HA in Crisis

In all fairness you got the best of Killcount during its time with Ritspike which because of kill count made that build really the only build you could run.

3-way was lame because as others said once a team started to get killed, they just got repeatedly killed on their shrine and farmed. But what was WORSE and more lame was....

1v1 Kill Count... this format looks like a pressure build in theory could have a chance, but in practice it cannot, a spike team simply spikes 1 player, scores 1 point and then runs in circles around the entire map. This was probably the WORST draw you could get in HA, way worse than Relic, and cap points. If one of your guys gets killed you /resign

Relics I will agree is pretty dumb in Halls, and LAME if you get ganked.

Cap points, if teams fight over the middle, its OK, but at some point the game gets decided by a team that tries to do something in desperation to try to win.

KotH with no DP is incredibly lame


Basically the lameness of the maps is a side issue, the reason they are there is so that gimmicks will be reduced and less viable builds are available because you have to spec for all the maps. I think the intention was to prevent holding builds like a fortressway team to just sit there and win all night.

Think of an end game situation that would give all 3 teams an equal chance to win, without speccing for a specific mechanic, this would be the ideal solution because more build variety would be good for the game.

In the mean time getting players to come play, still requires an easy point of entry for Casual players, like myself, who if we play its only for 2 hours max, half of which we dont want to spend forming a team, yeas a pug team because that is how casual players play the format and there needs to be more of them.

HA players blaming the system proves why it's dying

I can't believe you're all taking Borat's bait by responding to his talking himself up.
So, you're complaining about HA being hard to get into because you never tried to get into it?

Admittedly, it sucks that HA is no longer as accessible for r0 players trying to make the transition from PvE. Still, that doesn't mean that it's impossible - only that you'd need to put actual effort into it. Playing it once or twice in an alliance group isn't going to suffice.

HA isn't popular because no popular multiplayer game has the barriers to entry that HA does. Call of Duty, Team Fortress, and Counter Strike all have the following features to help players play well together:
-ability to jump in / jump out
-short-term and long term game rewards (kill streak vs profile perks)
-scaling match objectives, with tutorials
-ability to switch classes / loadouts on the fly
-ability to form parties for advanced play
-no classes are liabilities

Could you imagine if any of these games required you to somehow form an 8-man party in a giant chat room before you could play? Also, none of these games so heavily rely on a few teammates' skill as much as GW does with monks.

As a magic and swords deathmatch, Guild Wars is a neat distraction, but without serious matchmaking, and extra effort placed into making PvP more approachable for everyone, it was never destined to be what some people here feel it should be.

Screw rank discrimination. That's just a symptom of the real issues of HA being impenetrable on so many other levels.

We're not talking about shooters here, though. Most of those things shouldn't work in GW.

Besides, how do you think people get into competitive FPSes?

They're all action multi-player games where you control one member of a team and positioning is a key element.

Anet knows they have plenty to learn from games like them, which is why they are working to make GW2 PvP a lot more approachable. For example, you'll be able to jump in and out of PvP matches without much scaling. PvP is easiest to handle for most people when it becomes less about winning consecutive long matches, and more about contributing to your team within shorter games.

It's really hard to design a game where you're having fun even when you're losing, but those are the best multi-player experiences around. Those games have that. Guild Wars should've have that too, but GW2 is looking like it definitely will.

Hot-joining and swapping class in-match are terrible ideas in a game where team composition plays a far larger role than in an FPS. Some classes and specs being better than others is perfectly acceptable.

I don't see why you think that GW didn't possess any of the attributes you outlined in the quoted post.

Also, keep in mind that one of the reasons GW's PvP had such a high peak was exactly because it was so different from the alternatives. If it's going to be turned into a variation of DotA, what's the attraction going to be for the PvP enthusiasts?

Although the example is bad since GW isn't a FPS , Skye Marin is quite right ...
Main idea he's saying is that these games are popular simply because you can click and get an opponent/match ( already said it but , same reason HB/RA were popular...)In fact , the same applies for starcraft 2, you can choose either 1v1 , either 4v4 , etc... .

Point is that in GW , you can hardly win when you get 1 dc/leave ( even when it's not on monk)and you can right now see the effects of inactivity.

@ Lemming about competitive : agree , but people in these games are able to practice when they want to and get better relying on their own . Thus they can find and play with the same players , etc...Except in Hero Battles or Costume Brawl , where can you develop tactics alone ?
However , i know GW is a team-based game , but still , even not considering those formats , but except for players who were able to build a flist a few years ago ( thus now are in GvG ) , it's clearly impossible to do any form of serious PvP....

Now you will have to excuse me if this has already been said before and also excuse everything else that might have already been covered as i dont normally post on Guru.

I understand what pvp players are talking about. Thing is US PvE players can get away with a lose cannon here and there, 1 bad player we can accomplish our task still, 2 bad players even sometimes, Hell even no players and hero-way it which i tend to use alot. Now PvP players i can imagine 1 bad player = Fail.

The problem here is PvP players cant afford a noob "no offence indended to noobs" but because of this it is basically R*+ (example r6+) whatever the team requires. Now as a PvE player if i was to ask for GWAMM players only it would take us time to find a team also... "But".....

PvE is creating more and more experienced players as a FACT, every PvE player that joins the game is building there titles (1 mission even your working on it), Where PvP is not. If you was not there in the begining you aint there.

Now i am a 50/50 GWAMM and considered very highly amongst friends and guildies/allaince within the PvE world, but even i know if i was to travel to HA and try and join a pvp team with fame of 48 i would be there for weeks no matter what my skill is and like i said pve is more forgiving.

Pvp players will find teams harder to create because of this and players do leave the Guild Wars world for time to time. So with experience fading what can u expect.

I Have an answer if its not already been covered...... I personally think HA could be spilt into 2 arena's. 1 for the hardcore and 1 for the Inexperienced.
Example R6+ would go into the hardcore arena and organize a team, meanwhile the new players in other arena can create a team there up to r6 max to learn the basics and gain xp and fame in HA. The first 2 fights can be rigged for r6 below matches before they would be fitting enough to join r6+matches.

This would create alot more players in HA and create alot more r6+players to then join the hardcore arena with some experience in PvP. I would love to learn how to pvp as well as being a pve god, but i know unless something like this happens im not even gonna attempt trying.

Hope you enjoyed the read Ace Loves It.

Unfortunately there area few flaws in this.....The r6+ players would simply use alt accounts to farm the lower arena 90% (made up) of the time. Also in both areanas there would be lf r4-5 on the low-end and lf r8+ on the high-end.

While the latter doesn't bother me as much as the former, both would more or less likely exist.

3 arena it then :P... R3 Below with 2 fights, R6 Below with 1 fight and R6 Above. Even if others use alt accounts it still must pave the way from new crop of players. Also if they did use an atl account at least they can have a farm option and get involved again so sure they would not complain.

Some kind of idea like this to kick start HA for newbies.

I like how you're the only poster in this thread who replies constructivly to my posts. Everyone else is too busy hiding behind a wall of illusions just so dont have to come to terms with obvious realities I've said and explained a million times before on these forums.

Back to Kill Count:

I know it's kinda turning into a "Bring back KC" to "Don't bring it back" discussion, but believe me, I really don't want Kill Count back. It was shit every reason you said it was, however, you're making it sound like it was the format imaginable.

Let me start by making statements such as: "Ritspike dominated, therefore KC is shit" is as much as saying: "Bspike dominated ladder, therefore GvG is shit". There's build imbalancedness and there's format flaws; the 2 should not be confused because that results in what we all know too well as "fixing what isn't broken".

Hyper holding builds have ALWAYS existed, I admit, but the truth is that for 99.9 percent of those builds, the individual skills was the problem more than the format.

For example: From the start of Tombs, IWAY and spiritways managed to hold because warriors were pretty much invincable (ABSOOOORPTIOON) and spirits litteraly were. People just mass blocked ghostlies, abused e-denial or whatnot else. Surely the format lends itself to easy abuse, however it still is always skill imbalancess that force an intire meta through.

So ritspike wasn't a problem with KC, it was a problem that many builds had during those days: skill imbalancedness.

I just said that Kill Count IS inherently flawed, but as long as a build has minor spike capability (or aoe dmg), it should have a shot at winning Kill Count. It's not like ritspike was autowin, I've played it enough. Esp the full rit one (without AoE) would often get "outscored" by a balanced team with spiritual pain (and mad aoe dmg) or splinter weapon farm builds.

The fact that bad teams get farmed by good ones is definatly not ideal, but there's far worse things: A random chance of winning for example *cough relic run cough*.

And the truth is what it did was make regular builds less and less viable and made gimmicks more and more viable because only gimmicks can carry so much utility.

Cap Points and Relic have done nothing but worse for HA. The game became less fun, more random, the community left (alot of people left solely due to these shitformats) compared to 4 years ago.

Builds, bad balance and natural decline have nothing to do with it. The sole fact that you know you'll eventually get ganked in HoH, or come in the "last millisecond cap" scenario makes alot of people decide not to play HA because it simply is not fun.

If it's not fun, people won't play it.

Thing is that if they left HA without doing any update on it , no titles , no shit maps , no shit objectives , etc , there would probably still be players here . Actually , this could apply for whole PvP in my opinion....

Not going to say SC2 and WoW are that awesome , but seriously , is an arena where a poison ranger beat any team w/o a heal awesome ??

Stop complaining about rank discrimination and form your own team.
It is true that higher ranked players have a higher chance of not being a complete retard than unranked players. Therefore, asking for a ranked player is fair.
If you really want to play, just form your own team. And if you mention that high-ranked players should 'tutor' you, you are yourself admitting that this a is fair discrimination.

As for the OP's problem, I have no idea how to fix it. I suppose the problem is not enough people log in anymore. You cannot really blame them though, especially for HA.
I would be in favor of playing with more henchies and preferably even heroes. Also 6v6 HA would be nice. This may result in more teams, but it's hard to predict...

Asking for a ranked player is fair. Complaining about a crisis due to lack of players is fair. Doing both at the same time is just a little bit silly. The solution seems reasonably obvious. Get baddies in your team, or don't play at all.

Oh, and can I just say, I enjoyed the irony of reading 5 pages of complaining about 'people who want handouts' in a thread asking anet to dedicate dev time to fixing a problem for the handful of players that still play HA, who could easily fix it themselves.

The problem is the format. The format changes and balance issues drove away far more players than anything else.

I would love to fix the format, please tell us HA players how we can fix the format.

Dedicating dev time to changing the format in order to cater to the handful of people who still play HA is indeed one way to solve your problem, although I don't think any change that would actually help would be to your liking.

There's another way too.

If HA players first recourse is to run to anet, I don't think the problem will ever be resolved though. The mindset it takes to do that is not one that will ever bother to resolve their own issues, nor is it one that appeals very much to people who can resolve the issues for you. If some effort was made by the players, and it failed, then I can see anet looking at it, since the problem is clearly important enough to at least that small subsection of players for them to try to fix it.

You're basically running into the same wall that GvG is. You want to keep all the barriers to entry in place, but you want more players to enter. As someone else pointed out, no change to the format is bringing any serious number of people back, so you need PvE players in there if you want any players at all in there, like it or not.

Besides, you're really kidding yourself if you think people never quit. Their reasons for quitting might have been this change or that change to the format (which makes me wonder why you think changing the format would help in some way), but the reality is that if the format had stayed the same, other people would have just said 'ok this is stale now, I'm not really that excited about my next emote'. People quit, you need new people to take their place, you keep shutting out the new people, then blame anet for the format dying. See a problem? Everytime someone has come into the thread and said something that would get them playing HA, all the HA players chimed in with why it's a bad idea and will never happen. How serious are you about getting more players? They're right there asking to play. You're not going to automagically get a thousand r12s wanting to join in.

Completely beside the point, but I also think you're kidding yourself if you think any format change drove away more players than rank discrimination. I know back when I wanted to pug HA, it was all 'lf r3+'. I could have formed my own team, but tbh, I didn't care enough about it, that's why I was pugging in the first place. These days I literally wouldn't enter if you paid me, after having some exposure to the minds of HA players. The clash of fragile egos in this thread was particularly amusing, it's always the same, always has been.

'I'm higher ranked!'
'You got your rank with gimmick build X!'
'MY DADDY IS A POLICEMAN!'

The sheer number of people telling their version of the exact same story over the last four years should indicate to you just how many people have been driven away by rank discrimination. Remember the one percent rule. Holding onto the illusions that got you where you currently are, blaming anet, then asking them to fix your problems for you by changing the format yet again won't solve anything.

Honestly, pretend you put thousands of manhours into creating something for people to enjoy. Now pretend some of them deliberately exclude people who haven't already experienced it from doing so, because they haven't experienced it. Say they do this in order to to make it easier for themselves to chase shiny pixels. What would your response be when they came asking you to get more people involved in it? I would outright laugh in their face. After my initial confusion, when I worked out they were serious, I wouldn't be able to help myself. On the other hand, if they had gone out of their way to show new people how awesome my work was, used their initiative and taken steps of their own to get more people involved, but still felt like there was a problem, my response would be completely the opposite, and I would be very receptive.

Keep in mind my entry into the discussion was 'asking for a ranked player is fair'. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to play with baddies. I'm just saying that it's the most obvious fix to your problem. Especially for players who don't pug at all.

There are diferent ways of fixing things , but each leads to comments from people who don't understand the point and just say " oh this sucked in 2007 no ty " or w/e :

- fixing inactivity : i know it's not good but at the point of the game , either allowing hench teams either turning back to 6v6 are the ONLY solutions . Better having fights than no fights...

- fixing unfair fights : Adding back killcount . Even considering more teams , every mode is still relying on huge amount of luck . Adding Death Penalties could also be a good point.

Rank discrimination has not much to do with HA atm ( i can take everyone here , anyway there's noone to fight , so what's the point?? ;; i took other people , however , the holding team doesn't and we keep losing ; ....)and it would be nice if people stopped arguing on it .
The few solutions aren't the best yes , but you need to know that these were in place at nightfall release , and thus it wouldn't be same at all if applied now , thus could hardly make it worse than HA is atm....

People want to win, thats why rank discrimination is there. Beginners complain about it because they want to win and because they know if they play with people their level, they will not get anywhere. The problem is beginners want to win but GW wont let them due to the high learning curve. The quick fix you talk about will not change that, it will not change the inactivity of HA. There is no difficulty in getting into a group, most beginners just dont want to form r0+ because its a waste of time(will always lose) and not only that, they dont know how to because even with the existence of pvxwiki, they cant get the builds correctly. I went to my 2nd account that was unranked and i was able to form up a BBway in 10minutes.

I agree that no change to the format will bring players back because adding or removing kill count, giving old school halls, making 7-man parties, whatever, won't do anything at making HA more accessible.

For new people to feel they have a chance to win, they need an opportunity to learn all of the maps, builds, and mechanics. That's impossible without either a full-blown tutorial, easier matchmaking, and more experienced players teaching them directly. Any attention Anet would give to HA would be wasted unless all three can be added.

I'd bet that they'd rather add all three (including player tutorial incentives) to GvG much sooner than to HA.

Well idk , but then i didn't make this thread in that way. I made it because , personnaly , each time i log into HA , there are at best 15 players in id1 , and hall is usually setting sun 2 hours ago. Actually , this situation happens whole day except euro evening . I mean , if i played only at those hours i wouldn't see any problem , but you should just try play at my hours and see ....

Considering i'm not alone aswell to play at this hour , these suggestions fit then simply because there would be many teams . In fact , i hardly see how can having teams with 7 henchs wouldn't change inactivity at any hour ( no more rank discrimination and not much complaining since players would fight themselves and enter again in half sec when lose ....), since players would just take all fast and go instead of waiting 2 hours to have THE team....

But well , if people are still convinced that there's no problem at forming in HA , then it's pointless and /close plz...

pvers arent taking the initiative to get into ha, i mean our guild has a person who never ha'd before in his whole life and in about 2 weeks of ha about 3 weeks ago he got rank 5 because he was willing to learn and listen, vent helps alot whether u like it or not, he was bad and he caused a few losses and got bagged like any other person who screws up.
Really u cant blame higher ranked people for not wanting to play with bad/lower ranked people, there all a bunch of mindless drones and r9s/10s+ arent much better aswell..


descrimination has nothing to do with ha being dead...

halls needs a revamp and add dp for every single map, obviously winning/holding teams resets after every match, this would actually make ganks less effective.


anyways all games playerbases will reduce over time never increase in most situations, what do u expect from a 5+ yr old game.

I don't disagree but things weren't done in order to keep players though . You do realize that 3/4 of players left do only play to farm underworld/DoA. They're adding 7 heroes now because they know on long term( probably after gw2) it will be clearly impossible for players to do anything . The problem is that it should but doesn't apply for PvP , and except RA , whole PvP will probably end when gw2 release.....

If Anet cares, they'll find a way to make HA playable even after GW2 comes out. But if they don't, they'll simply leave everything as is (at a bare minimum), or possibly LOL "remove" the arena as they did TA and HB because they're apperently unafraid of deleting content they refuse to fix.

see:

What we are trying to tell you, is that there isn't another way. There are (or at least were) a lot of PvP players that left HA, not because of the difficulty of forming groups or the lengthy times between matches, but because the format is terrible. Without a change to the format, it doesn't matter what the players themselves try, it won't work.

WoW is 12million and counting.
Starcraft was korea's national sport and its 10years old.
People still play Quake and CS1.6 competitively.
Super Street Fighter II SUPER TURBO 20years old and people still play that competitively.

i think the main problem is that the current ha population are too scared to vring in new players for fear of losing..as with the player base so small..the chance of getting a good fame run are virtually nil...so why should they jeapordise what little fame thay can get ..Ha has been destroyed..and you can only blame the developers for that

Well that's what you get for thinking. You are wrong.

I have brought in many new PvP players. Somewhere between 30-50. Only one plays anymore, and even then I have to catch him on AIM to convince him to log on.

Success in PvP is about two things, attitude and effort. If you don't have the effort to seek groups or form your own and instead have the attitude to bitch about current players; it doesn't matter who picks you up, you aren't going to have any success in PvP and will quit.

The biggest thing I see is that people simply dont want to play HA. It just isn't fun to them, and even if they are willing to put in the effort, it just doesn't appeal to them at all. Granted, most people I know are PvEers but still, a vast majority of the playerbase are PvEers and they arnt going to play HA if its not fun for them. Why would they?

HA's problem is the players and rank discrimination. If the ranking system was set up as something more akin to Prestiging in CoD games where you have to work at it but it doesn't take literally thousands of hours to do it would be a better system. People aren't trying to win halls as much as they are farming points. That leads to poor build set ups that don't lend themselves to competitive play for the long run, but for the short term.

There should be different prestige levels and only players in the same ranks of prestige should be allowed to group together to play against groups that are in the same prestige level as they are(just an idea, would have only worked if implemented when GW1 came out). I almost think players should be able to keep their emotes but the rank system changed to accommodate something like this. At this point in the game I would honestly be about resetting the ranks altogether to get HA back to people wanting to group together. IDK, maybe it's unfixable at this point.

I know that this isn't a perfect set up by any means, I am just trying to get the ball rolling in a direction that is more conducive to parity in play. There is ZERO parity anymore. I think the rank system was bad at how steep the curve is for attaining ranks, and that led to rank discrimination amongst the player base. I sure hope they make up a better system in GW2 that lends itself to more players being able to get in groups, thus promoting parity amongst the competitors.

I don't see how the rank system has brought the downfall of HA. Would more likely be caused by the format and the player base. If you'd change the title system then people would just find a new way to filter out players.

if the ranks didn't take so long to achieve there would be less of a filter is my point. i think a tiered system would be great too. that way supposedly like skilled players would be fighting on teams against each other. like i said though, maybe the format is busted beyond repair.

yes i agree with that.

and I would like to add that rank discrimination is actually a good thing and is not the culprit of HAs inactivity: UWsc stone discrimination actually helps on the activity in ToA. B4 the intro of stones no one dared to form uwsc simply because they knew it was a waste of time since 1 person failing meant the entire group had to go back to ToA. Since the intro to the stones, PUGing UWsc was actually possible because people had something to correlate with a player's skills. Now there are NO STONE REQ groups and people always fail in those runs however it only takes 3-5runs to understand the simple tasks that each person had to perform inorder to suceed in the run. Because of this ease of learning due to UWsc's simplicity, it is a populated area.
HA on the other hand takes a VERY LONG time to be "below decent" at. and you need to take over 100runs to be at that level as a result you have to be very tolerant inorder to break through that barrier and since most people cant take that shit, they RQ for something else.

I don't HA, so I'm not going to go into specifics on stuff I wouldn't know about having not paid attention to the format for the majority of the game's history. But to me, allowance of 2 players + 6 hench seems like something that could at least be done. Game designers know people often play in pairs at least, but I don't know anyone who commonly hangs around with a group of 7 anywhere in the real world outside of an already existing team or job. My closest friends in games were always DPS types of different classes (I try every class, but my primary is DPS), so I wonder if there are greater difficulties where similar people play the same classes too much and end up competing instead of playing together.

Henchmen are awful compared to experienced players, mainly because the more skilled roles are healer/melee and hench do those poorly. They might have good weapon spell reflexes, but that Infuser sometimes gets himself killed while providing most of the spike contribution upon himself, and a full prot bar isn't something AI can do. Melee heroes require the micromanagement of putting them on the right targets, but they semi-randomly assist with damage and don't coordinate or call clean spikes. Heroes were strong because they could be turned into hybrid offense/utility/defense, you could use them as part of an interrupt gimmick, and you could micro skills. Henchmen don't have these advantages.

Background story

This is not completely suggestion related so not necessary to read, but if it helps, who knows. The reason I don't HA is because I didn't HA when I started playing, and part of the HA community was worse than even the RA community (my experiences may differ from yours). I never felt like it was an end-game format, but if you were in it, I thought you were actively trying to advance out of it to not get stuck there. In the past, I believed that if you could put together an organized team of 8, you belonged in GvG, and not in a place that should be pugged when desperate. I thought of it as a place where no one was supposed to hold halls indefinitely; if you won someone was supposed to counter you, outgimmick you, or gank you and throw you out again. If you won, wasn't it supposed to be because you wanted to UW/FoW or get a Sigil or something like that? Weren't you always supposed to gank the Korean or Euro if you were American? I never considered old HA to be a competitive arena because of the uneven matching, lack of tournament support, and the fact that it once controlled PvE favor. Things have changed though (that damn RC/WoH combo that I hated so much became the GvG balance standard along with a whole lot of no-split mechanisms being added).

GvG is now shark-poacher infested waters, while HA is just shark infested. Everyone starts as a fish and tries to first become a shark, but human beings net and eat everything regardless of what you become. I see this happening with disorganized guilds like many of the ones I myself frequently join (maybe I have bad luck, but best guilds I've joined in MMOs were West Coast US oriented play times, and I'm East Coast). These guilds strategize with 1 or 2 people, log on, set build for the non-strategic types and go: this is going to get you rolled in a GvG by 5 year vets or a build you didn't hard counter. I used to go with a guild like this, and even though we were never champ range, GvG was fun enough despite having flaws and exploitation. Then I've been in other guilds, where they wanted to run the latest spike for wins and the gameplay wasn't so dynamic. HA was tough when you set up a pug and got rolled by pure offense on the early maps (IWAY or spike) and that pug would prefer to auto-disband (or rank discriminate) over discussing what changes could be made to try again. The auto-disband PuG is pervasive in every part of the game now, even in PvE; and there's always a player calling bad strat who cusses out the group and sets off a chain reaction. It was so nice to have played this game during a time people thought of the content as difficult and talked about it when they failed. Entitlement and reward seeking are higher nowadays, while commitment and discussion are lower (my pug experience over time).

My view of HA has completely changed over the years as the game changed. I think shorthanded teams need access to HA to get their PvP exposure if they really want to climb the PvP ladder to open up opportunities for themselves (it's less synchable than GvG, for now at least). I now see it as part of the pvp end-game for most disorganized groups, because even if the top players in GvG quit, they could likely beat mostly everyone in GvG playing a few times a month based on the level of game experience they currently have. On the other hand, I came back from a several month break from guild wars a few months ago, the final remnants of my friend's list had evaporated, and I gave up on rebuilding it. So rather than live in guilds of people I hadn't played with previously, or putting up with the garbage that goes on in guilds of people actively trying to climb a title ladder, I put myself in a solo guild for xunlai/merchant access and committed that I would be pugging whatever could be pugged in the game (not really an oxymoron, committing to being uncommitted). My friends are elsewhere, the community is vastly different than what the game started with, I'm older, and I'm far more casual about formats than I was before. This is a bad combination to do 8v8 PvP (irregular login times also) and I would expect more than a few people to be dealing with stuff like this nowadays (they have more motivation than I do though, motivation is very important along with attitude as everyone says).

If there's a crisis in HA, I've started to think people can no longer say "Let the format die, GvG matters more". I've been in guilds where our goals were so far from compatible. I've previously relied on Friend's List for almost everything non GvG related. My guilds, let's face it, they know how to keep a schedule, and it was fun playing the game along with them, but incompatibilities come into play eventually. Guild stuff tied with crushing foes too much begins to feel like I can have more fun elsewhere when we are only great people while crushing foes. Most guilds are also built around original friends and then other people join. My Guild Wars 'core' was always spread out, people who joined at different times, played different hours, or had personal reasons for staying in other guilds. GvG only gets harder to jump into.

If you haven't experienced it yet, it's not very enjoyable being a JQ/FA/RA player who still recalls playing an 'alive' game (fortunately I can get by not having to speed clear PvE). I say that because HA players need the rank to keep going and the drive to grind from low rank to not fall into this. I'm more looking forward to the next Costume Brawl or random holiday event, and that's partly because I never used Heroes Ascent to build up being able to casual PvP in the later years of the game. I find the format worth keeping alive based on having directly seen the consequences of not doing it, because while I dislike it, I probably would have adjusted to it eventually and viewed it more favorably than I view the current RA. At least Guild Wars has GvG observer TV though, and at least I enjoyed single player games before I ever tried MMOs.

I will say though, that most high rank discriminators belong trying out GvG against better competition, because there are always less talented players putting themselves out to be farmed to keep the game alive, but they won't be doing it forever because they realize it's a parasitic relationship. And while I despise HA, even I've gone into HA wasting more than an hour of my time (multiple times) and forming a complete pug of people just sitting there (no requested rank), knowing that the playtime would be based on experiencing embarassing losses and disbanding. But dealing with idiots who'd rather wait in an outpost for hours than face the ego bruising of losses to learn isn't worth saving. Even costume brawl is ruined by moronic types, leaving down 0-3 or hitting the resign button instead of playing, in a place where you could pull out 6-10 points in a 3v5 or even win 4v5 due to people not knowing about base bonuses, class strengths, or tactics. One quitter even boasted about his HA rank 8, despite proving he didn't have what it takes in the face of PvE casuals 'competition' when he requested his teammates join him in cowardly resignation. So if you are genuinely doing a format for selfish rank/title farm, and not for fun or for challenge or to climb the pvp ladder: I'm not defending your gameplaying preferences nor would I ever want to be misinterpreted as doing so.

Can't win if you can't play. Can't play if there's not enough players.

People are right here in this thread saying they'd like to play but can't get into a team with any shot of winning, so they don't. The solution could not possibly be any more obvious.

To be perfectly honest, constantly repeating the reasons why rank discrimination exists is making a few of you look a little silly. Everyone knows why it exists. We know there are good reasons for it. It's up to you whether those reasons matter so much that you'll give up HA entirely rather than actively try to get new people playing it.

It's so odd that I even have to point this out. You need new players. You don't want to bring in new players. I think we've discovered the problem.

Yep agreed, and having to constantly repeat the reason that HA can't get new players is simply due to rank discrimination and child-like snobbish of majority of the HA players is getting boring.

Well , tbh i'm now starting to more likely get convinced by your points of views . Every solution suggested is either answered by " nah this sucked in the past " , " nah i wanna win " , " nah it won't change anything " . Players mentality is just terrible .. I don't know in fact if those mentality along the years made them decide to not code anything in some places....

There are obvious solutions suggested along this thread but anyway , people just wanna go on farming with their bbway or bala on dead hours and don't care enough so there is no point...

I wouldn't hold my breath for a dev driven solution btw. Anything that doesn't help get new players through the door will not change a thing. Asking for all new maps, rebalancing, and converting the format to 6v6 again is a massive request to make of four people, especially when it only helps a tiny fraction of the population. Besides which, converting to 6v6 is really just a bandaid, and not a very effective one. Aside from the fact that it only adds one team for every three you already had, people still quit, still no new blood entering, next you'll need 4v4.

If they do decide they want to dedicate dev time to making HA more active, I can see it being something more like Aceholes suggestion. Perhaps taking the average rank of each team and never matching teams who differ by too much. Sadly, it wouldn't help any of you find games more easily if you wanted to stay with your regular crews. In fact it would be harder. It just gets rid of the entry barrier for new players. It would work too I think. You tell new players they'll never have to fight more experienced teams, they can get a high enough hero rank for their hom etc, and they'll flock there in droves. I'd quite enjoy observing crippleface mcpvpfail's team holding halls during primetime too.

It's open to alt abuse certainly, but if you're bringing r0 alts to farm newbies, you're not going to be r0 for long. It's self correcting. Same with people who start 'lf g6+'. They'll get their team together, roll over the newer players, and find themselves playing against more experienced HA players in no time. The more success you have, the more challenging it gets. People who try to make it easy on themselves in the short run will just get to the more difficult stages where they belong that little bit faster. It might even stimulate demand. While I have to wonder at the mentality of anyone who would keep spending real money on an entire teams worth of accounts just to grief newbies for a few hours of play, I know they're out there

You have to keep in mind, a lot of you guys are pretty abrasive towards anet. I would be surprised if anyone on the team thinks of HA regulars as their favourite customers, and they don't owe you anything except the box you paid for. If you want this fixed, I'd say you need to start thinking about how you're going to fix it, not ask them to do it for you.

Again there are enough players to form a group. There are a bunch of unranked players sitting in ID1, you can form with them in a matter of minutes. Again like I said the reason why people dont is because its a waste of time, you go in, you get owned in UW and the group disbands. So FORMing or JOINing a group is not the problem. DENYing that its easy to form/join a group is silly. The problem is even the scrubs, the unranked, the complete noobs want to form a group that is capable of getting fame.
"I am rank0, i dont want to form or join with other rank 0s because they wont win UW, I want to get into a r6+ group because then I have a chance to get some fame." That is the mentality that is killing HA.

So its
Cant win because you are noob NOT Cant win if you cant play
And its
Can't play because I wont play with other scrubs NOT Can't play if there's not enough players.

To be perfectly honest, constantly repeating that rank discrimination is the problem is making a few of you look a little silly.

I'm sick of acting like a broken record for those of you that can't read.

I have brought in new players. Most PvP players have at some point. Those players don't stay around. Why? In most cases the moment you stop holding their hand, they quit. Initiative must be taken on the new players part; even with guidance, they must make strides on their own and most people are too lazy to do this.

So what's left? Every idea for how the players themselves can change the arena has already failed. What's left?