[Dev Update] Heroes' Ascent Changes Coming

which is why me(r2) and my friend (r6) are going to start an r6+ group right now lol

I dont know. but i share the same view a.net used to have. it was doin well until the hardcore pvpers started to whine that killing charrs before they can do pvp is grind and complained not having the appropriate skills to counter the builds of the then dominant Koreans (who obviously went through PvE content).

I still wonder what things will be if the PvP only creation character interface wasn't implemented. Maybe the then whiners who learned to accept that goal of A.Net have now their fully prepared PvE characters with UaS coz of easier skill acquisition through PvE. Maybe PvE won't be taken for granted. Maybe more PvErs are now good PvPers and the PvErs of today have a clear path to follow.

If only they had taken this view from the beginning 8v8 would still be around...

Oh well, this is CERTAINLY a step in the right direction. Here's hoping...

Wow, im still amazed that people complain about ranked groups, not taking them cause they are "leet gw players".
So basically what u are complaining about is other people are better than you? ... If rank truly means nothing why dont u get a bunch of low ranked / no rank players together and make a team ... there are working builds posted on various sites .. including this one

If you want to be accepted into high rank groups then play HA ...alot. Unless you pvp started the first month of GW then they probably had to go on a ton of low fame runs to get any sort of rank....I know I did. You may think that it takes a long time to find mission+bonus group for thunderhead keep, but you will need a lot more patience if you expect to get rank/get good at pvp.

-Every once in awhile my guild leader will be bored/whatever and decide to take a low rank into our team ... every time that player lasts one run cause he dosent know how to play the build, and more importantly operate with the team effectivly, and simply has not had enough experience to play relaxed. If a player is stressed out in a match he cant stop and think about what HE should be doing instead of just attacking a target / pressing searing flames followed by glowing gaze , etc ... u get the idea. HA is not just kill as fast as you can, a good balanced team will see what the other team is running / see how they are playing and if each player is good he/she will know what to do based on experience of seeing similar scenerois played out in the past.

If you want to get good groups then establish them, in almost every group formed that is high rank and not some gimmick build people ask their friends and dont pug, because they have played with them in the past and know that they are good; all high ranked players are not good, people know this and will not accept them into groups if they have played with them in the past. Earning fame is a slow process at the beginning, if you establish a good group of people that you play with often you fame will increase faster than when you started.


...playing a couple hrs of gvg or "other pvp aspects" ... u think this makes u good?

If you/your guild are good then why dont you guys HA together too? ... and since you are a compentant pvper that means u should have played with hundreds of different people, so if you were even decent people should ask you to play in their groups....stop complaining and play more




Pvers need to understand that if you are going to make the transition to pvp that it is a major commitment and if you expect to be successful you need to dedicate the time. If not then they will find themselves complaning about rank discrimination on guru, asking for a change

Well well well!

HA.

Heroes Ascent.

The home of bitter rank discrimination by a few if not many stuck-up full of themsleves players who think they are god's gift to Guild Wars PvP.

I just hope that they make changes to make this more enjoyable for avaerage players and not the atmosphere this place has.

I for one am rank 5 and it cost me a few many months to get to rank 5 and of course many will now make adverse comments to this my reply but I am not bothered with what you may say.

The truth of the matter is that HA constitutes, for unranked players, to spend a lot of time trying to get into any form of team and then, whether by luck or bad luck, they start to progress, high ranked players (names of a few I could mention here but I wont) insult them, humiliate them by using words like these:

NOOB go back to PvE.

I have a brain for sale for each of you noobs.

Rank 1 or 2 = Nooby brainless basher.

Bow to us we pawned you you noobs.

The list could go on and if the OP is to better HA, Gaile these are things that you should know even though you may know already and nothing can be done about these sad individuals, but I sometimes play the devil's advocate.

Reading reactions I decided to write first advices:

If you want to make 8v8 HA - do it but only as another competition (one of gvg tournaments?).
Keep ghostly 6v6 way as it is now. Ha 6v6 make it special and interesting, developing lot of new builds and whats most important - make it different in play and builds from gvg!!!
Its good there is ra, ta (4v4), ha (6v6), gvg (8v8), ab (12v12).

Things that should be fixed fast in HA:
-ghostly bodyblock bug (he is not moving back or any other direction when bodyblocked, big chance to bug - We had that several times)
-relics misplace lag (you run with relic, move arround enemy and it shows that you moving, and suddenly you are back on stairs blocked by something and hited by other players , 95% chance to have this, me a lot of my friends have this evry time we play relics... its so annoying)

They did do a test weekend for 6v6 to test how it'd be accepted actually >_>

And according to Gaile their numbers showed that 6v6 was overall accepted by the public.

But some people are so "leet" that they always need something to complain about

Double fame had something to do with the popularity of that weekend.

Stop underming the discussion by flaming HA players by calling them "leet" or whiners etc. If you don't like HA or the people playing, why are you trolling topics that concern only them?

Breaking news....! We all started at r0. If one wants to get into the game, they will play and break the rank barrier such as you have done. Also, people QQ about rank discrimination, but if you're truly good, you'll be found early on. I played with my first few r9s when i had 177 fame, was running with r9+ groups by r4. Rank discrimination? I think not. Skill discrimination? Yes. Fact of the matter is, lower ranks have a reputation for not being very good because the large majority of them are not very good. They all cry about bitter rank discrimination, etc., etc., but in reality they simply do not have the skills and experience to play with the upper echelons. ZOMFG, I wasn't good enough for the NBA.... DISCRIMINATION.... no, I'm just not good enough. Get over it. Rank really doesn't mean anything, there are numerous high ranks I've had the misfortune of playing with that I would not touch with a 30 foot long pole they're so bad. If one really wants to get into HA, they'll spend the time getting that rank and/or skill, regardless of how much the rank actually means.

Ok I have played GW for a year now and 2-3 month I played HA. Is was SO BLOODY hard to find a group. So I think that Anet should do something like put these people that doesn't have a rank into distict where 0 ranked can meet 0 ranked can form a 0 ranked group that face another 0 ranked group. That would be perfect.
Or those people can just found themself a guild that does HA.
I really want to play HA tho but I don't know any such build either... (r2)

Does anyone know what theyare talking about with the skill changes for the weekend? Do they plan on nerfing (skill balancing) a bunch of skills for the weekend then keeping the nerfs they feel that will improve the game or will the skill changes permanent but maps and win conditions only for the weekend? Also will they create a poll on their website or the fansites for us to make our comments on what was good or bad? Hopefully so.

I think we can all agree that a pve player trying to break into pvp/ha is a grind (you can deny this all you want or try to flame me for saying it but its true) and most of your time is spent running around in circle in HA lfg. (this is how it was for me unlit i got r3 then grps forming and quality of players got faster and better. This of course got better when i was in pvp guilds. New players are not accepted very well in pvp, it is rare to find a guild that takes in a new pvper and shows him the ropes, yes it does happen I know but definitely rare. This is why there are so many gimmick builds people want to win so they will get in any build they can when they start. They get into one that gets them a little fame so they stick with it for a while learn the maps other builds and stratagies. So basically imo gimmick builds like iway /bspike/ rspike/ etc and all the newer ones since the 6v6 update have kept HA alive with new players. I know many wont agree but my post my opinion. The fact is that besides new skills and new chars and the 6v6 HA is the same after a new chapter, that is a big factor of why people leave GW pvp or get their r3/r6/r9 or whatevertheirgoal was then leave because its always the same thing. RA/TA got new maps for each chapter why not HA new maps and new win conditions would revitalize HA so hopefull this will be acomplished with the weekend coming up and we can all get back to playing the game instead of complaining/flaming ftl on tthe threads.

I believe that the skill balances are supposed to take place in "mid-January", so I'm guessing that they'll happen a bit before the weekend as part of anet's regular updates. Also, I don't think anyone is denying that getting r0-r3 is a grind, we're just saying that it is necessary and people have to work for it, which is a good thing as it results in an overall better player and mor experience. As for fotms keeping HA alive, /signed, more fotms easier it is to get into HA. This is yet another reason for 8v8, it was easier for new players to get into the game (although the complete lack of competition in 6v6 makes it easy in an entirely different way).

I'm fine with HA and people that play it overall.

Its the....Oh..."leet" people and whiners that noone really likes. The people that seem to think their opinions mean more when they don't and they always have something to complain about. Which is hypocritical in itself since these are the same people that just can't get enough of what they are complaining about.

It cheapens any discussion like this with bias.

It is quite obvious why Gaile posted this here. To get support from the PvE and "casual or maybe never even played HA" players. Now all these players will bash the dedicated veterans that have played HA/tombs for almost 2 years. I like how Anet can sell a product and then COMPLETELY change it just to try and make it more noob friendly yet dissing the people that have bought the game and expansions from day one.

The key difference is that the people that "started at R0" when prophecies just started (like me) don't have to deal with rank problems since everyone is R0.

People who started a few months after that has to deal with some discrimination but since the momentum of prophecies is still going strong, there are still many R0 of various level.

People who started another few months after (aka air spike/smite/spirit spam era) must grind R3 with unranked occasionally, which isn't that hard.

And another few months after that (Iway era), zero chance to join any ranked group, and most notice unranked group can't make any progress because of ridiculous skill difference, and chances are learn nothing because they got rolled before they even got a glimpse of what's going on......people started forming dedicated "N" group and guilds and completely ignore the rest of the people, some leaves, and the rest fotm grind their way up.

And now, population entering HA is slowed to a trickle (just look at the amount of dist), with many leaving due to the rank problems reducing the population of unranked even further, trying to form an unranked group is like trying to find a pin in an ocean...THERE'S JUST NOT ENOUGH unranked people to form friends list, and most guild has rank req.

Conclusion: Unless you wanted be labeled fotm farmer, new people should just give up. For them....its like telling a newbie guild to go up against a top 10 guild and then asking them "what advanced strategy did they use" and trying to get them to learn....its just not possible.

HA, from the beginning, should be separated by rank to begin with. R0-2 ONLY fights R0-2, R3-5 ONLY fights R3-5...and so forth. Anyone saying that forming unranked now is as painless as Apr 2005....well, think again.

Thanks for the laugh. Haven't seen a flamebait like this in ages. :thumps up:

Well, IMO, HA is a chaos at the moment. I will explain: I am not playing HA before the patch that removed the heroway, and this doesn't mean I am a "herowayer", the problem is the only thing I did (in HA) before Nightfall release was heroway because the incredible chaos (IMO) invaded HA after NF.

With "chaos" I mean all "popular" builds disappeared in some way with NF (and some skill changes in a patch near the 6vs6 patch, I think) So, now in the observer mode (and in-play) the only I see are "random" ALL different team builds not near the popularity of the all builds of all time, even the "popular" builds now are not popular at all in comparison with the past.

Now the only chance for play and actually win good fame is with a good PvP guild (I am not in one) or being r9 or more and make good teams, I mean, there are a LOT of r6 (or less) people; That people need over popular, easy and fast to make builds (like IWAY) for make something in a over populated and chaotic HA world when people are still testing builds after NF.

I hope developers do something for fix that problems, and speed up the "popularity" of some builds or easy up the play for r6 (or less) people or whatever, specially before the release of campaign 4th that could easily make HA a chaos again.

I don't remember that chaos in HA with the release of Factions, I am not really sure why, maybe because new Nightfall professions impacted more in HA, also NF new skills.

I wanted to share a few comments:

There seems to be a misunderstanding about when and why we put 6v6 into place in HA. Sometimes, players mistakenly say that ArenaNet made the change based on reactions to a double-reward weekend. In fact, the decision to change to 6v6 came a number of weeks after the weekend, and came as a result of a large number of players saying that they enjoyed the 6v6 very much. Would all who said that, early on, still share that preference? Opinions differ as to whether they would or would not. However, I think it's fair to be clear about when the change was made, and on what criteria it was based, just for accuracy's and fairness' sake.

Secondly, I think that placing major news is sometimes appropriate on more than one subforum of any particular site, so I posted news of the coming test weekend here, in what I perceive to be the largest and most-active forum on Guru, in addition to posting in the smaller Heroes' Ascent Forum. I truly did not intend to have any sort of influence by placing it here, or there. Actually, I just wanted players to know about the upcoming weekend and invite them to participate. And yes, the invitation does extend to those who play HA daily, who dip into HA once in a while, who have left HA because they don't care for it in its current state, and even those who haven't tried it at all. I'm sorry if that is a point of concern to some. I know a few have said that we should only allow X players or Y groups to est. But in testing this level of change, we'd like to have a larger number of players involved which as a group represent all different types and styles of player.

Lastly, the skill balance testing will take place--as a test--at the same time that the Heroes' Ascent Weekend takes place. What does this mean? It means that instead of rolling out skill changes in a final state, players will have a chance to test not just the new mechanics of HA and the proposed revisions to that venue, but a significant number of potential skill changes, too. You're therefore will be beta testing both. At the end of the weekend, the skill changes and the changes to HA will be rolled back out, feedback retrieved and analyzed, and the final changes will then be implemented into the game.

Hope that info helps, and thanks for your continued input.

I only have 1 fame, because most HA teams are rank determined, yeah I will be happy if that happens too.

They enjoyed it because of the double fame. If you had done double fame and 6v6 on seperate weekends, you would have different player reactions.
I'm confused...will you be delaying the already late skill balance yet another week, then not actually implement it until a third week? Or will you give us the Jan 2nd skill balance on the (12th?) then run a new balance test during the HA weekend?

Gaile

I read this as the changes to HA and the proposed skill balancing being as one?

I do hope that the consideration of the skill balancing, (and any subsequent debate/assessment), is not just going to be decided upon by those that participate in HA, which to many on these forums seems to be the case, wrongly or rightly.

Gaile, 2 Questions

1. Are you saying the Skill testing will be limited ONLY to HA (as in, the rest of the game isn't affected)?

2. Are some of the changes going to help stamp out Rank discrimination. If so, I could finally try to encourage some friends to get into it (A few have a strong distaste for it due to the rampant unranked hate)

While we are at it please remove survivor titles, sunspear titles and gladiator titles.

Diffirence is that in PvE mode your titles not so much effect to getting group like in PvP.

Hmmm, I started December 2005 and overcame it just fine... ( I mean started the game in Dec., I started HA much later)

I know a million people are going to jump down my throat but I think they should disable the ability to show the Gladiator and Hero titles, as well as the Rank Emotes while in a PvP outpost.

Anyway, thank you so much to the ANet Dev team for giving us this weekend. Although HA is still fun, rank discrimination and draining of unique builds is destroying it. (3 Districts on a good day as opposed to the original 8-10 that was present months before Factions came out). I really hope the update will be very large and will take place before the release of Chapter 4.

Um... if you have friends who want to play HA, get them together and play?

For example, I played 90% of my way from rank 4 to 8 with the same pool of about 12 people. So I didn't give a damn about rank discrimination. If you have friends, I don't see why you can't do the same.

Gaile with all duo respect people enjoyed 6vs6 because it was something new and exciting and most important the double fame.

But you already knew that... just in case lol.

Honestly, stop complaining about rank people have overcome rank discrimination, its not that hard if you get off your ass and actually make an effort, stop being jealous of ranked people, your pve experience does not give you a right to get into the most experienced HA grouos.

Yes because spamming "lfg" for 30 minutes really makes me a better player. The grind is unnecessary, no matter how hard you try to justify it.

Hell I think I'm gonna go grind a bit right now because I totally need to get better at spamming "lfg". Let me know if you know of any other "necessary grind" so I can go waste my time some more.

*hint hint*

who said you need to pug to get yer r3, find some pve friends who want to get into pvp, and go at it. go on forums. etc. bitch less about rank discrimination and go play

Unfortunately, that image doesn't capture a "hint" but rather abuse of a system that was put in place at the request of players. Seeing that, and hearing the complaints of players who would like to use the system in its intended fashion, I imagine Support may be forced to start actioning accounts. Either that, or we change, adjust, or remove the trade portion of the entire system and go back to WTS in town. Please, folks, if you know anyone doing this, tell them to stop -- it's not going to make the slightest difference in the decisions of the designers, and it's extremely antisocial and counterproductive.

About testing: The skill testing will take place everywhere and at the same time as HA testing. We don't want to try to do two sets of testing on two different days. And yes, it's testing, pause, and then finalization. It's is ab it discouraging to read some of the negative comments, as if players feel that they have an entitlement to skill balancing, and within the timeline that they feel it's required. There is a downside to the testing process: It may be a bit longer to get the final skill changes into the game. There is an upside: The skill changes will no doubt be better because of the testing. In any regard, I do believe the finalization would occur in a few weeks or even less than that, so there's no need for heavy concern and please, don't go into this with a negative frame of mind -- it does neither you, us, nor the game a bit of good to do so!

Yes, I'm aware that part of the player approval for 6v6 was because it was "new and exciting." Some of it was probably coloured by the double rewards. But regardless, those facts do not necessarily end us up with 8v8 as the "obvious choice" for HA. It may come; it may not come. But let's wait and see how things progress and not make arguments in advance of evidence, ok?

As you know, I'm always clear on the fact that I am not a designer. I am intrigued by the idea of "ending rank discrimination," but I'm very glad that I do not have to decide on precisely how to do that. Aside from creating "zones" for different ranks or levels of expertise--and I assume (only a personal assumption, not an official statement!) that we do not want to divide the HA community--I wonder if you guys can provide some ideas about how to eliminate that discimination. There are some who like the more exclusive nature of the format; there are those who would like it to be more open. It's fairly easy to see what would support the exclusivity, but share your thoughts on how to achieve the goal of greater openness and a warmer welcome for those who are less experienced.

I do understand that nothing should be turned into a cakewalk, and naturally I agree. Challege, difficulty, and even obsticles to overcome are not negatives! I had an interesting post exchange on that last night, as a matter of fact. So I don't think that players would appreciate a list of suggestions that boils down to "How to turn HA into Bunnyland." (Right, guys? ) But if you have suggestions for broadening HA's appeal while maintaining the delightful challenge that it offers, we're all ears!

Thanks.

Regrettably, I think there really is no effective way to earn rank discrimination without causing a mass migration of everyone r5 or above to quit HA and/or the game...

I agree with Gaile on that those abusing that need to be taken care of. And lets not forget the ones who are on the edge of flames here, hopefully they have been warned. Tired of hearing some PvP'ers attitude on this,(not naming names). There is a reason why they changed HA as it is, sorry if you dont like it. Only choices that can be made are by yourself, dont like it well I'm sure you can go find something else. After all its your choice. Regardless what you think there is a bad rank discremination in HA. I'm quite sure some will call me lazy and get off my rump, but let me say this, There's a reason why i have 2 fame in 20 months of gametime. THEY DONT MAKE ENOUGH ALCOHOL TO PUT UP WITH MOST OF THE PvP'ers THERE.

Umm the reason is called sloth and lack of initiative. Seriously, I do not understand why people complain so much about rank discrimination. Sure it does exist, is it a problem, only to those who see it as a problem. the problem is that they do not want to put forth the effort and earn their rank, make groups, find friends to HA, or join an HA guild. All I can say to those who complain is quit QQ, it doesn't do anyone any good, especially you.

As for the weekend, maybe itll inspire me to HA again and be more than a lever and map deletion.

Do the players that have no rank or a low rank realy believe their chance of winning increases if high-ranked players can't show their emote anymore?


In 3 months the Title dissapeared and the Forums look like this:
"ANET, pleeeaase remove Friendslist cause all good parties only play with people they have on their Friendslist and I can't get on their team because they can always whisper friends."

I hope these new changes make things a lot more interesting and I also hope they let it stay 6vs6 for now. Look at GvG... it's worthless too at the moment.

As long as there is rank there will be people who choose to play with those of similar experience. If you remove rank you remove the main reason people play HA.

IMO, if people can't be bothered to find unranked groups, or start their own, and build up a friends list they're probably not ready to move over into pvp. Stop whining and put some effort into making some friends.

6v6 HA is a total scrub arena anyway, I'm not really sure why any new players would even want to play there.



Thanks for your efforts Gaile, but 6v6 was a bad move. Fix it or you're going to lose even more players.

So... if there is nothing to play for people won't even play it in a very short time.

That leaves 2 options for those that wanna have fun and don't want rank:
1. You abbandon the Rank-system and the place is soon as desolated as the Jade Quarry.
2. Play with people that have the same opinion as yourself. Since... people that are ranked don't fit in your Friendslist cause they have other objectives (Doesn't count for everyone... but if you want it black vs white)

Forgive me for what I am about to post but I feel this needs said.


First let me tell you a bit about me and my experience with online gameing. I run a guild that is going on 10 years old now. We come from the land of Mechwarrior a few of you might have even played it. In mechwarrior we as a group could "lock" up our servers and invite in who we wanted to play with ect. We were in total controll of the "community" we choose to play with. Due to our league matches or just fun scrimages for the most part it was nothing but fun. The result was we as a unit only got brief glimpses of what went on in "public" open Mechwarrior servers...

This brings me to my point. Were you to ask most anyone from my unit about pvp or HoH they would say they hate it.... The reason why has NOTHING to do with the maps, this build or that build it has to do with the people. The overall general community that plays pvp is hatefull and rude and as a rule not helpfull and that is putting it mildly. Simply put the internet is the land of no or very few consequences for your actions... In a competitive environment this is bad, it brings out the worst in most everyone... After all I can call you names because you beat me or I beat you and what is done? what can be done? This is the MAIN problem that ANY online game that offers any style of pvp has. People get sick of getting insulted because they won or lost and simply move on to something else.

Hall of Heroes brings to mind just from the name a place where Honor and Skill and a great chalenge should be expected.. Instead in my time there earning my rank 6 in HoH it was realy little more than a internet insult machine. This is the biggest problem at least to me about HoH and general GvG and PvP gamewide. But to get people to "play nice" in a unmonitored competitive environment is a impossible thing to create.

My suggestion is somehow creating a way to monitor the behaviour of pvp players in this game. GvG HoH and PvP areas could ALL benifit from this. Give us some consequences for our actions and behavior online in these areas if you ask me or most anyone in my unit this would be the single best improvement you could make to pvp in this game. Give people a reason to behave like something other than rabid dogs fighting over the same bone.

One idea I have is creating a way for players to "register" for this "new" way to pvp. The only example I have to draw from is the "league" games my unit played in mechwarrior. The "league" we played in had rules for behavior and direct consequences if you broke those rules. Everything from you were kicked out of the league due to repeated offenses to you were banned from competitive play for a few matches. I am not suggesting that anet kick people off of all of guild wars because they were rude in pvp...Merely you wouldnt be able to play "registered" pvp due to bad behavior poor sportsmanship ect. ect.

Why then would people want to play "registered" pvp then? Listing players individual standings as "registered" pvp players on some webspace somewhere giving them recognition for there skill as a pvp player gamewide. I can foresee in game rewards for the top 100 hell even the top 1000 pvp players in each country. Giveing rewards like this gives people the reason they need to NOT behave like the rabid dogs they are now in pvp.


This idea could be taken and used in many different ways to create many many different aspects of guild wars pvp not yet considered. Such as the "closed skill set" pvp tourneys I have seen disscused and other very intresting ideas. But if the pvp environment is to improve much more than map changes and skill balanceing needs to be looked at.