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

uh that was not me but i do agree with most of whats said there

I laugh so much when I see the "didnt have the resources to balance HB etc" yet, they had the resources to design, structure and implement CDX???? Hmm seems to kill that argument pretty well.

I said time and again to anet, remove the ZQ or make the reward so small it was not worth the time vs reward except for the people who played it as a choice.. I am still not sure to this day why that couldnt have been a better solution to what we have now.

Even if builds were broken (I hated Sins and never played as one), there were still ways for people to have competitive games and it surely helped my skills having to "try" and micromanage 4 bars vs just mine.

Finally, since anet showed their hand at one of the conventions on the fixed card deck, they have wanted to use it - Im thinking to see how it would work in some form in GW2 as a guess? So we were made to be experimental guinea pigs.

Comparing a normal day in CDX vs a day in HB, I am definitely of teh opinion HB was more popular that the current option and HBs removal restricted the choices available in playing the game.

Yea I know lol, i was just saying that he(the guy who made it) went into details.

Sorry for the confusion

They tried, again and again and again, for two years. It didn't work, no matter what they did to shadowsteps. Recall et al were absolutely killed for other areas, and they were still abused in HB. What else, besides removing those skills entirely, could have been done? That's why people say it was fundamentally imbalanced, because it's the sole arena where these skills were permanently meta-defining.

Like I said before, AB and Rollerbeetle are the only arenas where resigning gives you dishonor. The fact that this was the only 1v1 PvP arena opened up possibilities for abuse far more than other arenas. If they put in "/resign gives you dishonor", then people could just do "Red AFKs", because that would still have been faster than fighting it out for both parties involved. HB introduced more problems than any other single arena, because it was just so different from every other arena, so it was removed. It's not coming back, deal with it.

I still do not get why it was removed and anyway , i would like to know why codex isnt removed aswell . They promised tourneys , and we're still waiting after six months ( that's too late now anyway , wont change the arena much ) .

Anyway , it was said it would be deleted before all ppl did use " red resign " and abuse the quest . And , if the real reason was about that arena is farmed , i suggest we delete HA and GvG too : both are anyway impossible to play at some hours , gvg title is synced thus quest easily farmed too , HA title is a joke to get by playing at some hours , thus having all 1v1 .

The point is it's nice to have an arena where you can play when you want , especially in a game dying more after each day ( regarding the " super 5th year birthday" , same than past years , and the super mesmer update coming .. zzz )

orly? as far as i can rember, these updates in these 2 yrs are almost entirely focused on balancing gvg and ha and little to no attention was given to hb. i can prove to you with a quote from linsey, that hb "was compounded by years without skill balances". even anet admits that it is their own fault, so i highly doubt what you are trying to say here is anywehre close to the truth. regarding long range shadowsteps, yes it has been abused in the middle to later period in hbs existence, but in the start people ran creative builds and tactics, and actually tried out new things, dgenerative play only came later when prospects of high rewards and prestige came along. imo these long range shadowsteps should not exist in the first place, because it overpowers any tactics involving movement in pvp. but given that hb recieved so little attention for these 2yrs, it has done fairly well. i mean srsly, can you imagine if anet didnt balance gvg and ha for 2yrs? what would happen then? problems in gvg and ha would be just as bad as in hb by the end of the 2yrs.

yes hb was abused, theres no denying that. but you are srsly singling out hb for what is happening in the ENTIRE GAME, regardless of format. pve, ab, ra, ta, ha, gvg, anywhere in game you name it, it has been abused. people have always said that hb was the most abused, and the most fundementally flawed, and cite rr again and again. plz, remember that rr only happend AFTER ANET ANNOUNCED TO DELETE HB. seriously, this has been clarified time after time, yet hb haters continue to believe this was a legit argument. moreover, being different from other arena does NOTHING to justify its removal. if anything, being different is good, as there is more variety and more choices. most of the formats in game is heavily inspired by many other genres anyways. and yes we know its not coming back, we also know anets failure to replace it with a "better" format as promised, people deal with it by quitting the game cuz anet failed again and again and again. but just because hb was gone, does not mean hb haters can just dish out their fallacious arguments to troll hb.

does anyone even actually place codex besides the mass synchers?

the problem was not only neglect/laziness/incompetence/guildwars2hasDRAGONS!!! but the implementation of zaishen quests (free zkeys) & title points.

i'm curious if calls to remove codex will be taken seriously by anet. i mean, it's 1 less "different" format for them to worry about right?

I miss HB

HB was only area which you could play alone and would depend 100% on solo players skill
BRING IT BACK!!!

Anyway GvG is full of abuse and it's not removed.. syncing, champ pts selling, free rating giving and other.
HA is full of abuse: 3 teams.. 1 team always helping friends, other gank from hate...

Noone wanted HB to be removed so bring it back!!11oneone

The decision to remove HB altogether was, in all honesty, a bit lazy and defeatist. How hard would it have been to just add dishonour for resigns and make weak PvP versions if shadowstep skills, or even remove them from HB altogether.

That said, I think CDX was a great idea, but it just didn't turn out as good as it might have, but I suppose the general lack if players doesn't help.

But overall, I think they should have kept HB, it was one of the only things I felt I was playing for pure fun, as I am a "PvE noob"(please refrain from using that expression, it's so elitist, arrogant and frankly a bit sad).

HB was heavily abused with dice rolling and red resigns since it was created.

They could have corrected some things that were easier, like:
-Minimum of 3 wins in a row to win Zaishen Quest / Commander points
-Slow down morale points, a lot
-Prohibit shadow step skills from the game
-Heroes no longer are body blocked / frozen by Spirits and Pets
-Better rewards for higher ranked players
-smaller arenas to encourage fighting and reduce effectiveness of snare-only builds.

And then throw the Codex ruleset on top of it, and you have something that could be fun and not quite so exploited.

Right now, Codex is iffy because the player base isn't there. It takes hours to get even a small group together with an okay build, and even if you get into a streak, you might be kicked by the next skill change.

Either way, I think Anet made the right decision. Just wish I could get more people together and practice more.

Anet have had more then enough trouble keeping GvG/HA balanced, it was obvious that HB support was going to be dropped shortly after nightfall like a rock and surprise surprise it was.

Now codex touted as the next best thing, will anet actually make the effort and make some updates to it or will it suffer the same fate as HB/TA as the playbase in codex dwindles to nothing.

oh wait....

Easier to remove than fix.

Exactly how many adjustments did they make specifically relating to HB? I content very few and if they had paid even the slightest attention to the threads in the HB section, then they would have got much closer. Look at it this way.. in CDX, they dont allow a few certain skills to be chosen , why couldnt they have done that for HB??? Thats the same amount of work that they did for CDX + none of teh other workload they had.

Or indeed implement only 1 of any profession per entry like CDX?

Didnt they do exactly this for CDX?? (Im going from memory so this fact might be incorrect)

The fact it was different was its appeal, I dont want to do 4v4, 6v6 or 8v8 which is basically the same teaming up and epeen fest - I wanted something different. The problems were because it was ignored time and time again on the updates when ALL the other pvp areas got adjustments. RR or indeed Red AFK (which would have taken about 10 minutes a match anyway) would NEVER have been a problem with the ZQ removed/rewards vastly decreased.

Many things are introduced/removed in the game over the years, that does not stop us commenting about the changes and as such I am going to put my point across so you deal with that .

then I guess they should remove GvG too since it needs to be fixed.

Kind of like what has been going on with gvg over the past few years but even more so now. As far as im concerned Anet screwed a lot of people over by removing HB and listened to outsiders opinions on the arena rather than the people that actually liked and played HB opinions. Bunch of dumb stoned hippies ruining a game is what anet programmers are i tell you.

This. 10x Where else could you screw up and have nobody else to blame but yourself? I loved it. They really should remove GvG, as its even more broken than HB. But that will upset alot of people, oh wait anet don't care. Thats why they removed HB.

At the very least they could have left unrated HB as an option. Who would abuse that?

It was the worst edition to PvP in the history of the game, period. Getting rid of it was akin to curing cancer.

Actually they already did it since VoD was removed for a more stupid tie-breaker