Hero Battles

Why was it removed?

because people were exploiting it to acquire zkeys and pump up their title.

Lots of cheating (red resigns), tourney manipulation, and most people hated it.

The above, and also because it was basically impossible to balance, due to a combination of AI issues and the fact that the maps promoted shadowsteps and shrine capping over combat. But mostly because no matter what they did with it, it would always be faster to do Red Resigns to get points.

How nice an HB troll thread
Red resigns happened after it was said to be removed and it had a dedicated player base of over 1000 people.
First if they added dishonorable to HB it would have cut red resign/leave down by a lot, people mostly did it because it was fastest.
Second shadow stepping was all assassin and people did tourney manipulation to ask anet to fix it, really people complain about assassin in pve and HB so it sounds more like the profession is the problem.

Ehh, "Red Resigns"?

Removing 2 arenas(HB+TA) and implementing one(cdx), they saved space for their servers.

Not to mention it was just a game of moving bricks around instead of actually being a battle with heroes.

Yeah when they announced HB was going to be removed pve noobs came in to abuse the z quest.

I wonder how much space they saved from all the players that quit, if the red resigning for the z quest was really the problem then why not remove the z quest.

You sound like you've never played HB.

Devs didn't like it.

The end.

it all-around sucked, the meta was pathetic, and the only interest generally was rr

glad its gone and will never come back

Because it plain sucked.

No, it got popular after it was said to be removed, because that's when the rest of the community realized that that's what a heck of a lot of people had been doing. The notion that people only did RR after ANet decided to cut HB out is just wrong.

Resigning only counts for dishonorable in AB and Rollerbeetle Arena. HB matches take a long time, so why should someone who's been legitimately beaten have to stick around for a few minutes? It'd make more sense to add it to RA.

Yeah, all assassin, and so everyone ran an assassin secondary on themselves and all their heroes. And ANet did try to fix it, with huge nerfs to Recall et al. Those skills were made completely useless pretty much everywhere else, but they were still used in HB because the goal was to basically just run around and avoid combat. At least in AB you need to fight for shrines, and the map is big enough that you can't just Recall from one side to the other, but in HB? The fundamental mechanics of the arena dictated that shadow steps would always be the best way to play, and it sucked for everyone who wanted to play something besides minimap minesweeper.

And here I thought it was removed because Heroes were removed from PvP

Balance nightmare and lots of tournament manipulation. The large part of the "Red Resigns" exploit didn't come until the end of the arena's lifetime, but it was always possible.

Correct me if i'm wrong (did HB only once):

the cheat was that the player who spawned with the red colour had to resign (so the other could win). Since it was a matter of chance, after some trial everyone would have "won" enough battles to complete his zquest, basically not playing at all, and very quickly.

Only happened at the end of HB.

Everything in guild wars needs to be balanced, tournaments were manipulated to gain attention to the problems and dishonorable would have stopped red resign.

The HB ladder was filled with 1000 active people so I know at least 1000 people played.
Dishonorable is already in RA, an AB match is longer than an HB match.

Just because you didn't like it doesn't mean there wasn't a player base for it.

It was removed because it never got the attention it deserved. There were no updates to keep the format balanced and they(Anet) let it go down the pipe.

There were so many easy solutions to help Hero Battles, but they were too lazy to do it.

Also: RR-Day only began AFTER Anet announced its removal.

And: Match Manipulation in the mAT's were aimed at sending Anet a message that HB needed some love (it never got it)

the tldr version is that hb was removed because of incompetence on anets part:

over the course of two yrs there have been LOTS of players playing the format, and giving out ideas and suggestions on how to maintain/balance/fix it. anet, however, chose to disregard these and delete hb/ta alltogether and implement a new codex arena, citing their lack of resources/manpower/capabilities as always. like some of the posts above, they appeal to the reasoning that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to balance the arena. when in fact, it is only because they have no idea on how hb works. i can go into more details on this, but the consensus of actual hb players who actually knows how the format works is that there are 2 things that, if dealt with, will dramatically improve the runnings of hb: shadowstepping and r/ps.

unfortuneately, but as always, anet made the poor decision, by listening to people who barely have an iota of understanding on wtf is going on. i am not going to name names, but tehre have been A LOT of them on this forum back then when my friend made a thread to petition against hbs removal, and even more of them when he went to linseys wiki pg to discuss this issue. what is the reasoning of these people, you ask? let me give a few examples:

1. the format is broken and bad in nature, it is an egregious error for anet to implement it from the start, instead, they should implement a format like codex during nf release. interestingly, some people even argued that had codex been implemented during nf release instead of hb, it would have been more sucessful then hb back then, which is entirely baseless.

2. ppl do not like it, therefore it should be removed. this argument has always been given by people who do not care/dislike/hate the arena. whether they themselves failed at it or not, idk, but this is a major argument given. however, they fail to realize that the pvp community is the MINORITY from the start and there are alot of people who do not care/dislike/hate pvp. so their logic is self defeating in that, if applied, anet should delete pvp in its entirety.

3. hb is not pvp, because it uses heros. a lot of people give this argument, but as we all can see, its pretty retarded, right? another version of this argument is that playing hb does not improve player skills, or hb does not promote skilled play. again, pretty retarded, right? if any thing, ab, jq, asp, should be removed before hb if this reasoning is applied.

4. the nature of the format, hb, is not one that is compatible with gw pvp. in other words, they are saying that given all other gw pvp involves a team of players, hb is the only one that involves 1v1. this was given on linseys wiki talk pg when my friend tried to argue against hbs removal. guess what the reasoning for that was? this guy basically said: ok look, i played a lot of video games and i am going to college studying video game design, therefore hb is not suitable for gw pvp. lol? (eventually that pg turnd into a flamewars, but you cannot help it because those ppl advising for hbs removal were so condescending, and anet actually took their advice)

5. dgenerative play comes from hb, such as rr, ladder manipulation, joke builds in tournies, etc. well these ppl are just singling out hb for teh ENTIRE GAMES fault. nobody, or so few that the number can be disregarded in this context, even did rr before it was announced that hb would be removed. ladder manipulation was only a reflection of anets negligence and incompetence in maintaining the game, and does ladder manipulation not exist in gvg? ofc it does, but some people just like to put the blame on hb for whatvr their motives are. the hb community gave A LOT of advice and suggestions to anet, and when their voices are not being heard, they manifested their discontent through running joke builds in tournies, in hopes that anet will pay attention and deal with the problems that were alrdy rampant by the time. however, anet chose to interpret this as the formats failure, rather then their own, which is no excuse.

6. if you balance certain meta skills for hb, u will affect other formats. this is always cited as an excuse by those people who thinks that gvg, ha players are superior than hb players. but like i said before, the consensus was that shadowstepping and r/p were a major source of the problem. now what was in a shadowstepping build that made it imba? namely long distance shadowsteps such as recall, meld, aod, etc. sure, changing these will affect other arenas, but honestly these skills nver should have been made, because it is degenrative for ALL of pvp, not just hb. whats in a normal r/p build? well, the most common setup included hao, apply, and a number of cheap spear skills such as barbed. maybe apply should not have been touched, but wtf who uses hao and burning spear in pvp anyways? in general, what i can say is that, most, if not all, of the "lame" builds used in hb is just as degenrative in hb as any other formats. for example the 123sin is not just under criticism in 1 format, but in pvp as a whole, for its lack of sophistication and reqrd skills to properly run it efficiently.

7. if you keep hb, heros will degenerate game play of gvg and ha. i rembr some1 saying this but wtf? wtf does having heros in gvg and ha have anything to do with hb, theyre entirely different formats lol...

these 7 are the major lines of reasoning for removing hb that i can think up of atm. needless to say, alot of the posters on top agree to some or all of these arguments, as can be seen in their posts. but srsly, one thing that they cannot deny, is how shitty codex was. and if this codex sht is what we are going to get instead of hb/ta, idk about u but i know what alot of ppl will think about it.

He did:http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...to_HB_-_bumped