT harder nower days for lower ranked people that it ever used to be. Less people now play HA because of this as more experienced players move on to do other things, lower ranked people cant get onto the ladder so easy so the PVP population becomes smaller, and then it gets so small that it becomes even harder for lower ranks to get into HA. The divide between veterans and newbies increases more and more and the population lowers and lowers, something need to be done to change this. Heros were Anets attempt to fix this, there removal wont help matters. If things continue this way HoH will end up a solo map event which will ruin it further for everyone even you high ranked people

Lykan · Nov 17, 2006, 06:56 PM // 18:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by vapor311

Meta brings up an excellent point. What is Fame and Rank other than a Ladder system with no end in sight? What would the GvG scene be like if there was no guild rating and your standing was solely based on your wins and losses, which by the way, never reset themselves?
It would be pretty lame right? How could one compete with teams that have been around since Prophecies release? Why would you bother trying? That's right. You wouldn't. Your motivation for success would be diminished until you no longer thought it was worth playing for. It would essentially wittle itself down to a few hardcore groups who eventually would get tired of playing each other and all go their seperate ways leaving alot of really fancy hardware and oodles of bandwidth to go to waste and collect dust.

The tournament system for GvG is very different to the HA one. First off, the rewards are different and you win by claiming an alter and keeping it not by being no 1. Secondly the tournament system for HA finishes when you get to HoH, there is no progression after that, you either hold or you lose and you go back to the bottom. With GvG there is always a chance to become number 1 even if you lose a match. Personal player rank does not effect the outcome of who wins the HoH the way Guild Rank affect who wins the ladder. The two cannot be compared.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Mendes

I have suggested an optional district for players that are below rank 3 to go to find teams of similar experience level.

Meh Mendes this is an ok idea but its not needed, you have seen Euro Eng 1/2, its FULL of unranked people looking for teams, I dont know how the people who are complaining cannot find a team to get into. If they are hanging out in ID1 then they are in the wrong place.

Bread Fan · Nov 17, 2006, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by hyro yamaguchi

I say:

But also: reset fame, this to whipe out the Iway/SF/ebayed past, and make everyone equal again, after 1 month of whining HA will be good again.

Coming from someone that is ranked 3. Uhh no thanks. What a terrible idea. While we are at it let's fix the economy in Guild Wars and take everyone's money away.