HA in Crisis

I believe I do care about HA that is why I am posting here. I know there is something wrong with HA and its not as simple as every1 put it to be. I dont agree with your suggestions because imo they are bad ones and I have already explained the reasons why. People(not just you) choosing to ignore my reasonings to why they have bad suggestions have a terrible mentality. They are not open to discussion and are just out there to point out "its my way or the highway and if you dont agree with me then im going to call you the reason why HA is dying."

A core problem is beginners cant win, no one is suggesting anything that will change that.
If you take the build like "ride the lightning eoe bomb" they are played by beginners and have a good chance of getting past the first 3maps. Now like I suggested from the previous post, if you change the map rotation to make golden gates map four, it will favor that build since it can farm 10fame instead of 6 which is about 166%fame increase. Because it is favoring noob builds, beginners have a bigger point of entry into HA. Again as I said changing the map rotation would not destroy the top tier HA competition because noob builds have slim chance for winning capture points, relic runs, and KOTH maps.

Thats because most of these people come in half way into the discussion and fail to read what was already discussed or fail to read completely. Alot of these people only read select lines that put the poster out of context. They also choose to read select posts which inturn make them have no clue about the discussions here. Or they choose to ignore everyone that is against their idea completely. They keep saying the same thing that the previous beginners have said, it really goes to show that MOST beginners also have the same mindset. Or suggesting things that has already been pointed out and has been argued against with reasons already said in the previous posts.

Why dont we post solutions to revive the format rather than post the reasons why we ended up in the first place. I am happy to lay down my rank, my zkeys and any other title just to get the format livened up again.

If it has to be, the winner get 1k per match. I am up for it. I am up for anything that increases the population. I want to form teams easier and find new talent within the present low ranked bunch.

So the counterarguments are:

'What's the point of joining a group full of rank zeros?' which no one was suggesting you do.

or:

'There's no point bringing in new players because they'll just leave', which is as silly as it sounds. If even one stays, that's one more than you've got now. If everyone who plays HA managed to get just one newbie interested enough to stick around, guess what, you just doubled the HA population. Plus of course, when half the population is new players, it obviously becomes easier to get new players to stick around, and snowballs.

One is a strawman and the other is, well, let's just say that commenting on other peoples laziness in the same breath as saying 'there's no point trying, ill just fail again, it's the systems fault' is something you might want to think about.

Plus three in a row ignoring Aceholes suggestion, just like you all did last time, because it doesn't fit in with what you want, even though it solves the problem of no players in HA.
Aceholes suggestion would seem to address all your concerns. Although I like my updated version of his idea better

I actually don't think it's even humanly possible to give you some of the things you are asking for with the size of the current team, and again, you've done nothing that would incline them to give you anything more than a dirty look anyway.

I'll say it again. You need new players. You don't want to bring in new players. Why are you pretending this is complicated?

You are playing on active hours , however many people don't ( this is the last time i will say it really.....). I didn't say to allow hench teams to make more unranked players play , but in order to make everyone be able to play HA when they want it . Just saying " it sucked in the past " isn't really a convincing argument ....It would be really hard to code , but players should be able to grab more henchs at some hours or idk ...

Apart of that , i think there should be " original quests " such as :
- beat 1 opponent with 1 profession of each
- beat your opponent by having all same profession
- win by making your opponent resign
- win a relic map with a score of 5-2
....

In every way , you have anyway to think of long term. Let's assume there are only 6 players in HA for some reason. So , those 6 would be able to play if hench teams were allowed , but right now they cannot . This is just an example of how PvP will be in a few months if nothing is done

Aceholes suggestion is better than 90% of the suggestions thrown out there, but I do have some concerns for it. For those that dont read, Acehole's suggestion is to make 2arenas of HA. 1for r5- and the other for r6+. It will allow beginners wins, but I am afraid that people will abuse that system since many people have 2nd accounts. I can easily hop on unranked accounts with my guildmates and friends lists and farm HoH chest. Because I know I will do that, and many others will too, it in a sense will not prevent higher ranked players from entering that arena. This abuse will happen so what Aceholes suggestion does is basically split the player base into 2. And in the long run, the high tier arena will be gone and people will just farm the crap out of the low ranked arena. And please dont be ignorant and believe that abuses/exploits dont happen.

Perhaps now you should go and read my post on the previous page where I already addressed all that.

so only 6players in HA and these players being able to play will mean only 1 thing, abuse the system and farm. log on 2nd accounts and constantly farm them. This has been done in every empty arena.

The concept of UW skip to HoH, it just doesnt work. I have 4rank 0 accounts, plenty of people have that much mainly due to friends leaving the game. The "self correct" system you talk about will be too slow each account will take 3weeks to be farmed out, and im pretty sure some people can get more accounts in that time period. Again the possibility of abuse is too strong for anet to spend time to implement.

Change the reward in HoH for the low ranked arena to only flames of balth and IMO it will be a great idea.

I didn't make any reference to skipping to HoH, that's the beauty of it.

Along with the fact that under the system I suggested, your secondary accounts will be farmed out in hours/days, not weeks. Around fifty wins will get you to r6, as low as thirty four if you did them all in one session, at which point you're not going to be competing against total newbies anymore. In fact, just thirteen to seventeen wins (basically one or two series of games) will put you out of range of the real brand new ones, since at very low ranks I'd restrict the variable range to one. The only thing that will slow it down is the fact that you're likely to run into other farmers on the late maps who could ruin your streak. At first the variable would have to be very low, but later on as people develop some experience and reach higher ranks you can widen the range, which also helps counter the fact that people inevitably leave games as time goes on.

The other thing to keep in mind, even if HoH is absolutely full of people trying to farm low ranked players for chest drops, it's actually no different from now, it just means newbies can get wins on all the maps up to that point, playing against each other. They might drop a few as farmers pass through on their way to halls, but mostly they'll get fair matches, and they'll stop seeing the farmers alts after a couple weeks anyway, at which point they can start seeing the inside of the chest for themselves. In the meantime I'm sure they'll be happy enough just to get some fair competition and fame towards their hom statue.

Plus you know, you might have four rank zero secondary accounts, but there's a lot more than four newbies wanting to get into HA for each one like you. Most of them won't even face you more than once even when you are eligible to play against them, if at all. If anyone wants to shell out 150+ bucks to buy a whole team of accounts so they can play 13-50 games against newbies and win HoH a few times, I'm pretty sure most players would be happy to let them fund a bit more game development if all it cost them personally was a single game loss, maybe a pair of losses. I get the feeling you would be better off having a chat to the guy who likes to repeat '100 ecto 20 dollars, no banned!'

If it was really a concern though, anet could just lift the restriction when it comes to HoH. So to get to HoH, you get matched against new players, but once there, you're fair game. Farming the chest on alts is still a tiny bit easier, because you're less likely to drop out on the way, but once you're there you're going to be facing the usual competition anyway, seems pretty pointless to waste the fame you could be getting on your main. Besides, your mains will likely get there just as fast, if not faster. Since there's less people for them to compete against, you get to skip more maps, which seems preferable to taking the risk that you'll get almost to halls and run into another alt farming group who beat you. Especially since the chances of that happening increase with each successive win.

The best solution is still for you to sort it out yourselves, but I'm beginning to agree that none of you will be capable of doing so. If anet wanted to do something about it, I think something like this would be likely to work fairly well, at least a whole lot better than 6v6 or some other major change to the format itself. The biggest concern is that it breaks what I would consider a fundamental rule of design, which is that you should never split your population when it is in decline. In this case though, there are elements involved to reduce the impact that has (variable increasing as rank increases), and while the HA population may be split, the split would actually enlarge it. It's not so much about splitting the current population as adding a new population that starts out separate but eventually merges with the old.

perhaps they should increase rewards when winning, like they already have extra faction for flawless, maybe hold more then 5+ points in a row for extra faction, achieve 10 kills for more faction
, win by 3 relics on relic maps, perhaps more faction each minute u hold a base on cap points

i dont think promoting same proffession team based teams is a good idea

should reward on how people play though

So for that reason people shouldn't be able to play ? I don't disagree with your point , but it just shows how crap was the idea ( the way arenas were made ) from begin...And we're ok to say that players do play for the title so , and other suggested idea ( i.e delete pvp titles ) wouldn't do anything

Good. Some real ideas are being made. Here is what I would agree with so far:

Issues:
-the format is inaccessible and far from approachable
-new players are unlikely to win
-new players have low ability to learn
-other formats or options are more rewarding

Solutions:

Make Low-rank players match other Low-ranked players:

• Either split the arenas, improve group matchmaking, or give lower ranked players better rewards for beating higher-ranked teams.
• Ignore issues with smurfs. If it takes 3 weeks for one account to get to R3 or R6, so be it. That's 3 weeks where a player is playing with other low-rank players and maybe teaching them to win as well.

Let there be training:

• Give new players the ability to be taught on their own time, officially, by Anet sponsored AIs and NPCs in-game.
• Set it up like a BMP mission if need be, with a custom skill bar.
• Add more better PvP training with pre-defined skill bars and objectives like "Protect the Relic runner", "Knock down the monk 3 times in 30 seconds", or "Do X amount of damage with AoE spells in Y time".

Make forming groups easy:

• Have all players in HA be UAX by default, like in Codex Arena.
• If development time allows, expand the skill template menu to a team template menu.

Improve rewards:

• If you completely annihilate the other team, you should be rewarded. Double Faction and Fame for flawless victories under a certain time limit.
• Add a bunch more faction for a win beyond the first.
• Add a HoM statue for holding halls at least once.
• Add a HoM statue for any 20+ win streak in HA, or something similar.
• Add unique fame bonuses for winning certain maps for the first time, or within certain parameters, like win relics by 3 points, win annihilation in under 8 minutes, or hold halls with a Guild group.

Reduce griefing / gimmick builds:

• Give players better active anti-spike skills, like Complicate and Panic
• Keep skill balances coming and frequent and with some HA focus
• Shake up earlier games in the ladder with non-annihilation matches.

Anything that encourages a split would be fantastic as it discourages same-profession spike builds and teaches new players this crucial part of the game early. Make match #1 similar to costume brawl, but with only 3 shrines, and a quarter of the morale rate that only banks your extra point on a kill. This is to prevent overly defensive play that was so terrible in HB.

If I'm leaving anything out, let me know.

Players at least trying to get more players involved before they go running to devs. However, that requires taking a certain amount of responsibility I guess, which it's clear no one wants or is able to do

BTW, improving rewards does nothing. You're talking about applying incentive rewards that new players won't have a chance at for months. It's really just a good way to reward people who already play and will keep playing that get easy matches in some way, such as exploiting matchmaking systems.

If you want a reward structure that gets new players involved, you set one up that rewards participation rather than success. You would increase initial fame for a win, and reduce the bonus of consecs, not give extra rewards for 20 consecs that newbies will never see. I mean we've discussed to death the fact that new players don't enter because they won't win. Of course participation reward structures have their own vulnerabilities (see complaints about fame a few years back), so you still need to only reward players who win. You just don't need to give more rewards to teams that are already bringing home plenty, it doesn't make a single bit of difference to activity.

Like I have been saying, beginners need to learn the easy aspect of PvP first. Playing gimmick builds are easy. Almost every1 who has a high rank atm has played gimmick builds in the beginning. I myself played bspike to rank6 and after started forming my own team with my own builds. Easy builds teaches them fundamentals and when they start getting the hang of pvp, they will soon realize that these gimmick builds are lacking ultility skills that they need inorder to win more. This self taught realization of how pvp works is better than the shoving it in their face approach. An analogy would be you start off with ABCs then you go to words. You begin with childrens books before you move on to novels. Since HA is set up as a ladder climbing to HoH, it should be easy to climb in the beginning.
Earlier games should be 1v1 kill matches and IN MY OPINION golden gates should be moved to the fourth map that way beginners will have more chance to get fame and just learn how to kill and stay alive.

Learning tactics for split maps isnt easy. You dont want to expose beginners to it. Let me give you an example(im going to bold this so my guildies will read this because they failed bad and need to improve): 2days ago in capture points HoH. We were red facing against a blue BBsway and a yellow Balanced. Yellow was up by 6points up until the last 3minute, at that time we knew blue bbway will gank yelloe base, which they did as we expected. Yellow lost their base for 1minute and regained it back at 2minutes left. At that time blue went to our base with a warrior, rit, prism. We split back ranger axe and rit to counter. At that time I told everyone in team that we needed to make sure yellow doesn't get middle. So here is the fail that happened.

Our rank14 fire ele solo splitted to yellow base and got himself killed instantly. If he had went back to our base to kill the people there, we couldve full team regroup in middle. Our rank 13 hammer warrior went to blue base, if you need to play against yellow, you need to move to a yellow base to cancel or your own base to defend. Because our hammer warrior and fire ele was was not playing against yellow(due to death and wrong base) yellow was able to cancel our middle. At the time we knew it would be down to last kill due to failed split. Our hammer warrior who was the only one capable of that happening was using a sword to build adrenaline to take down the ranger. So had our hammer warrior not went to blue base or at least kill the ranger to make up for his mistake, and our fire ele not killing himself, we wouldve have a higher chance of winning the game. And these are rank13-14players imagine what a rank0-6 would do?

Also flawless victory is easy to get, doubling the fame for that is essentially diluting the fame system in half or in PVE term, you double the ecto drop rate, ectos values will be halfed.

This only means that your r13-14 guys are bad. After that much experience if you do such basical mistakes means that you just had a lot of time to invest on the rank. tbh is a problem of people (like you) that take morning farmers in team expecting something this players wont give to the team. I had such experience a few times and i dont want in my team a fire ele that need to be microed all the day long because he have no clue of what he needs to do since he did his rank farming halls at 7am (gmt+1) carried by other players.

Back in topic i think tacticals maps are very important because is actualy where you are gonna learn more about how to move, wich are the importants skills, and such things.

Adding another 8v8 buttonsmash map before relic runs is kinda useless since 3 map of that kind are already enough.

People is very good suggesting stuff to imporve HA when the solution is one and simple and dont involve arenanet to do something. You are rank10? take 3 rank10 friends with you and teach 4 low ranked people doing repetitive and constant runs. In 1 week they will probably learn more than 4 months with r3 people and who knows maybe you will found a very talented player.
If every single r9+ guy do something like this you will see ha a bit more repopulated and maybe some new players actualy enjoying the experience of ha.

95%of r12+ dont understand how capture points work. Sure they understand the basics but when the enemy team start doing things outside of the basic stuff, thats when they start showing how little they know about cap points. Where did I get this number from? I have played with way too many players and against many as well. I just see noob mistakes that makes me go lol. The sad truth is people auto pilot this game or dont have a big enough brain to think of something advantageous to do but instead just do something hoping it will be advantageous. Sadly if this many rank 12 players dont understand capture points, rank0-6 players surely wont have a grasp of it since they dont even know the basics of pvp.
Again making first 4 maps 1v1 kill matches is a good way for beginners to start learning pvp.

I'll give an example why an early split map would be great for beginners to learn the game:

In League of Legends, if you are playing a 5v5 map, the player splits are forced (of course because of the style of game it is), but the type of split is nearly always the same:

-1 melee (dps, tank, assassin, etc) and 1 support (caster, healer, buffs, etc) on top and bottom lane
-1 ranged/ caster / disruption in the middle lane

New players are drilled this setup from their first game because in random pug games, it works consistently and is easy to remember. It has plenty of side benefits:

• teaches players differences in class types
• encourages players to play certain characters to their strengths
• gives some flexibility with how the pairings work
• allows more experienced players to contribute in an important role (center lane)
• gives newbies an opportunity to learn first as a support role, or being supported
• emphasizes importance of positioning and communication in regards to ganking / interception
• allows newbies to make better team decisions because of less information required to process

I know League of Legends isn't the same as Guild Wars, but it's undeniable there are some skills that are transferable from game to game.

Seriously, that example you gave me about the r14 and r13 making poor judgments reinforces the argument more than it debunks it. Players need positional training. When new players are involved especially, forcing 8v8 deathmatches for the first few rounds only encourages builds that are hyper-defensive, gimmicky spike, or build wars-y gambles. They don't have the skill to run anything but easy-to-run builds. It's a muscle that needs to be broken down before it's rebuilt. Anything that prevents EoE bombs or pure single-profession spikes is fantastic in my book.

why u comparing a wannabe dota game to guild wars lol?

most online games contain teamwork whats ur point

and @ fierce i think you mean 95% of the euros including you are bad if they still cant split, holding halls at dead hour isnt an achievement which makes rank mean hardly anything

Why u comparing/correlating region to being good lol?
Theres nothing to compare/correlate whats your point?
Are you trolling?
Also dont pull a borat thanks. Im American, get the facts straight

And the guy gave a valid constructive argument, whats your problem? How do i unaggro this mountain troll guys? im using fall back and incoming FFS this troll is fast.

Anyways going to what the guy is saying.
I just think that the new players for HA is very different from LoL. Most new comers are not really competitive and just want to get a shiny emote then leave to do something else. Because there is such a player base(unwilling to learn, leave after r3 or r6) for the beginners to overcome when grouping, it needs to be easier that way the beginners who are truly serious can endure the grind and finally group with other like minded players. And why arent these guys staying? the sad truth is because GW pvp is a "bad" game . If it was a solo game its metacritic rating would probably be like a 5/10 or less. Sadly 5/10 games has fanboys(i am one of them).

Yeah, I agree. LoL 5v5 is easy to pick up because it's just like RA:

1. Click go and go.
2. Not be terrible.
3. Win.

RA's not in trouble, but the consensus seems to be that HA is. I guess an easy suggestion is to make HA more like RA, but I can't see that working at all. If you want to play RA, play RA. HA should be a quick and dirty organized play option to compliment GvG.

Anet could do something or nothing, and I'm fine with that because I don't have an invested interest in HA. I would like to play it, but I'd like the Dervish update or play GvG just as much.

Anet will do nothing, they dont have enough manpower to do so. That is the fact, and that is why I am suggesting the most simple fix(at least i think it is in terms of coding) which is make map 4 to golden gates and more people will flock to HA due to its ease. Its almost like coding for the map rotation for ATs.
Anyways hope they learned from gw1 pvp and make gw2 pvp better. 5player focused pvp means less stress forming WOOOT!!!!

5player pvp also means an individual's performance has a larger effect upon the group's performance. This is going to make an individual getting over any learning curve more difficult and more painful for the whole team.

If they could make HA 5v5 or 6v6, it'd definitely cut down on the waiting times for entering. It probably make rank discrimination a bit more intense, but if it does happen that'd only further cripple the activity anyway. And I have zero hope in that players will realize this and counteract it. I bet they'd rather rage-quit the game than play with new comers, tbh. Elitist pigs will always be elitist to the very bitter end, until the final sting of game-death is administered. They WILL ultimately destroy "game activity" with their malevolence.

While sad, it is the truth.

I don't really have problem playing with unranked pugs ( in fact , regarding my playtimes i don't have much choice ) , but the fact is , and i understand it , there will still be some addict guilds playing 24/7 ( such as [MATH] , [sz] , [Egg] + some common teams with same players ) .

For some players , these are already hard to beat so can you imagine beating them with inexped healers or melee ?? It would be possible after playing vs them a lot , so that could take some week but problem is that those players want to win right now , not in few weeks..... The same can apply for people that keep want to find r11+ players while there's noone in id1...

So yes , i think they did good by making 5v5 for gw2, since here it's kinda hard to change people's behaviour anyway , and hard to find a good solution otherwise...

I would love to see a bunch of skill updates to help boost HA's build diversity well not affecting GvG's.

1thing I would really love to see changed is make haste. This skill is a must and really puts a strain on the attribute points allocation, make it 15seconds flat in the no attributes line. Reason: You can put it on more classes since making Para secondary is already a sacrafice due to its bad skills. Plus no one touches this skill in gvg.

Another thing I would love to see changed is Nerf to Soul Twisting. Either kill the skill or make the spirits have their recharge when interupted(atm only Dshot and dchop forces the long recharge) Reason:its basically killing all spike builds atm and most rupts(dshot and dchop being exceptions) dont do anything since ST will just instantly recharge the spirits.

I said it on other thread , but shadow walk and cripshot nerf right now just prove they don't care of any other format ( i don't know how many times people in HB asked for teleport skills to stop casting enchant...).
Atm , this update doesn't do anything for HA , except by making ranger/sins a very little slower. But yes , it would be nice to just change 1 or 2 skills concerning HA only though....

Frankly I'd like to see a reworking of *all* of the must have skills.

Song of Concentration
Make Haste
Ward against Foes
Grasping Earth
Savannah/Searing/Teinai's
Resilient Weapon
Aegis

Also no DP and 1 min rez in halls makes just about any kill other than backline irrelevant.

Yes , actually maybe they should make like rez 1mn right after you died. It could be better then for 1v1 holding especially , or like some situations in cap pts ( like you finally killed r/el , osht he rezzes 2 sec after.. )

A couple of hours ago in international district
GLF healer r9+
I am r8 and sent invitation to the group. When I showed my rank I was kicked in no time. Usually I ask before entering in groups ranked higher than me, but I thought that one rank of difference was not that tragic...
This is one of the causes why HA is dying. I mean, if the knew me, and they thought I am a bad infuser, I could understand... but kicking one person one rank below your requirments and spending 10-15 mins more to find a new one, that you don't know either, is very childlish

The utmost reason why I've lost interest in HA and am now GvGing instead.

HA destroyed itself. Period

I don't think Anet cares about anything other than GvG, tbh. HA, RA, and CA are all just lowly orphans permanently locked in the basement, only to be fed the bones and bread crumbs that tumble and trickle off of the GvG master dinner table.

yep i agreee

drama.

always been like that form your owns teams to solve the problem.

its not a drama and I do not care a nut of these guy. As monk I find a team in 5 minutes every time, so I have no problem.
I also form my team very often, and when I lead, most of the time I accept people less ranked than me, if I have no better choice.
It is only to show at which level can elitism arrive

You think they care about GvG?

At the very most *yes*.

Let's say they care more of GvG than HA and everything else ( and anyway , updates proved it...). People will tell me once again " you can't expect people to be on 24/7" or " it's 5 years old game dude" , but seriously , it's totally impossible to do anything else than RA now at these hours....

Welcome to 2008.
Halls died YEARS ago.
Another QQ ZOMG IM R0 BUT I WANT IN YOUR R9+ WHY NOT TAKE ME???


About the only thing I can think of that will get me R9 (RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO wolf, I'd rather bambi), is if the let me take 7 heros. When halls was active and I played with good people, playing with trash just brings on the red mist. Since I started playing again (PVE) I've seen like 2 good prot monks.

The fact I can prot and hold halls just proves how low HA has sunk.

That's very condescending of you. Possibly true, but condescending nonetheless.

I think there's nothing saving HA, or even GvG. Anet's not allotting the resources for it, and they're quite envenomed by our attitudes at this point after having visited all applicable GW1 forums and reading all the vile posts within them. It's not to say they haven't earned it through their nonperformance, but our collective responses aren't helping anything get better either.

Concluding: Trying to save Guild Wars 1 [PvP] is like trying to scoop water out of a "swiss-cheesed" boat [full of holes] in the middle of a stormy ocean surrounded by sharks. It's just not. gonna. HAPPEN.

so true, sad thing is people still jizz there pants when they hold halls in 2010

It depends how you want to save HA. The " rank discrimination " many consider as a problem and inactivity could be eliminated much by having henchs ( since people will QQ if heroes) teams . However , if not , i don't think there's any solution to save HA at his point yes . But ,players mentality is more involved than i expected though , and i noticed it by just standing 10mn id1 earlier...