So What Are We Doing at the Moment?

henchmen are a lot more limited in terms the degree of control. you don't have access to individual skill usage and movement controls.

basically, as long as anet implement the right builds, it will make sure that builds that revolve around AI will never form.

Alas this relates back to my comment on I think page three of this thread. Why do added work? When the end result is going to be, the playerbase not even taking henchmen into PvP zones when they are sub par to heroes/humans, end result is Anet wastes time making mediocre/static skill bars that no one will want, thus forcing those last 2 slots to be human. Effectively all it does is push heroes out of play and that was the initial goal, so why bother beating around the bush and just remove them from play...
It's really either or, black and white here.

Furthermore it's not like Anet needs more food on their table, they can not consume what's already there, if new henchmen are introduced would it be wise to waste further time on balancing said skill bars if they don't give the desired effect? Which again relates back to being sub par to heroes.

Which is a good thing. There have been heroway builds in the past that were very effective because of the reaction times hero have over humans. One of the most famous ones recently was Hero/Smiteway. It wasn't unbeatable, and even bad guilds could get through it if you played smart and played as a team. The problem with it was that it was effective mainly because of the heros and not the actual players. I've played heroway before, and it is ungodly easy and effective. You can basically play the game on auto-pilot and pay little to no attention and do fine because of the heros.

Even though it was beatable, it did win, and it won a lot. It got even worse when in the middle tier of gvg, it was what every other guild ran. They would reach a certain level where they started facing top tier guilds and would get stomped. But the heroway was too good to drop them out of the middle tier. They stayed there and would steal a lot of wins from players who were more talented than them. That was evident when they would give up on heroway and try balanced and then fall out of the middle tier.

Hardly anyone liked playing against heroway. It made the game dull and it ticked people off to no end when you lost to it. Playing heroways over and over again caused some people to give up on guildwars because they just didn't want to see it anymore.

But it is too little too late I guess. If anything I guess it stops future hero ways from popping up. But as people have said, the damage has already been done and it wont make today's meta any better.

The only thing I can think of this being good for is if you are in an AT and someone lags out with about 1 minute til gametime. He isn't able to log back in in time and you cant get a guest in this short amount of time. So grab a henchmen with a halfway decent skillbar and hope for the best. If it does nothing else it at least allows you to avoid the forfeit and move on to the next round of the AT.

This has crossed my mind but; when skill balances are released no matter the henchmen picked or used, is going to give you sub par results based on skills getting altered, sooner or later. So no Anet is faced to update henchmen skill bars every skill balance if effected skills have been altered, we all know how this has gone over the years. They update the bars like once a year...

You can already do this now, except doing so would be detrimental to having the slightest hope in winning that GvG. So it really doesn't matter, unless of course, you have been paired up with a real weak opponent.

I'm not suggesting removal of all AI within PvP modes GvG/HA, I'm simply pointing out adding more henchmen won't do anything in the grand scheme of things, except added work load which they seem to have a problem with.

Maybe I should apply for quality assurance within, shoot down wasted resource methods/ideas.

I agree with that and I do wish they would be spending time doing other things rather than coming up with a skill bar for henchmen that many will never use. I was trying to dig into this problem and find a positive reason for them to be doing this and I found a very minor one, but I didn't think up that bit about them needing to be updated which is an extremely good point, and something they might want to consider when giving these henchmen bars (because we both know they aren't just gonna scratch this idea).

Overall I think we are all in agreeance this is way too little way too late and the only positive of giving henchmen good skills that we can think of has negative consequences in future updates, not to mention it takes time away from balancing the game...

<----Wishes to sign up for the Krewe.

PVP henchmen arent spamming healing breeze, blessed light and Jameis gaze on one, and RoF, Life Sheath, Draw conditions, mend ailment plus mid battle rebirths on the other.

Yea ok, its only the monks I really have a problem with.

P.S. I would love to join the krewe as well.

As discussed earlier in this thread by people like Echo and I, updating PvP henchmen would be a waste of time. The only time they will ever be used is in emergency AT situations where you need to fill a spot to play, and even with an amazing build, that henchmen puts you in a situation where you are most likely going to lose. Not to mention Echo's point about the henchmen needing multiple updates in case their build becomes nerfed due to skill balances.

Personally I'd rather see neither PvE nor PvP henchmen messed with because there are far more important things to be addressed right now. But if I had to choose one, I'd say update PvE even though I don't play it just because they will be used more. Personally I think the EOTN henchmen are just fine and they should model the other ones according to that.

I have made a suggestion here:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10382201

Not to change any of the current henchmen, but to add a new type of core skilled Zaishen Henchmen to be made available on top of the current ones but everywhere in the game, both PVE outposts and in HA and GVG areas.

Let me know what you think of this idea in that thread thanks.

WoW as in Weapon of Warding. I'm proud I've never touched a Warcraft game in my entire life.



Son of a...

I do think its a great idea what they are doing, one that should have been implemented ages ago before heroway killed big part of the pvp.

You see, most of the guilds out there cannot get 8 players to play GvG/HA, so AI becomes needed. Current henchies are too bad, so its like one less player, while heroes got the potential to be overpowered and abused, as they were multiple times in the past.

Just removing heroes but not giving some AI worth of taking to pvp will just decrease the number of pvp even more.

The one potentially good thing would be if the hench bars were adequate for entry-level gvg. That could be a step better than heroes because people wouldn't need to know builds, important when the AI badly botches most human bars. It could also be a passable but weaker replacement for casual guilds and the bottom half of ladder. As mentioned though, this depends on the bars being maintained through balance updates, which hasn't been done in the past.

Test servers?
DO WANT.
I own all campaigns and I have finished school with an A mark in English (extended).
So hit me up if you want.

The live krewe is an awesome idea
and I'm glad anet is involving the community in the changes
sadly I'm 17

Hey, now, Warcraft III is pretty cool ;p

I'd be happy to join the live krewe, but I'm only 17, too. Oh well.

The Testing Krewe idea is really good! I think this is going to really be a helpful addition for ANet and a lot of fun for the Testing Krewe too!

Like noted here several times between Echo and Still... it would be a waste of time to build out new henchmen and re-update them every skill balance... Reason being, probably no one will really use them except for maybe like a Rupt-Bot.

As for the suggestion for removal of AI in GvG and HA... I frankly wouldn't mind that. Like I said before, PvP means PLAYER vs PLAYER... not a PLAYER and some AI Bots capable of interrupting and such that are not humanly possible vs PLAYER.

If you want to play in a Guild v Guild... then you should have a full team of players. Ergo the mAT rules of having all members of the team being from the same Guild. Heroes and Henchmen, not part of a guild last I checked. And if you want to use heroes, HB is the place to go... if you don’t have enough for an 8v8 team... guest out of the guild, recruit OR TA. I am just playing advocate and making counter points that there are PvP arenas already set up to fill those needs/roles. I don’t understand why there needs to be an excuse, or exceptions, to fill spots just to create an imbalance of play (the addition of AI verse Human). If you want to truly balance PvP as a whole, eliminating the AI and making it true Player vs Player is a nice direction to go in.

That krewe sounds like a very cool idea, you know i'm gonna sign up for that.

hmm removing heros from gvg and ha, now it will take more time to get all the people to play an already dead game, and A) im somewhat glad that arena net is finally listening to us after basically 3 years, but a little to late, and B) hopefully anet gets some non-pvers that actually knows what PvP is for their live team or whatever. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE TAKE OUT THE 14 DAY RULE FOR AT.GUILDWARS IS THE ONLY GAME YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY WAIT TO DO SOMETHING. ty

Unfortunately its not easy to get 8 active players to pvp. I have been in a few guilds where we couldnt get 8 players online at the same time, and heroes enabled us to still play when we wanted to.

Considering the number of teams you see in gvg/ha that have heroes, i am sure i am not alone in this. Of course i am talking about mid-low ranked players/guilds.

Their decision to take out heroes and add henches is good cause it enables people to play gvg/ha without the need for 8 players and still doesnt unbalance it as heroes would.

The point of Heroes is that if one player errors out 10 seconds before the round starts, you don't need to forfeit - you'll just be loading in to a likely loss (UNLESS IT'S AGAINST RANGER SPIKE AND YOU BRING KOSS).

Granted, an uncontrollable Henchie is better then a DC (no player at all). I have run into that myself, especially lately with all the lag issues on ANET/Internet currently. But its still taking away from a true PvP environment.

Having a henchmen for emergency situations isn't really taking away from a true pvp environment anymore than the Guild Lord, Knights, Bodyguard, and Archers are. In fact those NPCs take away the true Player vs Player more than a pretty useless henchmen would. Although I'm not advocating getting rid of them because then you'd just have HA, and I like GvG a lot more.

Heros took away from true PvP because there were actual situations where having a hero was beneficial and made the team better. As long as a henchmen can't abuse the ridiculous reaction time Heros have, they will never impact the game in that manner.

Considering in GvG/HA Heroes have never been that great in terms of real players it'll be nice to see the change. However with that said, alot of groups you can't HA with because of the requierments to get into a party. Ex, r9+ which myself and some people may or may not have. In terms of GvG, I can see getting rid of heroes, but HA? If most people cannot get into a group then I can see why people wouldn't want to use heroes.

2. Great idea.

No true input by me for the first part. I can see the community being split pretty evenly on that.

as for part 2: Great. I'd love to do that

1. Obviously there are arguments on both sides of this. The argument i would like to make against heroes is the way that BB sins or whatever frontline bring along a hero and click ROJ just as they kd an opponent. This would require a fair bit of team co-ordination to pull off with real players, so this in my eyes is an unfair advantage. The other point against heroes is of course their insane reactions or interupting or whatever.

2. Great idea, but people never come to agreements on builds in this game. One person wants a skill nerfed whilst others don't. Making sure the right people are chosen to do this is essential.

Good to see anet getting involved in the community after all this time, although i fear it has come a little too late.

3 years too late but a good try ... so you have basically fired all pvp testers after Factions and now you seek players to to playtest your game for free and sign the NDA? Good try and would work, 3 years ago ...

Another thing they could do would be to weaken the natives rule. There are alot of cases where people know people on Flists but they can't pull 4 people together out of one guild. Ladder doesn't mean anything anyways, so a single guild officer ought to be able to start a ladder match out of their guild. Everyone's already bought their champ points anyway (and guild slots are sold as easily as guests) so that point hardly matters.

My guild plays GvG rarely, and if we are honest not to a very high standard. However, we do play occasionally. One thing I have noted at the level that we play at is how often we see hero's complementing the opposing team. Indeed we ourselves always have 4 hero's as we (as a guild) can only manage 4 actual players at a time.

My worry is that by freezing players like us out, you again reduce the amount of guilds participating, because I have to say I find the idea of fixed build henchies about as appealing as a hole in the head.

What is preventing you from recruiting more players to play with? There are a ton of players looking to get into PvP but can't find a home. Why not give them one?

Yes i remember the alpha testing in which you had to be invited and approved to get in. They have opened it to the general public now which I fell will be completely worse off than the original alpha testing was.

By opening your applications to the general public, you are essentially allowing everyone that can type a say in what goes on with the game wether it be good or bad. Something can be horribly wrong or a suggestion that completely kills or overpowers a skill, but as long as enough people vote for it, it can essentially make or break either side of the game, albeit PvE or PvP.

I believe ANET has created a double edged sword with this. While yes I agree that they need people to test the updates to try and find the flaws/bugs/improvements that could be made with each update, I am the most leary that you have an even mix of the population that plays the game giving the correct knowledge on the subject. There are a lot of players to be honest, on both sides of the game, that haven't got the slightest clue as to what is the most beneficial for either side of the game. You need a mmix of players that both know the game well, know what has been completely flawed in either side of the game, and have reasonable and decent ideas on how to go about improving this. Sadly I can without a doubt say that it will be worse off than the original alphas if they do not be very very selective in who and what they decide to let in and do in this round of testing, otherwise you are going to be worse off and lose even more customers to the game.

But this still brings me to my original question in the first place. The Alpha testing by select players was determined by the devs/cr/balance team to be no longer necessary shortly after the factions release. These people were not paid to do this, they were just select players in the game that were fortunate enough to have access to skills/updates before they went live. While good and all, there was a general consensus among ANET themselves that the alpha testing was primarily useless and thus ended the alpha testing. So why was this closed in the first place, if only to realize that maybe it would be good to have this back 3 years later. What was the original point in closing it? If the game was/currently/will be revolving aroudn player imput and testing of this kind of thing before the damage could be done, than wouldn't it have been more beneficial in the first place to have left your damage control in place to find the majority of the glaring problems before they are sent to the general population?

IMO, this is different... because those kinds of NPCs are not controlled at all by party members, and they are on every GvG Map. This makes them more of an obstacle on a GvG Map then an H/H would be. So that is a different case then the one I am making.

This is my point... why just throw up your hands and say "screw it, just bring Vekk and Gwen and lets go"... GvG is the last changing feature to this game left. And there are tons of new Guilds out there looking for players to play GvG. I know my guild is 1-2 short of full core ourselves. But we go out and grab a guest from HA or look at my F-list and grab another from there. Maybe even try your allience or get into an allience that might be interested in GvG. Heck, last night, I grabbed a guest from HA, come to find out he was looking for a GvG team cause his GL was AFK for 4 months, played great for us, and is now a core member.

Go out and try recruiting... you might even run into people from top guilds that might guest and teach you a thing or two about GvG. You will never find out if you dont try. And removal of H/H from PvP would push this... those that say screw it... I guess you give up to easy, just lazy, or just dont care.

If they're looking for a biased smite monk who wants to make the line more devastating in PvE so that even Grenth laughes his ass off, they can always pm me.

So no I'm not a candidate and Anet should carefully select the right people if this Test Krewe will have a real effect on skill balances. I support the idea though.

Regina: Are you going Elyos or Asmodian?

Just curious, how many people will be accepted for the team?

Imo if anet intends removing hero use then perhaps they would consider reverting back to 6x6 again too.
As for test crew - /pickme

Looks good to me. If it fails miserably, they can always cancel it.

I appreciate the effort that they are taking in order to become connected with the community, and their willingness to give this a try. My primary concern is that the process used to select members for the Krewe will not be taken seriously as it should, or not encompass a diverse cross-section of the player base. I have been playing for three years, but although I have more experience and knowledge about the game and its history than a relative newcomer, that does not inherently make my ideas, suggestions, or insights any more important than the newer player. I will certainly be applying though, and I hope that others that choose to apply with do so for the state of the game, rather than furthering their own agenda.

Best of luck to all applying!

I think the testing Krewe is a great idea. This is something that top players have been asking for forever now...I'm glad to see it finally implemented. It's nice to know Anet is making an effort to connect more with the community. This will, of course, take some of the burden/blame for skill updates off of themselves (which is a good tactic, knowing the gw community).

I agree with Ariena that the Krewe should be selected very carefully because, as he stated, sometimes a new player's opinion is just as valid/valuable as a veteran's.

I'll most likely be applying.

Well spoken, Ariena.

I echo this word for word.

Interesting forthcoming attractions.

I like both 1. and 2.
1. has been requested for yonks.
2. has become a necessity since it appears they a. do not have enough time / people to do it themselves and b. all the problems lately in having bugs slip through in the updates and new systems going live.

I would like to know more about 2. Only certain people from certain countries will probably be allowed again. I am more qualified than most to do this type of testing.

Anyway, will look out for it.

Thanks for the communication, Regina. Appreciate it.