Henchman Skill Bar Contest Winners!

That's why Magic tournament rules do not have the "originality" rule.

Even if we decide to treat your latest interpretation of the originality rule as serious, the Magic parabole fails. Such a rule is not needed, because players understand that they are only allowed to make decks out of Magic cards. The only purpose that rule served is confusing the participants. How do you imagine GW players could use skills that are not property of ANet in their builds?

Why does this appear only now, after the winners have been declared. People were wondering about this rule since the contest was announced. I'm sorry, but this simply feels like a dodge.

I don't understand why you guys keep nitpicking on the contest's rules: it's completely beside the point, and gives ANet the edge in this discussion.

What is clear as day and undebatable from every point of view is that ArenaNet made a mistake. Don't get fooled by tactical legalese posts, you guys are in the right. Here's how I see it:

• The official rules state nothing about a potential AI update. Anyone reading the official rules and knowing the henchmen's behaviour well enough would never have submitted a bar with e.g. Bull's Strike in it.
• A community manager came on these forums and posted misleading information such as "common gimmick builds are not likely to be picked" (proven wrong by the results) and "builds that will not be immediately made obsolete" (proven wrong by the presence of certain powerful skills); for this, the company is at fault for being incoherent about their intentions with the CR office.
• Assuming by absurd the information posted was reputed by the company as pristine rather than deceptive, and the vast majority of the community misunderstood en masse, then the community manager would have been at fault for not being having been able to convey it in a timely and unmistakable fashion.

There really is nothing else to say. But there's this issue with ANet not being able to admit "sorry, we made a mistake, let us patch it right up"...

I have refrained from posting in this thread in order to not restate the obvious.

But what you just pointed out here, is pretty significant, as it's not the first time this has happened. In fact, it happened not too long ago, during the Talk Like a Pirate Day event. People thought the event would end on Tuesday, but it ended earlier, and again, the community manager didnt warn us up beforehand, even though doing so would have been easy enough. Also, I remember a once or twice in the past year the entire community was expecting a skill update, and they failed to inform us of it's delay until afterwards.

Are they seriously becoming sloppy lately or is it just me?

Just a clarification on my 3rd point (which I slightly edited accordingly): Martin's post about no gimmicks and no obsoletes was absolutely clear from my point of view, hence the "by absurd". Obviously there was inconsistency between what Martin said and what those picking the builds did.

Either Martin went too much out of his way with that post, or the "judges" didn't take into consideration what was said by their community office. In any case, it is a screw up.

It's hitting new lows it seem's, lucky for Anet it'll all be soon forgotton about.

I have a feeling it's going to continue, makes a person wonder whats in store for guildwars 2.

Isn't this the general theme anyway, dodge most of the questions and spin everything else.

obviously anet have some internal communication problems. i don't want to defend anet in any way but i guess this problem occurs when a team works on too many things at the same time.

/winthread Akaraxle

Good points Akaraxle. I want to expand on a few of them, and add a couple of my own:

Clear miscommunication between Martin and whoever picked the winners. Martin made the (smart) point of encouraging original and non-meta builds, which was then entirely ignored by those choosing the winning bars. Possibly he has a greater understanding of how AI works in the game than the judges do?

Poor judgement in picking. Spin off of the previous point. Whoever picked the winning bars not only made a lot of very silly mistakes, but fails to grasp what would make a decent AI skillbar in the first place.

Lack of clarification. Whilst the whole copyright/originality clause in the rules may have obviously been legal jargon to some, combined with Martin's comment there were many who took it too literally. Also, that people had to go digging to find where Regina had mentioned the point about AI tweaking was pretty pathetic. These should both have been explained from day one, or at least immediately after they became an issue, instead of Regina basically shutting the stable door after the horses had already bolted.

Inability to communicate issues. As Inde pointed out, there have been continued calls for CM involvement in a thread in which they have been very involved. The reason this thread is still going, the reason we have all these silly ad hominem attacks, is because they have failed to answer the most important question. They have failed to answer it because nobody has directly asked it. "What are you going to do about it?"

This whole thread reeks of the silly standoffish behavior that has developed between this community and ArenaNet over the years. The incredibly poor relationship has damaged communication to the point where not only was it probably the root of this problem, it has made it exponentially worse with every page.

A lot of people here are waaaaaaay too vitriolic, constantly on the offensive and looking for any reason to smear ArenaNet. It's boring, tiring and immature. At the same time, ArenaNet is not making much effort in trying to improve that. They are not actively participating in the community, giving people the benefit of the doubt, admitting mistakes, or making a real effort to understand concerns. Communication is always the bare minimum, almost always reactive not proactive, and largely cold and professional in tone.

I have no idea which one caused the other, or if both simultaneously developed over time. I will say one thing; if ArenaNet aren't willing to admit to their screw ups then perhaps they shouldn't expect much sympathy. I think it's fairly obvious that somewhere along the line there have been mistakes made with this contest, yet we have had no recognition of that from ArenaNet - just excuses.

Either way, it absolutely needs to stop.

In the meanwhile, we are back to the one question that remains in this thread: What are you going to do about it?

Nothing, use the hench on double fame weekend or when some1 dc's.

Easiest way for Anet to treat this pvp henchman fiasco is to just treat it like they treated XTH: Remove it from the game, claim that you're "working on it, but can't promise that it returns". Then, just never let it return when the community has forgotten about it. Requires no apologies from ArenaNET, and gives yet another easy excuse to not be working on skill balance or a PvP Love update. Hence, "To XTH something".

Meridon

I have to say I was astounded by the language used by some of the people on the talk pages of Regina or Linsey. I am quite surprised that Anet employees even bother to answer some of those personal and often nasty remarks. Here on GURU it is at least moderated so we see only the most civilized of those which would have been here.

People demand quite a lot from Anet but they are unable to show something as simple as respect.

My point is why would they bother to care to communicate to people who behave towards them in such a way?

Respect works both ways, you know. When the community expresses genuine concerns, it would be nice if ANet addressed these concerns instead of trying to dodge the issue.
I mean seriously, all this would have been nipped in the bud if at the beginning of the discussion ANet just said "Sorry, we screwed up, there was a communication breakdown somewhere along the way". But no. And some of the expalnations offered are bordering on insulting (see the "originality" rule explanation. I'm still finding it hard to believe that it is serious).

That's the way I am starting to see this situation now as well. Lately things have been sloppy and this has escalated all year. I mean, everything after April Skill Update has been terrible.
I quote this from Linsey's page still:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:Linsey_Murdock/FAQ

"Why aren't all the questions on this page answered? Why aren't you answering questions on your talk? Why are you being so inactive?
A: Right now Live Team is in crunch mode on the April build. Some days I don't even have time to eat or sleep, so finding time for the wiki is tough. You guys should be going to Regina more than me right now, since she is the Community Manager and this is more of a side-project for me."

I'm not one to point and argue, but April was a while back.

It's been just going so far downhill, but its because nobody cares about GW1 anymore, all the focus is for GW2. I barely see answers in ANets posts, only more things to ponder.

/end before this becomes deleted.

Yes that would do for starters and then do what was said they would do. I was creative and didn't even look at wiki or pvx and I am punished for this and didn't win a prize because I obeyed the rules of the contest. It's a lopsided contest and a fraud to me by Anet and company and those that picked the winners.

FWIW, it probably hasn't been changed because she is still in crunch. She is still regularly working until the early hours, and even doing all nighters and working through the next day. She is the last person that should be getting hassle.

You know you can say you're doing a lot of things in an online post it certainly doesn't mean you are doing them. Look at me. I've been up all night cleaning my house, scrubbing the floors, washing the windows, changing babies diapers an on an on an on. I can't believe you believe that crap she says she's doing just like that. lol People will say anything online to get symphathy or to get their agenda across. I'd say lying is the number one thing that happens online every single day and most especially on gaming forums and official gaming sites.

"Dear players, it seems there has been a bit of a misunderstanding between our Community Managers and the committee in change of selecting and evaluating the submission for the Henchman Skill Bar contest.

We apologise for the inconvenience. We are currently discussing the most appropriate course of action: whether to improve the AI according to the bars posted, or apply small changes to the builds to make them more suitable for henchman use, or issue another contest while letting the winners keep their prizes. Whatever the decision, rest assured we'll get back at you within the next few days with a solution that will hopefully make everyone happy. "


Would you vote me as a community rep? =P

Perhaps if you got yourself an editor...

I'd go for this except not give prizes to those who just used a wiki/pvx build. Anyone who submitted an uncommon and origional build that one I have no problems with whether it would be useful or not at least it was uncommon and origional to me.

Thing is Akaraxle you ain't Anet and they've never really been so kind.

/winthread.

I would. You see, this whole lack of communication problem is caused, well, by lack of communication. How hard can it be for Regina to answer those unanswered questions that are flooding the forums? How hard can it be to scan the wiki once in a while providing responses to interested guys...

Accepting the failure, however, is harder, and since the CR guys don't do the first two, I have no reason to believe they'll do the third one.

A.net screwed up. It happens. It shouldn't happen, but every man screwes up. Even in big companis, consisting of way more than the five people currently in the live team, mistakes are being made.

The difference is in the way of reacting to the failure after it's been made.
Instead of accepting the mistake (and clearly some mistake has been made - or that the guidelines were wrong or the judging was sloppy), Anet's CR guys chose to throw excuses at us, like some kind of smokescreen.

A mistake was made. I doubt Regina/Martin can miss it.
Something must be done - a course of action needs to be taken. Not doing a thing is of course an option, but is considered the worse by mot, I think. I think Akraxle only mentioned some ways to act, and I'm not sure they are all fair.

For some reason, some precentage of the community understood that builds have to be original. It might or might not be based on martin saying "Builds have to be original.". Either way, This precentage is high. This misunderstanding doomed their builds not to win - Everybody knew he could put some gimmicky build - its just that martin canceled the option it'd win.

Also, Since no change to AI was mentioned, I, Among many others, chose to consider the incompetent AI and built a build that could work with the current AI.

So, as usually, the choice is within Anet grasp. Whether they leave us annoyed, or they'll invent some serious solution, the ball is in their field.

One tiny thought in passing, hoping people will read it with a calm mind:

Our CMs, and maybe even devs, may feel much more enclined to come on this thread if they feel that it's not a battleground, "them" against "us", but rather a place where serious issues can be discussed peacefully, even if tension and emotions are high. Bear in mind Anet is busy, Martin got back from the land of Ice for example, Linsey is busy with the next big thing, etc. They can't simply drop everything and run here.

Create the context for a cool, reasonable discussion and there shall be one! We need to create a win-win situation, which is not the case with a "them against us" environment. No need to be aggressive or put people on one side of the other.

There are really some people making some true efforts to communicate calmly, with Inde and JR leading the way, but if there's more of that, it may prove to Anet that communication on this thread is not only POSSIBLE, it's DESIRABLE.

Oh you RED ENGINE GOer. The full stop was there to emphasise the apology; in Italian you don't use capitals after a colon; at->to was a mistake indeed ^^; and it's not "keep" because they're not happy atm!


P.S. Do I pass the mirrorclimbing test?
P.P.S. I'm a developer not a writer, you insensitive jerk

Tsk tsk. Hardly the temperament for a community manager.

This is not an Italian audience!

'Make you happy' is stronger language than 'keep you happy', as it implies that you expect your solution to change the emotion of the reader. People subconciously object to that notion, as it is both condescending and presumptuous. It also recognizes that your community as a whole is not happy, thus justifying anyone who otherwise would have believed their discontent to be an individual experience. Conversely, 'keep you happy' lightens the mood by assuming that people, in general, are content.

;D

Not meaning to be rude or anything, but I must say it. CR's come to these pages to view the problems and understand the issues, and learn how they can be resolved. They come here because that's their job - and seeing that there is a lot of disputes on this page, I believe they watch this page regardless of all the crap that is going on. One would not like to view all of this, but its their job and whether they like it or not they do it. They don't have to answer however, but they are always viewing situations like these.

In saying that however, I wholeheartedly agree that we need to concentrate on the issue which is the Henchman Skill Bar contest, although I and obviously and rest of the viewers here need responses form the CM's and find out what's been going on. There's been an issue clearly, but the issue is being, not ignored...but... overlooked somewhat.

These rules about how the CM's can only say so much is totally screwed so we are left with no answers, because it would be a violation of their rules for their job in answering until they are given the green light go.

ANet, do you see the flaw with the Henchman or is it exactly the way you want it? Are you willing to accept that this would take months of debugging and precious time from all your resources that you barely even have? Remember how you always say that your resources are limited, and tackling something on a large scale is almost impossible for the GW live team? One moment you tell us you cannot tackle something so large, and the next minute you turn around and work on something huge, leaving us in the dark.

Give us an answer and tell us what is going on. Make us understand what is going on, where we are headed. We might be acting childish, but please don't throw that childish attitude back at us and ignore what's going on.

Thanks for reading, I hope we can learn what is going on in the near future.

People, listen to this very, very carefully: Anet is made of normal people, they have lives and events sometimes influence your work (and I know that Anet is keen on its employees having a good RL, which is probably why the company is so good).

I don't remember when exactly, but I'm sure that since April, Linsey had a series of events in her RL that justified her being late with her work. Between Gamescon and PAX, Martin and Regina have been working relentlessly for the promotion of GW2 (and preparing comunity management, see latest entry in Regina's journal). Regina was here in this thread during the weekend. Robert, who just joined Anet, spent part of his weekend too on this contest. I bet the list goes on and on.

It's easy to say "here is what I'd do if I were Anet", but none of us knows what's happening (or need to for that matter) and understands the intricacies of their job.

Come on, be more understanding, tune down your emotions for just a little while, be patient, and we may get something sometime later this week. The issues pointed here are still very much relevant, but it's about the tone of the thread, not its content.

i would have to agree; just let it die and start focusing on giving us the test krewe and sealed deck already. tbh, i'm not sure why the henchies were picked before the test krewe; i'm certain the test krewe could have done a significantly better job at judging and selecting the winners.


true, but bad choices are still bad choices, i.e. you do not make promises that you know you cannot keep. all i'm going to say is: know your limits.

I think them re-doing the contest at this point is unlikely and even unwise. They didn't break any "rules" with martin's misleading post, but they would be if they suddenly nulled their contest and dragged this out further. Really the chances of any one of us who submitted AI-friendly builds being picked are small. It's a monumental effort/mess to just pick another 40 random winners, not worth it.

At this point I just want them to reconsider how trash the bars are and fix/redesign them. The winners still get their names and tonics so they shouldn't feel too insulted.

^ This.

Let's move on already. I'd like to see some of that ridiculous shit-list get done rather than them wasting more time on stupid stuff like excusing away their own follies.

How much is still on that list that we've seen/heard nothing about again?

1. XTH
2. Sealed Deck
3. HB/TA removal (if they do that this week w/o warning us.....)
4. Live Test Krewe
5. Halloween Contest
6. Halloween Content
7. Wintersday Content
8. Skill updates (we're supposed to hear in advance now, remember? When was the last time we had one?)
9. PvP skins
10. GvG Tiebreaker
11. New mAT schedules
12. JQ/FA bug fixes
13. New HoH maps
14. Syncing RA (which obviously wasn't fixed)

And a large part of that is contingent upon the Live Test Krewe....which isn't done yet.

In before the lock I guess....

1. It's obvious to me that a-net screwed up by announcing rules for the contest totally inconsistent with the rules the contest was judged by. But I don't care.

2. It's obvious to me that the winners received a very significant unfair advantage because of the confusion over the rules. But I don't care.

3. It's obvious to me that many of these bars are so poorly suited for the hench AI that they will be useless. This is a problem. Insofar as it's possible, the AI should be improved to use the skills properly. Where that's not possible, skills will have to be replaced; and sometimes entire bars when key skills aren't hench-friendly.

In short, fix the hench so people can use them, and who cares about the silly contest.

/agree... I think at this point everyone understands what happened... and its best to look forward to Test Krewe, SD replacing TA/HB, XTH and the last few batches of skill balencing... this is about to be locked soon anyways... so lets all look forward and not back to this contest...

yes, forget this darn contest, but don't look forward to anything else.

Possible. But it could also have been politics. If he said most popular wiki builds win how do you think everyone would have reacted? Do you think people would have even bothered?

Good point. The fans, myself included, are a little to hard on Anet but on the other hand it would be wrong to blame everything on the community as Anet does have its share of deficiencies as well. If they just asked for something close to the wiki builds that the AI would be able to run from the beginning I think that would have saved them about 14 pages of angry posts.

Going on to the lack of communication on Anet's part, I really don't think it is going to improve that much. Regina is likely handcuffed as to what she can say and the people who've handcuffed her probably won't let her say whatever because they gave her communication rules for a reason. Likewise she is only a rep and I think that she shouldn't be the one to do the apology nor does she know the technical goings on or why the design team is doing what it is doing.

Anyways I think Anet is missing out on something more important here. Supposedly GW2 is getting closer and closer to coming out. Anet either intentionally lied to us about what they wanted to do with the contest or realized they couldn't back up their promises and opted not to tell us ASAP. This is bad customer service either way and will effect people's decisions to get the next game.

Imagine this scenario:
GW2 is coming out and Anet runs a contest to develop PvP henchmen bars. Winners get a free copy of the collectors edition. The rules are just like the ones of this contest: original and something that the AI'd be able to play. The winners pull meta builds off of PvX2 and get their dances, minis, etc. If you worked hard to follow the rules wouldn't you be pissed when you saw GW2 on the shelves and think twice about picking it up when right next to it is the new D3 or the new race of SC2?

From Linsey's wiki talkpage (exactly what I was saying above):

Probably. It depends on what the solution is and how long it took to implement it. Either way, what you have given us here is far more than what we have received. All we have received are answers that don't answer anything and large amounts of attempting to dodge everything.

But I suppose people realize this by now and have taken the stance to just let it go. Fine...but at least we know the truth of what happened here. We also know it has happened before and we are pretty sure it will happen again. I suppose you are ok with that and life goes on.

Can't say I disliked the contest I submitted my build (only one) did not win. Really not mad not upset. And I guess not sure why everyone is going crazy over it. These are henchmen. So you are missing one guy in your group and can't wait any longer to fill the spot... well now you have a henchmen to grab. I really see no advantage to much of a degree I see more of a disadvantage. Granted they are faster on the reflexes but targeting and following commands will be the trick. Its added content of some degree maybe not what you want. It was a contest nontheless and people are getting a prize for it hats off to you if you won

i havent read all the posts, but have refrained from posting anything so far, but it has been bugging me, so if this has been said already, then my apolagies.

my main point is not the fact that the winning bars were pvx shite etc, but the fact that i myself, and many other people were thinking of viable bars that henchmen could run. the the AI would be able to use. regardless of the originality etc, a current hench wouldnt know how to use an infuse bar.

so why, after the contest has ended, are they saying that the AI will be update to fit the bars? surely that defeats the whole point of the contest, as i could have submitted anything, then expected the AI to be reworked around it.

is each hench going to be equipped a seperate set of AI? or are some updates going to mess up others skill usage?

i mean, there are so many holes in this contest its rediculous. i was intentionally happy that this contest was going on, it seemed like a real effort from anet to start to get the community to help with ideas and get them involved.

but the point of just taking any old bar and saying your going to update the AI after... kind of defeats the point... its just a big clusterfest of shit that didnt go as planned

1) Why are you being such an apologist? The community was misled nothing more to say. there is no further input coming from Anet period.
2) What the heck do you keep bolding all the proper nouns for?

Looking at the skill bars, im wondering why i spent soo much time making mine UNIQUE!!!

I have a feeling any points raised on Guru are simply filtered out by the CRM, thus anything said doesn't matter. Didn't they say this forum isn't representative of the playerbase as a whole?

Yes, more than once.

I don't really care. The whole concept was fail from the beginning due to AI limitations and future updates. They should have just kept heroes if they wanted usable AI, since it can be controlled and adapted. If they didn't want usable AI, they should have got rid of it altogether.

Now we find out that meta skillbars were chosen to win, well, you got to wonder if they even thought about the judging at all. Aside from the fact that AI can't use almost all those bars, the fact that they are meta just means that skill updates are more likely than most to hit them. Unless you're short of people, I don't think anyone will even use these guys after a few updates. Though considering updates are on a two month schedule now gives them a bit more lifespan I guess...

As for who gets credit for builds, well, the fact is that anet can pick whoever they want. You can't PROVE they took them off the wiki. They could just say they thought up the builds themselves. Add the fact that most wiki builds aren't actually put up by their creators. Most of those builds have been used ages ago and then someone saw it, thought it was good and stuck it on the wiki. Look at Sabway for example. Seems plenty used it, but who created it? It was used in HA ages before it was used in pve. Hell, it fell out of favour cause anet nerfed jagged which slowed energy gain, and then ages after Sab suggested it was good enough for pve. Next thing you know, its Sabway. Same with discordway. Who first thought it'd be good if you stuck it on as many necros as you could and then rampage around? Or N/Rt healers? Anet can only judge what gets submitted to them as each being original.