[Dev Update] Heroes' Ascent Changes Coming

I started 20 months ago, and have been playing HA since before the first ever PvP weekened event, when they made faction actually feasible in terms of unlocks.

As for your presiously mentioned task, if it is still "I'll pose randomly in the next few days as a newbie in HA asking politely for someone to show me the ropes" that would be a futile attempt because, as I have already said quite at lenght it it nobody's job to how you the ropes. That is your job to not waste other people's time by being totally incompetent for no good reason.

If your task is getting into groups, once again, that would be futile since you have already stated that you have high preferences as to what kind of group you would join and would most likely refuse the majority of groups forming.

Just what exactly is your point? What are you trying to prove?

Brilliant idea. High ranked players would NEVER play with people they didn't know then, and unranked/low ranked players would never find groups. I thought the point was to make pvp more accessible, not more frustrating via crippling the current grouping systems in ridiculous ways.

Furthermore, pvp wouldn't be very fun, or competitive, if you were forced to play with bad players rather than being able to pick players you know to be good. I'm pretty sure there's enough of that in RA already.
If your understanding of the game is so lacking that you can't create your own well thought out builds, then you need to start working on becoming a better player. Learning how skills work together and keeping up with the metagame is an important part of becoming a successful pvper.

Besides, Anet already gave us an in-game build repository of sorts via observer mode.
This is actually a very good idea. I'd love and in-game system similar to www.gwshack.us for sharing builds between players.

2 problems with that
1: You can't change the minds of thousands of players to make them not care about rank. After all, you used to iway exclusively.
2: Newer players to GW might not have friends to play with, and even a group of real life friends might not have enough pvp experience to get fame.

You mean because of the players who used to take HA seriously. HA has been a joke since December 05, when IWAY and the new observer mode kicked into high gear.
Which is another sad part of the game that Arenanet does nothing about. Hopefully, when chapter 4 is released and skills that kill players with 1 shot exist, they still won't care, and I will be able to sell my account easily.

so what are you suggesting then, let both of the teams have almost the same skill bar? do you want fireball to have the same damage as lightning orb? swords having the same damage as axe? scythe having the same damage as wands?

see, there will always be skill combinations that will be better than your current favorite combinations, but good thing there are counters for all damages - skills, movement etc. during our time, we've seen supposedly good balanced teams ball up in a ward while me and my partner trapper trap within them and they seem to enjoy the conditions and damage. or monks that tank damage (while 2-3 warriors pound on them). or they just leave spirits. you get the point.

i think people claiming that builds are overpowered are overreacting people who don't want to bring the appropriate counters and get better coz they are used to running their own builds and bringing useless counters for overpowered builds will just destroy their build. the only overpowered skill imo was Signet of Might and skill combination the Dervish/Monk builds.

i also blame the observer mode for IWAY's notoriety. IWAY guilds were wanting to be in top 100 to be one of the first GW TV stars.

Unfortunately, you missed the point I was making entirely. There were two skills that differed based on whose side you were playing. Dwayna had Avalance that had a 1 second cast time and crippled the target and all nearby targets for 10 seconds. Grenth had Yellow snow which removed one condition and made your next snowball cause disease. The problem is that there is no ballance whatsoever between these two skills.
Hidden Rock is a preemptive glyph that you use when you are outside of other people's action range because of the long cast time and the mesmer interupt that negates it entirely, because it has no duration you should always have it up before engaging. Yellow Snow is also a glyph, with a two second cast time that removes one condition but because it is also a glyph, using it means giving up the hidden rock that you should already have up. There are only 4 conditions present in the snowball fights: blind has no effect, daze is only a problem if you have snow down the shirt on you and the disease only comes from Yellow snow (which at a 10 second duration amounts to 80 damage which is neglijable unless you want to take down someone on a sliver of health who is hiding in a snow fort), and then you have the cripple. If you are crippled, and you stop to use Yellow Snow, you give them enough time to catch up ot get hidden rock up, also you give up your own hidden rock, meaning that if they do take the present away from you, you cannot retaliate untill you get the glyph up, which can be interupted. As such, the Yellow Snow is a dubious skill at best.
To make matters worse, Avalance is a AoE cripple which denies you one of the most basic strategies in the snowball fights which is to hug the runner so that you may instatnly pick up the present if they are KDed.

The inballance between the two skills is colosal, and the fact that you respond by asking if I am advocating making fireball and lightning orb, or wands and schythes,do the same damage, or give everyone the same bar shows that you put no thought whatsoever in your reply. Skill ballance and over/underpowered skills have nothing to do with my personal preferences or yours. Do you even understand what skill ballance means?

sorry my bad. and you're right. avalanche != yellow snow but i was looking at a different view, the fact that snowball got almost the same generic skills for all players so i thought

about the comparison and one skill leads to auto win, well, with random players playing the snowball arena, i can't tell really the difference. it's either i get a bad team or good team. but comparing one skill from the other, and telling yellow snow is more overpowered than avalanche is like saying that apple is more nutritious than oranges. they're both different skills. remember that snowball's win condition = capture 5 gifts. and i simply look at this way, avalanche applies cripple and yellow snow removes cripple. cripple along with ele snares is a crucial factor in gift runs. the obvious advantage of avalanche is being balanced by the yellow snow.

but see my previous unthought reply still i maintain. lol

Unfortunately one is AoE while the other is not, not to mention that it removes the previous glyph, and the huge difference in cast time. As for the ele snares, they have no place in this discussion because they are part of the class skills. I'm going to stop here because this has gone waaaay off topic.

yea, let's just let them serious HA players discuss rank discrimination, rank devaluation and 6vs6 being the cause of reduction of HA districts.

nobody else is pissed at the new 'party search' feature? see my previous post for suggestions :P

Man, my recommendation for you is ... just play the game, RA are the best for learn whatever build you like. About being low rank or not rank at all in HA, well, just with r3 you could enter r3 teams, etc, etc, etc, all will be easier with time, but never perfect sadly, I am r6 and not actually playing HA, I am waiting for a "balance", not exactly in the skills but in the people, teams and populars builds itself; Obviously Arenanet can help in this, not idea how but they are the developers, they can, I hope

Sadly new campaigns change the game a LOT, and I am not sure if 6 months are enough to balance things this time. I hope the next campaign will be created with that problem in mind, I mean, don't break the popular builds with the release of the campaign (popular builds that will slowly appear in all the months before the release)

Look people talk about rank discrimination: Im sorry despite there being very bad high ranked players and good low ranked players the fact of the matter is that rank is an indication of skill and it is not unreasonable to want to play with people of simmilar skill if you believe it will increase your chance of winning.

Now a lot the low ranked players will complain that they will not be able to get into a group and will not learn anything. Here is my answer: if you are r0 join r0 pugs and then see who you enjoyed playing with and put them on your friends list, keep doing this until you ave a decent size friends list and then form groups with the vast majority being your friends or friends of friends. Playing with mostly your friends list is not exclusive to high ranked players, I have been playing with my friends more than pugging since r2.

Finally in response to saying you will not learn anything, that is not true. In playing you will discover which proffessions suit you best, what sort of play style you work best at (e.g. pressure, spike, hex degen etc). Part of guild wars is which skills you use, but in fact the most important bit of playing is WHEN you use skills and when you do things: it ranges from simple things like not wasting a key adrenalin skill when someone is pre-protted to analysing the other teams builds and as a result deciding when to move in to cap or take the other team off the altar. These are just a few examples: this game is all about timing and this is something you cannot be taught it is something that only expirience can teach you: being spoon fed by high ranked players will not help you and it is most certainly not thier duty to teach you. Expirience is best teacher, yes you may lose a lot but you will start yo see why and this builds up your expirience as a player which will lead to your rank increasing.

This is so true,

imo, there is no real rank discrimination, no1 started at r9 so please stfu with your "I'm pr0 I can play wiv r9+ w/o getting my r9"

You dont wanna know how much people got through their ranks slowly, took me over 2 months to get my rank 3, if you want a title invest time in it ffs, everyone did that so stop QQing and go play another game w/o discrimination.

edit: oh and btw, resetting fame would be the most stupid idea ever, I got my tiger and rank 9 and I would like to keep it since I barely play HA anymore, I cba to get it again just for a bunch of morons QQing about "rank discrimination" while it's just their lazy attitude.

nice, good for the pvpers but personally i would like to see 10vs10 in HA. i dont do HA that much but i really want to see all the professions being played in one run. and I really missed the:

EEEEKS!!
FAT MAN BEHIND ME! FAT MAN BEHIND ME!!
OMG HELP PLS!!
YOU STUPID SUNAVA
BWAHAHAHAHA(and so on)
(sorry thats how we noobs plays HA, we love the excitement and getting pwnd by other guilds)

of my fellow guildies talking through our vent or ts
6vs6 is just too lonely

Sounds nifty, but I doubt the 'noobs' will have a great chance at winning

I have done HA with my guild like 1 time and GvG 2 times so I do not know anything about it..but I am curious, why is 8v8 so much better in everyone's opinion than 6v6? Same skills, professions, etc just 2 less ppl per side so is it just that you have 8 friends that you play with and you "miss" 2 of them or is there something actually better about 8v8?

The main point is: in HA you need a few skills to be able to cap the altar, you need Song of concentration, you need Ward of Stability. So you're allready being forced to take either a primary or secondary paragon, and/or a primary/secondary elementalist with points in earth magic. Then you need dmg output, so the elementalist also needs certain dmg skills, since the amount of characters is limited you will probably take earth dmg skills in order to get some killing ability, so basicly you're being forced to take sandstorm.

Then for defense in the current metagame you need someone offering their secondary to monk so he can have draw conditions to draw all the daze spamming thumpers, because 2 dazed monks=gg. Another secondary wasted because of this.

This will be the same in 8v8, however then you're able to take 2 other characters which will give something unique and different to your build. You got more space to actually do something in your build w/o running overpowered and skills that have proven to work.

In 8v8 you can take more counters, which let good teams be able to win from any build around, in 6v6 your options to take counters are limited, so it becomes more a "rock paper scissors". If you have a better build then your opponent, then your chances on winning are way higher in 6v6 then in 8v8.

That's my problem with 6v6, to much build depending.

Edit: Just found this at TGH:

Coming from #gwp probably

My idea to make HA more friendly to new players.

Problems:
-hard to find a team
-hard to win with better groups
-newbies jump to better areas giving stronger groups easy win (all golden areas and hoh)

Solution:
HA should have 2 steps of competition. Like in sport tournament f.e. tenis - you start with eliminations or you start from 3rd round because you have high rank. Groups that have low rank start from zaischen, earn moral boost and fight other low-rank groups. Game count fame of all players in party then it moves party to one of 'start' points. Low ranked group for me should be counted if sum of 6 persons fame is <2000.

Let me write an example how it should work:
Low ranked group gather and start, they win with zasichen, earn 8% moral boost and move to underworld. They meet first enemy - another low ranked group. They win, earn 1 fame and move to broken tower - they meet 2 other low ranked group that passed underworld (no skips). They win, earn 2 fame and move to scarred earth when they meet 3 other low-ranked groups that passed broken tower. They win earn 3 fame and move to new location.
It will be new area, lets name it 'crossroad' (completly new idea, new win conditions map or just altar map), where they will face better groups for the first time or other low-ranked that passed scarred earth (3 or 4 teams on it).
Ok stop now and lets see how >2000 fame group starts.
They enter battle but no zaischen - directly to map, no moral boosts. They start first battle 1v1 on new designed map. They win, earn 2 fame and move to second, new-designed, map when they meet 2 other groups (altar or some other idea map for 3 teams). They win, earn 3 fame and reach 'crossroads'.
So there will be 3maps+zaischen for new one (and 6 fame to gather) and 2 maps, no zaischen, for experienced groups (5 fame to gather). They met each other at 'crossroad map' and after winning it (all now gain 4 fame for this win, and +1 fame for each next map) they move forward in competition (golden maps, I advice to throw out unholy temples-relic map) to reach hoh. Reward for winning hoh for the first time (after all run - no skips) should be much larger, for holding it - normal.

Would be great if this help somehow to make HA more friendly to low-ranked players.
Designers - there are also good solutions in sport and sports tournaments and in history (ancient arenas like in roman empire, medieval knight tournaments etc).
I strongly support 6v6 HA - if some part of community want 8v8 back, I agree only if it will be another competition/tournament (maybe one of gvg tournamets) that will give fame (or other points/new ranks) for winning.
GL you make this game each month better

p.s. I strongly support Bocjo Bassannn - in his idea stated in post nr 120 in this thread:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=120
GW really needs more monitoring (offensive or non-rpg/non-person nicknames; guild names, spam, insults).
People must feel consequences for their actions in game! Also GW is mmorpg - RPG - game. Monitor nicknames and guild names to be more rpg and it will improve game much...
Where are game masters in this game?
About punishments - they can be short (banned until nick/guild nam change, banned for few days-week for insulting, only for continued rule breaking or serious rule breaking like hacking should be long or pernament bans). I worked as tutor in other game (1/3 way to gm) and its really not hard to promote group of players (some exam and work/report verification for them) that will help to report rule violation dircetly to custommer support or game masters. I can pm info with some ready solutions...

On the issue of having players fight players of a similar rank i agree. Being english i will explain like a true englishman by comparing it to football. Atm HA currently works like the FA cup in which it is a knock out competition between randomly assigned teams. This means that bad teams normally get killed by good teams, typical rank 0 gets their asses handed to them by r9+++. Sometimes an upset happens when the underdog team wins.

If it were to be so that teams fought teams of similar rank then people argue 'the rank at low levels would be meaningless' or 'they would lack experience'.

This is not true. Take the league system here, you only move up a league by proving your better than everyone in your current league. Why not the same here?

If you only fight players of your own rank, and win, then surely you are better than them? Therefore you have earned the right to fight players of the next rank up. Yes, you will have your ass handed to you on a silver platter the first few times but thats the only way you improve, giving you oppurtunity to prove that you are better than everyone at this level aswell. Moreover, it would restrict people to the rank at which there own skill takes them.

Looking forward to potential HA changes and skill balances that may result.

BTW: When do i get my paycheck for beta testing nightfall 3 months after release?

Its true that this is a good system however in an arena that depends on PUG to form teams this idea would NOT prove you are better than others your rank because you wouldnt necessarily be on the same team as you would be in a sports team.

As for guild groups/friends groups then yes you would improve as a team over time and eventually outplay the others in your level. But since this particular arena relies on individuals forming different teams each time, there is no better way to gauge HA success other than rewarding individuals for being on the winning side of each match (AKA Fame)

Wow...where to start

1) PvP focus of Guild Wars -- why make PvE "chapters" every 6 months then, they could just add more skills to existing maps for PvP and save tons of money, guess you must be wrong

2) "People in english forums" (How many languages do you speak? I cannot read any other forums myself so I don't knkow what they are saying, but then maybe you do know all the languages in the world and spend 3 weeks to read all the posts everywhere) -- probably you are just wrong AGAIN

3) "Be Gratefull for what you have" What exactly do we "have"...I'll tell you we "have" a couple of zones that we can never play in because our region doesn't have favor...and I sure hope you are not American because if you are then you are obviously the "scrub" since we never have favor

And last but not least...TAKE PVP INFLUENCE OUT OF PVE!!!!!

Every run i do gets a skip and wins halls for like 4 fame,

Hardly ever lose and still get shitty fame,

Mores maps + more players = good fame and happer haers

I have some advice for ANET: no more pointless map gimmicks like the new RA maps. I mean... come on. How many times do you see people give a crap about moving the flag to get an extra 40 dps? Out of those times how long does that dps last before they simply move to the other 80% of the arena unaffected by who controls the altar.

I wish HA was the main course of PUG pvp. In order to do that you need swarms of players (attracted with new cool maps) and you need constant skill balancing to keep it from turning into ToPK or old HA where people only run B/P and IWAY respectively. Sorry I can't be more helpful... but it confuses me when the developers will release skills that totally shatter the metagame, not nerf them for weeks, and not nerf them enough at first, but their big change to RA maps is a little altar that does 15 damage to nearby enemies.... wow. Don't do that with new HA maps (I know you will make some because how else will you get people to HA?)

Another idea: more item rewards in HA. Maybe adding an item chest for winners of the map right before halls will encourage more PvErs to try and get better at PvP. The thing is, if we can stimulate enough growth in the population, and get people of ALL skill levels to play HA, then it won't be this retarded one-sided crap we see every day with only r9s winning everything.

The reason nobody makes PUGs in HA is because they are swarmed by better and more organized teams. This will never change unless we can have masses of PUGs join, and then they would actually have a chance of beating the other pugs, getting to the map right before HA for the l33t item drops, and then losing in halls to the better pvprs. Sound good?

ANET: I take cash and computer hardware as payment.

So you propose to increase the amount of morons running around with healing breeze, mending, and meteor shower (without glyph or snares) so I can farm more fame. Sounds good to me. r12 here I come!

You do reliase r12 will mean bugger all if the PvErs zerg rush HA

as a comment on the quoting of Izzy's preference of 8v8 vs 6v6, i always felt that the 6v6 change was to change the pace of the game, smaller teams forcing quicker matches, more battles, etc.

But instead players went with the defensive route and forced LONGER matches and standoffs with holding style builds.

And thats just not very fun.

Hopefully the new changes will rectify that as per designed.

It won't mean much less than it already does since anyone "farming noobs to r12" probably had 10-15k fame already anyway.

Good point But .... are not that "super defensive" problem caused by PARAGONS? that are monks with warrior armor, casting special "enchantments" that can't be removed?

Ok this has to be said.

Im sick of the fact that people assume that we want 8v8 cause of bspike.
IT's a LOAD OF CRAP.

people want 8v8 cause it was better, 6v6 was only popular cause of double fame.
im sick of people claiming it'll bring back iway - it got nerfed. get over it.

theres NO reason why we SHOULDNT have 8v8. cause we want it.
YOU WANT TO BRING PEOPLE TO THE GAME, GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT.

you want to make money, give the people what they want.
and seriously, unless it goes to 8v8, i will NOT be buying the next expansions.

waiting for 8v8 to come back!

heres hoping 8v8 stays away

About that over posted 8vs8 vs 6vs6, maybe a new "official" poll will clear things; I am plenty sure some months ago 6vs6 could win, but people mind change with time, I am not sure now. IMO is not important the amount of people in party, HA could be even 1vs1 or 12vs12, my problem right now is I just normally play over popular builds, I don't like invest a lot of time in the HA outpost, and even being my guild a good one, I love it, ... is PvE.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10096953

Our poll, currently at 75/25 in favour of 8 vs 8. Other sites show similar results.

Really GW is free? I paid over $200 canadian (one being a collectors). Hook a brutha up.

I think they should delete all his gold, its free

(edit: post irrelevant - parent deleted)

Wow, lol no monthly fee does not equal free, you still have to by new chapter to get major new content.

Why is it exactly that ANET is running this test weekend with 6 vs 6 ? This makes me think that theyre not really considering bringing it back, because, imho, if you test the new maps and situations with 6v6 it would be extrememly stupid to then bring 8v8 into it where unforseen problems might arise...

The main requests from the people who HA have been to bring back 8v8 and new maps (in terms of majority). There was a very small minority that actually said it was cool staying as it was, and there was an even lesser number of people... all unranked... that called for the rank/fame system to be changed (please note: if that really happens, and I and hundreds others wasted so much time to get our ranks up, then i guess the people profiting from sales of this game are gonna see a HUGE reduction in sales once the new game comes out).

Does anet have ANY plausible reason for being so difficult about bringing back 8v8?

I know they're going to be nerfing a bunch of skills ( i shudder at wat exploit someone is going to discover and make 1.5k fame before anet fixes it...remember that dervish skill) But to promote more build variation, while taking into account that many ( but not all) people will gravitate to the builds which are easiest or more effective, 8v8 is the answer to that , not 6v6, no matter wat map changes...

it is a numerical fact that with 8 you have more variation than with 6 variables.

So please Anet, stop ignoring the pvp community and bring back 8v8.

I liked some other guys idea that said that when you win a match there should be a reward, either monetary ( say each party member wins like 100g for each match or something) or items ( a chest at the end of each match for the winner)

Over all the new maps should be interesting to test, i hope they are not just a reduced version of alliance battles though.

I hope you will read this

Merlins Valor

Good
OMG!

So I guess you have some proof of a causal relationship between being good and being r12 tucked away in some folder? OK.

In a nutshell, yes I plan to increase the amount of 'morons' running around in HA. But for your own benefit take a minute and think about what will actually happen. The teams that have no idea what they are doing (yet) will only make it to the next map if they are better than the team they are facing. The same type of competition happens on each map. So obviously, you get very little fame for beating the newbs on the first map, but as you progress through the maps the newb teams are fewer, yet the fame rewards are higher.

I agree, you would be able to do 1 and 3 fame runs much easier and faster if HA drew most of the GW population in, but to get r12 as easily as you claim it is would mean you needed the same thing you need to get r12 now: a team that holds against other really awesome pvprs for huge fame runs.

So.... whats your problem? The average ranks of players is inflating no matter how you look at it. I've spoken to an r9 that told me about a W/R build he made with like 6 stances power attack and rodgorts (wtf... you know this is an ele skill right??). If GW lasts long enough one day people might realize what r12 means - exactly what it means today: "I earned x amount of fame..." the end. It's no indication of how long it took or what profession you played or even if you were a strong player on your team. For all the rank system knows you bonded for 7 warriors and did 1 fame runs for a year.

As far as the old guard is concerned, the r12s that got that way because they and 7 other people played well and often: games change. And the HA system definately needs some change.

The important thing is we provide some kind of incentive for new players to get into HA so they cangroup with other HArs and fight other newbs for practice. I think it would be a bad idea to make a separate area, instead we need to just get more people interested in HAing. Perhaps winning a map in HA should provide gold??

*****I mean come on.... the only reason people play HA is because they like that particular style of GW PvP. It seems freakin' obvious to me that the only way people are going to find out how fun HA is is to provide some kind of bonus for doing HA instead of RA, so that newbs can get together and start pugging for practice.******