I think Anet's direction has gone wrong

RA and HA is different because the objectives are different

the current HA has its stand, but it is not popular, perhaps there is nothing wrong with it, it is just the time to transit from RA to CA to HA is too wide, players cannot see the link in between of these arenas towards to the player skills development... not with standing the jump from CA to HA is quite new and wide.

just like not many people will play 2 years of RA then play 3 years of CA then start to play HA.... they will just go straight to one of the format they like and stick to it......and develop skills within the arena instead........

what my suggest is doing is to narrow down the gap between CA and HA, it also help players to focus on objectives that is less confuse for a first few times players who jump in directly.......

That niche used to be filled by Team Arenas, though - same format as RA, but more competitive on account of being more organized.

team arena is dead, leaving Codex Arena.

COdex arena ---> HA

4 to 8 players
limited skills to all skills
similar less organised maps, relics, capture, holding lighning tower, resurrection to bigger maps.

I don't know.....do many players transit from RA then to CA then to HA?
or just jump inside to HA?


perhaps should have a start over in order to enter HA, a particular level of codex rank is required to obtain...

but in the end the map/skills/players objectives in HA cannot be easily understood with a first few game plays, notwithstanding the time to form a group, altogether it requires years...

The first three HA maps are deathmatches. Are they really that hard to understand?

I mean, sure, the complexity compared to 4v4 deathmatch is exponentially higher, but that's simply on account of the higher team size.

first 3 HA maps are death matches true..

but suddenly a map jump, the second map can become capture point...players are not expecting capture point, so early on, so they confused.

the build requires to form for capture point+relics run+hold altar+ death match compare with only for death match is totally different...

perhaps the transition should be

RA-->CA-->GvG-->HA...

even the objective in gvg is less complicated....

in the end the link of transition in todays guildwar pvp is lost.....in my opinion

The different tombs formats aren't that difficult to figure out. The main problem is that the people still playing are insurmountably better than the average person organizing a low rank group.
Sure, you can drag a gigantic carrot into RA to draw PvE players, but the reward inevitably can be bought with enough (PvE) grinding, or PvE players tolerate PvP just long enough to get the item, and leave.
A full matchmaking system would be ideal, seeing as just about every competitive game has one, but it's way too late to implement one. The closest thing to that would be Rank separation. Ranks can't be smurfed without another account, and perhaps by giving incrementally better rewards for higher ranks, there's less incentive to.
This is, of course, if Anet really wanted to try and revitalize organized PvP in a 6 year old game. The game started out with a PvP focus, after all.

I don't like they way they're offering PvE rewards for playing PvP. Zaishen Key farming in PvP is already very lucrative and then they add all of this.

I don't enjoy GW's PvP much at all yet I'll now feel compelled to do it in order to keep up. There are also more rare pets and tonics that very, very few people will get their hands on which has always been a sore point to the majority. (I've opened the Zaishen Chest just short of 5,000 times now and haven't recieved on of those everlasting tonics either! /whine)

If they want to encourage PvP, then great, but they're going about it in the wrong way. People should do PvP moreso because it's something stimulating, competitive and enjoyable - not because they're lured in by the shiny stuff. Since early on, shiny stuff (emotes) was always the attraction of Tombs' and drew the hoardes of ADHD sufferers to furiously grind the first maps with gimmicks. Then came the HA Zaishen Combat day. Good for numbers, bad for the integrity of the format.

Will I go in to the gleaming success of gold capes? After this update, there's even more reason to sell invites.

It's hard to recommend improvements to the actual PvP itself because there are too many formats, too many professions and too many [poorly balanced] skills.

Roll on 2016 for GW2, I say.

If you are so autistic that once you get a map change you go "omg, omg, what do we do, what do we do?? WE'RE DOOOMED" and you don't take your time to look into what you're getting into, i.e. READ on wiki or here on guru, where there are excellent guides, don't bother playing. I'm not a PvP'er, I will never be, well maybe, if they're gonna let us wait for GW2 even longer. So whenever I do the occasional "let's PvP for lulz" with my guild, which has some pretty exp PvP'ers, I'm always the noob (can't always be the pro) but at least I have the brainpower to adapt to situations, and if I really don't know wtf is going on, I just ask on TS and they will gladly explain to me.

Also, if you don't wanna get on vent or TS for organized PvP or high-end PvE for that matter, don't bother playing as well.

I take dota as an example, as I played a number of years in AT / MM /RT Dota systems

AT
arranged team dota, similiar to todays high-ended gw pvp, organised team bashing non-organised team,

AT players argue bashing is to let newbie learn to organised, but the fact is dedicated newbie may starts to form AT to bash other newbie, they stick with their own AT long enough and when it breaks it take a long time to form and gather another AT again, also some AT will only keep on bashing unorganised newbie, and will never try to compete with other AT, to me there is no improvement, which the current HA situation is kind of forcing it AT vs AT, but the fact is organised AT is hard to find, and when dedicated AT dissolved, is not easy for them to reform another AT, but move on life to another faster pace less rooting system.

to me... AT is not a good pvp system in a sense of maintaining a player base, but is good to create eliteness, which they are not really that elite.

RT

in dota, there is shuffle players into groups, which is similar to random arena in gw, in this system, the skill level of players are random, but the pace is less stressful and causal, sometimes you get good games, while other you get bad games, the factors are random, it is a better system than the AT in the sense of maintaining a player base, because it is less hardcore, players comes and goes without the need to spend time to form their own groups, players can develop their own skill level but lessor the dedication of moving as a group of one in the sense of AT, but it doesn't mean they are not good as moving as a group, just not having the bonding of AT, in the end when all the skill level of players are high enough in the group, that bonding is irrelevant.

MM

there is match making system in dota, some based on elo, that is an equation to calculate how good you are by the number of killing/dying/assisting etc, than just only wining or lossing.

this factor can helps to make 2 groups more balanced, when in the fight the tension is more competitive, however, the level of skills are based on the player base, the artificial competitiveness can help the player base to improve eventually, however a bad mm system can lessen the incentive for a player to become good, as a bad players tend to group with better players, good players want to be less stressful, they don't play with their potential, and the game can still remain competitive....

the skill level will be determined by how dedicated the player base is

mm in my opinion can maintain player base, if there is enough good players, good players refer to understand the game and play with their full potential, however usually that is not the case....good players will tend to like AT because is less stressful for them to bash on newbie than bring up match made newbie who group with them, the reward scheme in this system is more effective to provide incentive for good players to stay and play well.

Conclusion
in the end different systems have it own flaws, however the main factor to sustain a game is not the rt/at/mm system, but more on how easily the game can be played well...

dota do not have many reward system like gw with all these items, but they still have many people to play because of the randomness and balance of the games the players face each day....the pace is fast, it doesn't require too much time to get a game to go.. as 5v5.....the dynamic of dota in an hour of game is more fruitful than an hour of HA/pvp in gw.

It's as someone said, HA is simply an old man's club now, nobody new is going in because it's viewed as a place for elitist jerks.

Nobody wants to help new players in, they just want some new fodder to play with on a stepping stone to halls.

The only thing that could save HA is a matchmaking system, but that's not going to happen given the complexity of team setups that dominate HA (Even if they are braindead like EoE bombing was).

It's done, accept it.

if gw1 is done, then gw2 is done also.?

Me neither.

Did I get shiny emotes for making several GWAMM characters and playing PvE? I most certainly did not.
Why then does PvP give PvE rewards?

This update will not make me start playing PvP after five years. On the contrary, I'm going to ignore it even more.

incentives should have not been put for random arenas and codex, its a low form of pvp(sometimes reminesceneces pve), these rewards should have atleast been exclusive to HA and gvg to concentrate the population more in these 2 forms which have been near dead for past few years.

Said it before, what you need is a league system of some kind.

Ok I like the idea of pvp just as when I was a kid I liked Sunday football but if the top 5 teams in the country were in my Sunday league I would just give up.

Its all very well to say get better or give up but how do you get better when you are just anihilated before you can begin to imagine what your doing wrong.

Each game type needs districts just like pve when it gets busy, win enough times in district 1 then off to district 2 and so on.

Better players will only play against similar ability players pvp titles will be harder because easy wins will be more uncommon.

Ok its only a bare bones idea but I really feel something like this is needed, where new players can find their way before being thrown into deeper water.

I'm not disagreeing with the concept of matchmaking for the purpose of producing "fairer" opponents, but keep in mind that the method in which the two 8-man formats were initially designed would have accounted for this automatically. In Tombs, unexperienced/underskilled groups are unlikely to be playing past the first few maps, usually against each other. In GvG, of course, the Elo system is used for both the determination of relative skill level and matchmaking.

In both cases, the system fails without a sufficiently large playerbase. What caused this playerbase to atrophy in the first place is another can of worms.

How can you ignore something even more?

PvP needed more incentives to make people unfamiliar with the format(s) try it, the problem was that the incentives came too little too late.
Flux was clearly never thought out, and the changes thus far have little to no impact.

* The game itself is complicated. You have to learn dozens of skills and complicated game mechanics before you can do anything, nevermind winning. You can't just grab a gun and start shooting. But this is a core characteristic and nothing can be done about it short of complete redesign.

* The match recordings are a joke. GW needs full server-side recordings which can be downloaded and played in the client, with stop/rewind/frame-by-frame. And with full information on what bars are used and what's going on, not having to guess what the little yellow arrow means or watching for skill animations and sounds -- are you kidding me? For a noob a GvG replay is just a random mess from which they don't get absolutely anything. It also needs ability to spectate live, both PvP and PvE.

* Smaller formats. People need to be able to build up to 4v4 and 8v8 through 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or formats where it's pure deathmatch or free for all. Team-based gameplay is exponentially harder than single player.

Take the average or mean rank of a group (or both) and match those against those of other groups

If they want to smurf that, they'll have to buy a new account

EDIT: Could also be done for GVG

a good mm system doesn't just look at rank as it is not a good indicator on how skillful a player is

^ this.

I'll admit to being a PvEer. I have a GWAMM, I SC multiple times a day. You know what my favourite PvP format is? HA. My alliance do casual PvP and we've won and held halls a couple of times. We're by no means hardcore PvPers, we do have people with some PvP experience, some with quite a lot. We're in the process of making our PvPing a bit more organised as we've started to get more interest in PvP in our alliance as a result of us being relaxed about it and focusing on the FUN of the formats. We know we're not the best. We know we're not going to win all the time. We do it for the fun that comes with it and we tell people flat out if they're not on Vent then they're not coming, same as for high end PvE activites. Vent isn't about being yelled at if you screw up. It's to co-ordinate and to have fun with the people you're playing with. Of course you're going to QQ about a bad HA team if you're not able to co-ordinate a spike properly because you're too busy typing when you could just be listening.

Considering how inexperienced most of the people I HA are and the fact that we've actually had a reasonable amount of success, I wouldn't say HA is too hard. People just need to change their attitudes (I know I did) towards PvP and realise that while there are a lot of douchebags who play it, not everyone is like that.