New Designer, Updates, PvP, XTH, and more! courtesy of Linsey Murdock

holy crap xD that sounds like fun....a lot more fun than the current RA/TA...

except those words didn't come from the CR

With such good info from Linsey, who is actually involved in the game and knows what's going on, sometimes I wonder what the need is for the CM's. I don't recall them actually saying anything this useful.

This next update will be interesting to say the least...

Sealed Deck Ladder ftw

I'd love for some year round costume brawls.

I'm another pve person, so the update doesn't concern me very much. Never cared for HB. Sealed Deck sounds interesting. I'll probably try it once its implemented. XTH might not be back. Bummer. I like free stuff. Dont really play much anymore. So I guess it doesnt matter if it returns or not. Not much to say.

The idea of new pve quests is the only thing I'm interested in. Come on new Halloween jokes! Come on follow up quest to Gwen's quest from last year. Also..Mox's quest was supposed to be followed up at some point...I guess we'll have to wait until next year for that..

This year's Halloween art contest should be changed to a joke contest. Need..New jokes...Please...Please..Please...Can not stand to hear paragon joke one more time.


Sometimes I think Linsey is just wasting her time and effort. I think her enthusiasm/desire to work would be better used on Guild Wars 2 related matters. GW is a horse on life support. There's not much you can do for the game anymore. Its time to kill it and move on.

Please keep to the topic, and please desist on trying to argue/discuss PvE vs PvP or which is better, more important, the game focus, etc.

I'm hoping sealed deck will be similar to the Zquests. Every day a new batch and everyone has to use them in the new arena. Or something like costume battles, which is second to dragon arena in awesomeness.

Im really sorry to come out like this but, people need to stop assuming this is gonna be something along the lines of costume brawl, this is sealed deck, if they meant something like costume brawl, they would've described it, "costume brawl".

again, http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Sealed_Deck

i don't understand why everyone seems to think this update will be amazing though it could be because i'm not a pvp type of person:/ However, as such, most of what i took from what lindsey has said has been bad news
Basically there gonna slow down and reduce the size of future updates but to make it sound better, they said what everyone wanted to hear which was that they will be more 'open' with what little (in my opinion) we can expect from future updates I hope this update has more than what is stated though or it will be severe letdown to have waited so long in game time because when they first announced these content updates i actually had a surge of new hope that their new content schedule will mean bigger updates like the anniversary one.

I may be wrong on this one, but didn't skill updates used to be weekly?, or at least bi-weekly? then monthly, and now bi monthly i hope this at least means bigger and better skill balances:/

maybe like two others have said, they need to take the dying horse off the life support machine and maybe lindsey would be better off as a gw2 dev with her enthusiasm and the ambitiousness of gw2
oh well i hope that a new dev will at least give a good enough reason to keep the horse alive for a little while longer till gw2.

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Game_updates/2005_June

Not really instanceskiller. Skill balances were NOT that frequent. Rose colored glasses and all. In fact, when they started doing them monthly, skill balances was actually more consistently done. For the longest time, the only changes to skills was to fix bugs. Very few values were actually changed for a while when the game was new. And the first time a skill actually got its functionality changed completely only happened like 1 year ago.

And really, yes it is a PvP centered update, but PvE already got a huge update earlier this year with the 4th anniversary stuff.

...so for the people that liked HB, we just need to gtfo?

GG

I might try and grind out my r3 Commander before the thing gets shut down, but I'm so glad to be giving up TA and HB for some kind of Sealed Deck play.

Almost forgot. Thanks for coming on board, Rob. Also, it's nice to see that ANet really does want to be a lot more open about their ideas, and I'm looking forward to what they'll be doing next. It sounds like whatever PvP update that's coming will be here sometime in September or October, so I'll be trying to keep ahead of my college coursework until then.

I'm sure those three people can find something else to do.

Well looks like the XTH is gonna go away finally so thats good news. Zcoins are going to be the wave of the future, too bad I don't have many.

This. Nobody cares about Hero Baddles except baddies, and TA has been gimmick vs gimmick for so long I can barely remember when it was fun.

Hello I'm your neighbourhood local HB baddie

Bit more than three actually smart arse.

None of the players from Hero Battles are too happy about this change that has been decided.

So we have started a petition even though it will probably not even get glanced at we're still going to try because we love the format and do not want it deleted.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10398610

How can the number of players playing HB be compared to that of RA. Hero Battles is not mandatory to unlocking other areas of PvP whereas RA is required to play to progress to TA/HA. Plus RA is used as a testing ground for new builds not proper play. Whats next aT's for RA? So far the only players that feel this is a good idea is the ones that tried Hero Battles and failed at it "Oh yeah remove HB thats a great idea, this sealed deck idea is awesome!" Those people are going to get a shock when they find out they're bad at sealed deck too. Why don't we throw in a little kiddy play area with big spongey skill bars thats limited to 2 skills and that makes pleasent beep noises to keep these players entertained.

The problem isn't that the format has a small player base. The problem is that it requires half a brain to play so the retards give up after 10 matches and say its a bad format then skip back into RA and keep there fingers crossed for a monk so they can get themselves a glad point running their meteor storm Warrior.

So HB has a smaller player base than the other PvP formats. So what? You'll probably find that these players are far more devoted and passionate to HB than every 20 RA players put together or many of the other PvP formats. If the idea is quantity over quality then screw it, I'll play WoW.

I am here for the keeping HB alive petition. Even if our Fan Base is Small the ones that HB are very very dedicated and many of us have 100s if not 1000s of hours under our belts. How can you just take that away from us?

Also here for keeping Hb alive, its just so much easier so quick to make a team and you dont have to worry bout getting paired up with Idiots

yea ok fun, can we have commander title removed if r1+ isnt acheived? pleeeeeease lol

I wonder how many /roll, /rock, /paper, and /scissors that translates to.

I'm sort of confused about your plans with the commander title, like will you be able to add both a commander statue and the new title statue to the HoM? And you said that the commander title will count towards the kind of a big deal title track but in order to count toward the kind of a big deal title don't you have to max the title which no one has done for the commander title yet and i doubt they will be able to in a month.

TA, HB gtho.

I welcome our sealed deck overlords.

HB is niche enough that keeping it in play probably won't be cannibalizing sealed TA population.

Forgot to welcome Robert Gee to Live Team, he sounds like a match for Linsey . Re-reading the devnotes, I realise how HUGE the work undertaken by the Live Team is, in terms of actual development I mean. Automating a process long after the process has been in place is no easy task and I'm sure it'll allow the Live Team to be relieved of a lot of boring manual work. And the change of tone of the devnote is an excellent indicator of things to come (GW2).

As I posted in the TA section..

The sealed deck should have replaced HB alone, leaving TA intact (though possibly with some skill fixes). The charm of TA is that it was the best format next to gvg; a format that needed far less planning and organization but was almost just as competitive. Making the most of one's bar, adjusting one's bar if needed, using it to its full potential and in perfect coordination with your team mates' bars for the bars complemented each other - that's something that wont ever be possible in a sealed deck where one cant choose their own bars and is hence limited to a rigid selection of possibilities. Or at the very least not to the same extent.

Sealed decks like costume brawl can be FUN for a while, but they can't ever be competitive or be as rewarding as TA used to be for the very same reason - because they are sealed, because there one really doesn't have a choice but to keep on playing the same thing over and over again. The arena had SO much potential, but all of it was wasted and disregarded through the past years, until it was finally finished off when anet implemented HB - that ladder should have been implemented in TA, you silly, silly people. It would've been SO GOOD if only you took better care of it and separated it from RA years ago - I mean, not like one loads into goddamn HA coupled with another TA team after 10 wins in TA. There is NO rational argument behind RA loading into TA after 10 wins - it is but poor decision making.

Along with this..
TA might be in a bad state atm, but far from deserving to be removed for mere convenience...leaving it as it is won't hurt anyone, you guys have missed your chance to add a ladder to it, emotes and remove its connection from RA long, long ago, so at least let it RIP you vultures.

Also, to all those who qq because they get farmed by the regular TA teams and cannot make a decent run - that won't change even A BIT in costume brawl. You are still just as bad - you will still get farmed just as much. If you think it's only an issue of builds that let you be farmed up to now you are VERY wrong. So do not voice your opinions if they are completely irrelevant to start with.

So TA should stay on for the sake of a handful of regulars and a couple dozen more title farmers?

I've always wanted to do more TA, but every time I manage to persuade some friends to join we end up failing miserably, people get discouraged and never return. The skill level of the regulars is simply too high compared to the amount of players available, there is no way new players will ever get a footing in that arena without being severely masochistic. Outside the matches against ra leftovers you're almost exclusively fighting a gimmick or "the regulars". No, I don't think losing to karla's crew is the big problem, the gimmicks are. Is anyone even denying that TA(outside of HB) is the most degenerate meta? Blockways, unbeatable shove, hexstacking. There is no way you can make a build to counter all that with only 4 bars available.

Some scream for a revert of aegis, like that would solve the problem with shove. Now all you need is a ranger who can reliably interrupt 3/4 cast shove. Yeah, and where do you find all these rangers? I obs gvg a lot and let me tell you all the rangers in the top guilds miss these casts ALL THE TIME. (I mean not literally all the time, but quite often) That's fine. The problem in TA is that missing shove means something just died. While this might be a good solution to you top dawgs, do you think this is a fair entry threshold for newer players? Of course not, any fresh blood to TA get quickly ushered out or pick a gimmick themselves. "Abuse a gimmick, be a top tier player or GTFO"-arena is a joke arena.

Anet has shown no love for TA. (Well they did nerf SoM which was absolutely shockingly nice) If they don't have the resources to make a few skill balances to this arena it's better off dead. Put it out of its misery. I'm sorry karla, I like the TA concept but it's been suffering for too long now and deserves a remedy. It's like taking a pet to the vet and being charged with an operation that's way too expensive. What do you do? You pick the cheaper shot.

Players that genuinely enjoyed the format didn't roll...I don't think anyone did rock,paper,scissors why? ROFL Don't assume because a bunch of players turn up on double points weekend and start rolling that is what all players do everyday.

so, RA will be the only way to get glad points ?

damn, I intended to look for a TA guild to get the 180 points I needed

guess I'll just have to monk in RA then, and if I don't fail, I'll get long winning streaks


btw, if RA = only source of glad points + no more TA switch after 10 wins, they HAVE to fix sync joining, or people may abuse it even more (I might even abuse it myself if they don't fix it )

rawr's mAT winning build sums up all the problems plaguing TA (r/a abuse, mantra mesmers with humility, stance mo/w's etc) pretty nicely. Guys, we ought to delete gvg, for its beyond "balancebility" and has degenerated to a degree where repair is no longer feasible.
I vote gvg be replaced by a 6v6 sealed deck with: defy pain power attack mending wammos, signet of judgement monks, cripshot rangers and so on and so fort. Who's with me!

Well, I'm sorry to pop your bubble, but the regulars obviously have the advantage of having more experience, knowledge and skill than newcomers do. However, you shouldn't forget all these regulars used to be newcomers just like you - the only difference is they stayed, perhaps they proved to be especially talented at a certain class so they could stand out more from the new comer crowd, but it still took quite a lot of time for these regulars to get there. It is absolutely the same in gvg, so it is very pointless to give that as an argument in favor of deleting TA, because then we'll be best off if they just completely delete gvg, ta and hb and leave us with AB and HA alone.

As far as shove is concerned, its been proposed often enough that the smite extra damage be dealt with, but that was before aegis and heart of shadow took the already gay build over the line. And considering nothing was done in the past, they just dont care enough to fix it - despite the fact it abuses the 8 min limit and the maps to the limit.

For the rest of the problems you're experiencing, read my first paragraph. I can fully understand what you mean, but that's just how pvp is like. Also, I think the most degenerate arena was, is and always will be HA.

I'm sorry, Sankt, but with the arguments you have provided, they would have to delete gvg too just to be fair. TA isnt harming anyone; its a game format as old as the game itself (unlike HB...), so i see this attempt as a huge "crime" against GW. Obviously, only new staff could come up with something as outrageous as this.

I love the idea of openness and have been begging for it for a while...and I like several of the other ideas...but something about this note scares me.

Automating events (they didn't already do that?), removing TA and HB in favor of a format where they don't have to worry about skill updates, content updates being more frequent (and I would guess, much much smaller)....all of that just sounds like we're prepping GW1 for it's death. It sounds like we're setting up GW to be almost self-sustaining, so that we can move on to GW2.

Look...I'll buy GW2 and probably love it...but for the next 1-2 years, I would like to enjoy a game that isn't just being maintained. I would like to enjoy a game that is actually having real work put into skill updates (every 2 months? Really? Can't wait to see what "degenerate metas" take over in a model like that), real work put into content (are we seriously not getting a content update? This is what we get? A promise?), real work put into events....not that we've seen that in a while, etc.

I love the ideas, I love the new approach to openness, and I love that you've added another dev....but all of this seems really dangerous (and no, I'm not afraid of change).


Oh, and RIP Xunlai Tournament House. You may not be dead yet, but we all know that they're not going to invest time in it to fix you when they can easily say they couldn't figure out the problem.

*long-winded sigh*

I think you missed the part about me being positive about TA. As a 4-man arena I see it as a nice alternative to gvg when you don't have the manpower to form a full team. I would much rather Anet nerfed shove, r/a's etc and toned down all hexes slightly. But as Linsey just said they don't have the resources, and they never did if you look at TA historically. (Again with SoM as the exception)

You know you are wrong about the gvg comparison with regards to balancing. The whole game is balanced around gvg. Gvg = Guild Wars. The fact that the recent update gave birth(not very surprisingly to anyone but the Anet balancer I guess) to r/a garbage does not mean gvg is not the center of balance. I'm sure the r/a will be short-lived(that is 2 more months till next skill balance). Anet judged Aegis(basically only used in gvg) to be too powerful and altered its functionality. By removing a possibly over(?)powered skill from gvg it totally ruined TA. Do you see where the focus is?

But I don't know.. I like you karla so maybe you should be allowed to continue in TA as it is now. It's not like its costing Anet resources to just have it linger on. It's a bit of an embarrassment to have such a degenerate arena though.

Looking forward to the sealed deck-thingie. Costume brawl has always been my favourite.

ah ok thx for clearing that up hawk and i think i forgot to say welcome rob to the gw team i am however, still not hugely overwhelmed about the upcoming update though i guess i could give the sealed deck pvp thing a try.

Obviously you don't play the format at all.

The /roll, etc. only came from people in very low ranks who wanted fast commander. Those who genuinely like the format don't do any of it. Obviously you DON'T play the format at all... you just went in on double weekend, saw people doing the emotes, failed epicly, and said "PLEASE DELETE IT!!!."

You have to get over the learning curve to get in the high ranks in HB. Most people stop before they "finish" the learning curve, which is why the player base is sooo small.

As fun as HB was when I didn't run into someone who wanted to /roll or whatever you do nowadays and then they just left....I'm not really gonna miss it at all. (And no I didn't just play on weekends/Zquest days.)

even though I rarely TA, I will be sad to see it go a bit.....but not that much XD

So They are trying to make everything automated so they have more time to work on other things? Sounds good to me, I just hope it doesn't have a lot of kinks.

How can it be an embarrassment if they dont care about it to start with? How can you say that they don't have enough resources to do something about it if they are willing to sacrifice resources (and obviously they still have some left) to take on a task such as creating a completely new arena with completely modified maps is? Come on.

Just a thing about costume brawl...it's kool and all until you face synchers . And until the first week is over.

Also, I know the balancing never depended on TA and that despite the fact MANY broken gimmicks from past and present were/are first abused in TA before moving over to gvg - so one could say TA is a good indicator of what gvgers should brace themselves for in the future. But i guess that's not a reason enough to at least take a look at it.

Yea,,they are doing something that is normal in the MMO industry...
How great.


Anyway the Sealed Deck isnt that bad of an idea,but I dont think it will be popular for too long.

Getting rid of hero battles instead of trying to fix or tweak it is the dumbest thing I've seen this company do so far. And thats a pretty long list of stupid things too. So what most people don't care about it? most people don't care about presearing either. Why not get rid of that too? Many people want R3 commander to add it to thier HoM and take that to GW2. I, like many others, have yet to achieve R3. I was in no particular hurry as I always just assumed HB wasn't going anywhere. So now the grind begins. Thanks alot anet. Quick question, do you ever wonder why no one EVER has anything good to say about your company?

Hero Battles is broken. Needs to be gone.

Anet has made the best, and basically only (worth mentioning) free online game - and soon to be masterful MMO - game thus far.
Pretty sure roughly 6 million people have something good to say about Anet. If you don't like it, no one will miss you when you quit.

I'm personally looking forward to these changes, and greatly appreciate the light shed on the dark that has been the news of updates.

I think we are in agreement on this issue, we just approach it differently. We would both prefer some skill balancing for TA rather than have it shut down.

It is a bit weird how they explain their lack of resources for TA skill balancing but still end up designing a whole new concept. However, I'm not working at Anet so you can't really pin this decision on me.

Hopefully this sealed deck stuff will be hoops of fun, time will tell. It it was my decision though I'd pick the safe route and devote the resources to a full TA overhaul which would definitely boost the format.

Given Anets rationale about ending 2 broken arenas to create 1 successful I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The only difference between us is that you will be very sad to see TA go and I'll be just a little bit sad, but mostly "mkay, whatever".