HA in Crisis

PvP is dead, its the player's and anet's fault.

Anet is to blame for bad updates and poor managing.

Players are to blame for not including more people other than a pool of already established players for so long (3+years) which is kind of like inbreeding...eventually the group dies off from defects and retardation.

Overall, most of us saw it coming and honestly im surprised its still going at all. It will be like CA eventually unless more players quit crying about rank discrimination and just form and play and learn from losing.

its been like this for 3 years, if its gonna become like ca it would have happened 3 years ago

It will become like CA once GW2 will be released. 2/3 of players will leave , other 1/3 will be unable to play , because of epic condition to at least get some fights in an area ( i.e usually at least 25 players ) . For the time till it's released , people will probably get bored and leave with time . Euro evenings will remain same imo , but rest of time will just be even more dead than it is now...

The only problem why people keep away from HA is because a) 90% of the HA players are douches and won't give someone a chance of playing and b) they require a rank of atleast 6+ nowadays, which is impossible for new players to join in... I have had GW for about 65 months now, rank 4 hero, but I've NEVER been able to win the hall...

Geez, seems like i maybe the only R1 that have won the hall though its only once, but that was 3 years back with a guild team lolz
its was a nice feeling

yep u are correct, people don't like HA unless you grind a lot and reach a certain rank, 99% are not "elitist" as their rank came from grinding not that they are really elite. But you can't blame them, they just want to reduce the grind. just leave this format alone, it is not fun. it is full of self delusional players thinking they actually live in an apartment right beside Battle Isle. it is a frustrating place full of haters.

remember why you buy the game in the first place? it is for fun and laughter, peace and joy.

Halls is crap anyways your not missing anything by not playing it.
Well to be constructive.
A game should be accessible, easy to learn hard to master.
That is not halls, it's just not approachable by design, or to be more frank it is no longer approachable due to player actions on concepts (titles).

Even then, if you removed titles Halls wouldn't get better.

How is this thread still going?
About the only thing that will revive HA is letting people take 7 heros.
God knows I'd rather use them than new pugs.
I'd also be able to faceroll most of the r9+ pugs to boot.
Win - win situation IMO.

No, it's not. Read the thread.

Let's hope this ( or something close to it ) will be done on the next 7 heroes update ( if it even comes..)..

And to ecknine : rank discrimination is a problem that has always existed. The problem here is about the activity in HA on non-euro evenings. You can be either r0 or r10 you won't find more people.....

Thus this leads to rank discrimination problem. As long as there are many people playing , there are as many unranked team that ranked i guess ; but here , concerning the few times i logged recently , it was just like same r11 bala holding halls , facerolling everyone they get 1 on 1 .. But well, 1on 1 halls is also an other problem....

If high-end PvP players wouldn't have acted the way they did back in the day i.e. like bunch of douches, and if the remaining high-end PvP'ers would stop acting like 'em too, this would never have happened. I'm a good player, experienced and all, and I learn very very fast, but I got repulsed by the idea of rank discrimination. Ok, if someone is bad, don't take him, duh, but they have to prove they're bad first. Never tried GvG though, but HA always appealed to me in some way, but never even got r1, because people never gave me the chance to enjoy it. It's dead, guess what, it's your own god damn fault.

If you think anyone is good enough to play like a well ranked team, why do you and your SC friends form up a lame bbsway or invoke spike or IWAY?

I bet you would get farmed. I'm not trying to be mean, but the reason my guild loses in GvG is because they want to learn a game that is 5 years old. Try being new in Starcraft/Warcraft. The same thing will happen. Everyone you play will be experienced. You will lose.

/agree.
Can the beginners explain to me why they dont believe in this simple idea of experience?

Rank descrimination is there because those of you that complain about it suck. Ive had 2 rank 11 accounts in the past 3 years and both were champ 3 and 4 respectively. Now after i got my newest account ive gotten rank 6 in 4 nights. Stop complaining.

I beg to differ, I was never given the chance to prove my worth, all I got was: no rank? conclusion, you must suck. That's pretty bad PRing in my opinion. At least what we do in our guild is give people the chance to prove that they are worth spending time on teaching how everything works, and it's worked splendidly and it will keep working that way, because when old players decide they've had enough, new players will always take their place and learn hopefully fast enough.. There are indeed players that are just plain bad at everything, but they usually leave themselves...

And you might have r11 on 2 account and r6 on the third, but you prolly got in some high-end guild with lots of mates who took you on runs, because they know you're good. Well, that's still discrimination. Whether you like to admit it or not...

The problem with (most) high-end PvP'ers is that they think everyone is bad by default, and never give others the chance to prove them different. Stop being such cocks on a stick and HA will probably blossom again, although it will be a mere reflection of what it once was, and it will never be as beautiful as the flower it once was..

And of course, there are also some cocks on a stick in PvE (I know some, and I don't like them for that particular reason) who don't give people the chance to learn either.

And I also know there have been made efforts by some very good-willing PvP guilds to get HA going again by advertising and trying to get a new influx, but the game is too filled with players who walked into the party after everyone was already drunk and went home to go to sleep, and they don't know what the hell is going on. There are of course some of us die-hards who stay till the last drop of alcohol is gone, but it's hard to sympathize with players who have been hardly playing for a year or so (I feel the same).

I'm actually considering going for a PvP title once again (many attempts of which all have failed) but it would mean leaving my friends behind, and not doing DoA anymore, so it will probably end with a no thank you...

Well the thing is there is too many things to teach, you cant expect a beginner to be good at HA overnight, it will take months just to be decent in most people's opinions. No one has months to teach a beginner the basics of HA. There are rank12+ players that you may consider as "good" but they still dont understand subtle things in HA because they only play the game and never question the mechanics. For example on the subtle things, most high rank HA monks run survivor insignia, HB infuse, +30hp spears, has the -5damage/20%shields, camp 4040 when getting attacked, dying on high set, doesnt have a -50hp -2degen death set. Failure to get life up against a degen team through bad placement of the spirit. And then theres splitting in HA which 95% of r12+ has no idea on the very most basics of monks following damage, frontlines calling for midline damage to offensively cap bases and that 2frontlines when splitting should not be on same base. Cant 3man block hoh relics, cant square block in unholy. Most rank9 players cant even explain to you why all of these are bad(hell even a supposedly "high ranked player" wrote a gaint article stating why it is better to camp 4040 which is clearly false). Of course these subtle things can be ignored because HA really has no competition and u can make these mistakes and still win against the r6+.(real life analogy of: If you are a cripple and you win the olympics 300m dash because there is no competition, does it mean you are good?)

if you examine a beginner who is new to pvp.
1, they dont read PvP articles so they dont know any of the nuances that people have discovered over the past 6years
2, they dont have the correct bar and they dont understand how the skill works
3 they have the wrong equipment and the wrong attributes(even with pvxwiki, yes I pugged unranks a few times, gave them the team pvxwiki link and this still happens)
4 they dont understand what 90% of the skills do. that means you have about 200 skill vocabulary to build up and fully understand the pros/cons of these 200skills being played in HA
5 they dont understand how to prevent damage through movement which is why they always wipe sooo fast.
6 no understanding of objectives and the different aproaches to win/ prevent the other team from winning.
7 the game is way too complicated for beginners to learn, might as well go play some other game that is easier to learn and get the reward of enjoyment instantly.

You immediately assume that I, or anyone else just isn't capable of learning that stuff.. I am very aware of skills, I learn very fast and I am already very experience in other aspects of the game, so learning these mechanics won't be that hard, ok it will require trial and error for both me and the people teaching me, but that's how you learned it, and how every other high-ranked PvPer learned it.

I'll reflect this on what I generally do nowadays. Well, the only thing I do nowadays actually. DoASC, I know PvE is a lot easier, and AI is easy to predict, but there are still a lot of mechanics linked to it, and there is a lot to learn from that as well.. When I first started doing it, it was generally, listen to what they tell me and try not to screw up. After like 10 runs I had mastered all the mesmer bars, and I could already run caller. Tanking and bonding followed shortly after. So now I can run everything, even did UA the other day, but screw that, not running that shit again...

Anyway, in DoA there are also many things that go wrong with new people:
1. Not knowing how the AI works and how monsters will react, causing scatter, breakage, bad placement of EoE, agroing things..
2. Bad spikes, because of the new guys being unsure when to go, or lagging behind.
3. Bad monks who don't heal/seed at the correct times
4. Emo's lagging behind and losing bonds, although in some situations you can perfectly cope without bonds, but when balling big stuff you get blown up pretty fast.
5. Bad or new tanks who still don't know all the pops, patrols, pulls etc (although I also make some mistakes there sometimes)
The list goes on with little mistakes that are made there, but the new ones learn them pretty fast usually. Some stay bad, or mediocre, but that's normal, they give up after a while and don't do runs anymore, so that doesn't really matter..

The big difference here is: AI =/= PvP, I know that, when you play against real players it's very hard to predict what will happen, or what's best to do, but I got vent, I talk on vent, but most importantly, I listen when people that know how this works better than me explain me what to do. That's one of the main things that also must happen in our guild: if you don't know what's happening, or you don't know what to do, ask what to do, or listen to what they tell you to do. That generally works out just fine..

I would also be weary to take players that haven't been around as long as me, and haven't known the game as it used to be, all those years ago, because if you were there from the start, you know how things have evolved and understand mechanics even better.

I'll say it again, you guys shouldn't be so xenophobic about taking new players. Take a recruit, trial him for a week or so, and if he indeed proves to be bad, you could still say: "We're sorry, we don't think that this is something for you, you might want to try something else." That happens in our guild as well, if someone doesn't apply to our standards, our leader kindly sais him that he isn't the right thing for our guild. But who knows, if you try, you might find someone who IS good at it, and who could be a friendly and nice guy with whom you become friend eventually. But you guys always isolated your sanctuary from the other players, and now there is noone interested anymore, yeah kind of logical, no?
If you have a giant cake, and found it first, and some other guys want to have a piece, only a little, and you tell them to f*ck off, because it's your cake, and they find one somewhere else, and a couple days later you want to have a party with your cake, but no-one shows up, because they have their own cake now, it's kind of your own fault. (Sorry for the metaphors, I'm growing kind fond of them )

Well if you make reference to PvE, UWsc is the only one I know, so its like this: There are guilds that can UWsc in 18minutes, and there are guilds that can UWsc in 1hour, there are just things that cant be taught.
And heres another thing the game is 6years ago, most of the high ranked players already made friends that they play with all the time. Theres 7 other players in the team, if you let 1 newbie in to teach them you are destroying 6other peoples goals. Its not as easy as you think. 1 guy payed 100e to play fire ele into our group once and every1 in the team was "i want to win thanks, kick him." Unless you can change the core definition of what competition is, which is to win, what you want will not happen to some extent. But thats not to say that high rank players dont help out. They join unranked/r3 groups alot of times when they are free but the beginners never really ask for advise they instead just ask, "hey can i join your guild, im really good" or "hey can i come in one of your groups im really good"(the reason is already discussed in previous posts)

Theres a hierarchy of teaching in HA, just like real life education.
r3-6s need to teach beginners basics.
r7-9s need to teach beginners basics but more refined
r10-11 need to teach counters and build theories.
r12-13 need to teach subtle tactics.
so who you really need to blame are r3-6s not wanting to teach you because they rather farm fame. And you dont wanna learn from me cause im a douche

That's not true. You've made it more than obvious that you are disgruntled and displeased with the pvp community, but accusing them for the awful state of HA is just ridiculous.

The problem is that most players want everything handed to them instead of working for anything. You need motivation and dedication to succeed in PvP in any game. Instead of pouting and holding a grudge against PvPers, you should have found a guild for beginners looking to get into HA and gone from there. As long as you were not terrible you would have developed connections and getting into groups would have been easier. Saying that you were unable to partake in HA because of rank discrimination is nothing more than a scapegoat.

Anet figured out long ago that players are lazy and most do not want to work for anything (see: UB, SF, cons, etc.). A lot of the people willing to put in effort were part of the PvP community, but most left the game a long time ago, which has led to the barren state of HA.

That's not right. It used to be possible to test out things in order to get better in 2006-2007 , but now people are lazy because they know it's pointless. GW is one of the rare games where there are only teams vs teams for competitive PvP and they know that it's completly inactive , only some r10 teams are left. In AB , there are 3 groups of 4 and even if 1 is shit , other 2 can still contribute to win. In JQ , even if you have crap ppl , 2 roj monks can make the diference. Same reasons can be said for CS , starcraft , warcraft , etc....Now , since 2008 can you even test out builds and get better in Ha/GvG? clearly not. That's why probably making 7 henchs team is the best solution...

Just get this example :
- Setting sun guilds forms team at 5 am euro when noone and then they keep holding vs randomways + other teams , since it's 1v1 and they are blue. Every day they hold about 6 hours , what's the point for people to bother forming since they know they will lose hall and then disband ??

'Teaching' by accounts of what the word really means, is almost absent from Guild Wars (majority of older players learned with experiences and had not been taught). If I were to try to define teaching in a meaningful way to help people do it, I would have to combine various standards that qualify people within the profession of teaching (too much work to do this). If something like wikipedia defines Education as 'act or experience that has formative effect on the mind, character, or physical ability of a person', teaching would likely be something like 'having formative acts/experiences organized in ways that they are more efficiently utilized by others based on knowledge of how they learn'.

When you recognize what happens within the game, Guild Wars requires people to decide what is important to learn and decide how they want to learn it. A real teacher has knowledge of how people learn (child studies, psychology) that the ordinary person likely doesn't have. A real teacher can teach the unwilling. Many players don't even seek to find the distinction between getting better and winning more. Game players have more power than they do in a school to just walk out of the classroom, or to schedule how long they want the lesson to be and what that lesson covers.

Teaching was discussed for a while in a thread about why the community sucks. It correlates with learning in that learning can likely be done using environments as a teacher (which is harder than having experts). I can't remember all the conclusions of that massive thread. My best guess on what conclusions could be:
1) People can succeed by repeating beginner lessons instead of advanced ones
2) Some players cannot discern skill levels well
3) Some people have outside obstructions to learning
4) Some people ignore/can't find available resources
5) There is a hard ceiling on how good many players will get
6) Getting better is not always entertaining
7) Sucky communities both require teachers and use them as scapegoats

It's more of a learning hierarchy. Learning problems can be related to how perceptions cause motivation and demotivation. In poorly functioning communities, parents and students can also use their numbers to gang up and say it's only the teachers causing them to fail to learn. Like the things people mentioned about HA in this thread, it doesn't always matter whether things are true. If there is a believable perception that playing Heroes Ascent is too difficult/pointless/institutionally biased, motivation to play it will only drop and beliefs about the place will be self-fulfilling. I would consider this to be an issue with 'advertising'.

Stop focusing on teaching and learning unless these are real strengths that people have. If there's something that individual players are more capable of doing, it will be advertising and seeing how the 'brand' of Heroes Ascent is coming across to the players. Based on how Heroes Ascent is being advertised, recognize that people will know that lies are being told when they enter the place and see none of what has been advertised to them. GvG is also struggling, and yet it is currently being advertised right now with Monthly Commentaries. I can't say this will work, because A-Net is advertising people away from PvP and communicating towards filling Hall of Monuments and achievement. Commentaries will require the right mix of providing information for learning and making the format at least seem accessible. Celebrity endorsements are frequently used, but in GW, the 'celebrities' endorsed GvG; and over time the game became so AI focused that there are almost no celebrities.

If you can't teach properly, if the players can't learn properly; what else can you try next but advertising better. What else makes people buy crap products and elect politicians? What will get people to enter Heroes Ascent? But remember, sometimes the reasons you 'buy into' HA are the reasons people don't buy. How is education sold in the real world? Through demonstration. Scientia Potentia Est is not just a guild name.

It's not true that I have never tried, I once had an ambition to get into doing HA, but even most guilds required r3+ if not r6+. I gave up after like 2 months of trying to get some PUG fame, or having to hop from one shitty guild to the other.. But it's still somewhat appealing to me, just can't get to leaving my current guild just for some ambition I had like 3 years ago...

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/i...t10464516.html
Playing with friends/guild does not remove rank discrimination.
When you new guys learn to follow instructions, and not be bad, I might consider forming up with unranked pugs.

The problem is the complaining about rank discrimination itself.

This indicates an attitude of self-importance. While its ultimately based on the individual, the vast majority of people with this attitude, despite what they say, will not listen or coordinate with a team. Take a wild guess what happens when you put someone who won't coordinate with a team and put them in a team game.




Haha, wtf is this?

Screw Rank discrimination or "Complaining about Rank discrimination".

Hero's Ascent is not a very accessible format, no matter how you slice it.
Putting aside the rank factor, there is still coming up with the builds, even if you say "Im running Xway LFG monk" you still need a monk with that can run Xway or a Warrior that can run Xway, whatever "way" is being run you need that profession to show up. Need to make sure everyones running the build.
Go in find out not everyones competent, people get angry, rage out of group first round and your back where you started.
If your trying to PUG forming the group can be rather time consuming.

Herp derp maybe HA is just flawed as it is now.
Doubt reworking the format would be ideal, because people would just leave because "HA was changed".

That's why allowing hench teams is the only solution to make more players play the format . I don't believe it would be such a problem for r11 balas or bbways holding 24/7 to beat it , the only annoying thing can be from easy gankings on hall map maybe ...( but that's already the case now anyway..). Since there would be more teams , i don't believe the " i will make teams with my sec accs " help since there would be many teams in at anytime then....
Once again , i hope they will think of it since they wanted to allow 7 heroes for PvE... Making PvE easier and leaving PvP as sh-- as it is wouldn't be smart....

Rank discrimination will never disappear : knowing players mentality , let's consider this example : it's 5 am , setting sun farming halls 1v1 , we're 6/8 monks missing. Even with serious monks it's not easy to win hall as red 1v1 , so why would we take non exped or blahks/tutella that won't target ghost ? It's worth trying of course , better play than not , but the result is obvious...

You're acting like forming a non-pug isn't time consuming.

I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately this is what GW1 is, using 64skills out of 1000s to chose from, from their magic the gathering concept, which works good on paper but can be left without for the longevity of this game. Most beginners have no idea what skills do, therefore they can never make a strong bar, most dont even know the existance of pvxwiki and most of the templates in pvxwiki are not optimal. I really think by now there has been so many team builds created that Anet can really just create a HA arena where your templates are preset much like costume brawl, that way the beginners can just load a powerful bar without worrying if the build even works.(they are somewhat doing this in GW2 with preset weapon skills) Hell they should've made rank role based, it just makes more sense.

Well building a friends list(non-pug) is the most time consuming and even when you have a solid friends list, you cant really play whenever you want, you have to rely on your friends list being online.

I know it is, but I mention pugs, because if you have them going on in abundance you know the format is moving and lively.
GW2's hot join rooms will probably eradicate this problem, since people just wanting to get in can just join a room with the easy accessibility, while allowing more serious efforts to exist.

Who here that is actually good at any form of PvP uses PvXwiki?
Only thing that place is good for is finding out the flavor of the moment SC/farming builds.

OK i have a quick input that will greatly help all nubs in HA. believe it or not EVERYONE was once r0 in HA. but how do we all get ranks so easily???!@#$

cuz we have a F**king brain and we use it!
get off your asses and form teams, run gay bbways or invoke spikes. ask for r7+ even if u are unranked. USE vent and dont say anything retarded and i PROMISE u that people wont question your rank because they want to be in a team as much as you do. and if they question you on your rank just kick them and get a new pug.

Its really not that hard to get r3 (180 fame). by doing the method above you will be able to farm your bambi in a matter of weeks and at the same time you will make valuable contacts.

so dont sit in id1 looking for a group for 3 hours. just play american/euro hours when others play as well and form your own groups. And if you still can't get fame this way its because you are bad and most likely need to work on calling and tactics.

lol long message short:

form your own groups and talk alot of shit

yes. but dont just shit talk random people. pick them out on minor mistakes, try and make your self look better than u really are. 9/10 pugs wont question the leaders rank so u should be golden most of the time anyway

You know, the way I understand this thread is:

The PvPers: Guys, we need more fresh blood, cause only the same people play HA these days.
The PvEers: You discriminate us and now ask us to play?!?!
You: Well, sit on your a**es and do something, you *put something insulting here*.
The PvEers: Well, you can **** ***! You're the ones who need us, so it's not our problem.

And in the end, this goes nowhere. The point was: you misunderstood the reason for creating this thread. The PvP crowd needs the PvE one, not the other way around.

That post could be true if we were in 2006-2007. Unfortunately , everyone was r0 but not on same period. back in 2006 , there were full districts and a lot of players unranked ( thus less players much exped). this means it was easier for everyone to get fights , and there was also not any restart.

The rest of the post is as pathetic thus i won't really argue about it . However , you also need to know that whether you are bad , r0 or r15 , if there is noone to fight you won't go far.....
That's a problem people need to realize. Almost everymorning , there is setting sun holding 1v1 halls , whereas there is NOONE in( or 1 randomway from their sec accs). However , people are still wasting hours trying to form a r11+ balanced. What's the point ??

did i or did i not say farm american/euro hours??? any other time is pointless unless u make a good team and have at least 2 second accounts to make random ways with to feed your self in halls.
also to who ever said we NEED the pve community, we really dont, i dont want more useless r6 kids who know nothing but uw grinding. also new comers to HA are pathetic in how they try and find groups. i see them all the time saying r0 ele LFG......yeah gl with that approach

The problem in GW PvP is, and always will be, the combination of four factors:

- Rewards very disproportionately accrue to the strongest teams
- One player's failings have a large impact on the overall performance of a team
- Most people play PvP for the rewards
- The learning curve is extremely steep

The result is that established teams have little incentive to help new players out. Investing time in developing complete noobs into real players takes too long to pay off, and relatively few players have the dedication to fight through the long period of failure that precedes eventual success. This yields a constant population decline; skilled players leave faster than they can be replaced.

I don't see a solution that produces the complete result the community desires. Tweaking the reward structure to compensate teams for carrying new players would just result in the use of unestablished alternate accounts by already skilled players. Altering the reward structure so that skilled teams are not disproportionately rewarded leads to time > skill. Making PvP easier reduces the opportunities to demonstrate skill, and again yields time > skill.

This post is quite sad. HA is laying in a ditch pretty much for players that think like this.

Okay, so i haven't read through all the 16 sites, but here's an idea.
How about some exp high ranked HA players offer to coach people through gwguru.
For example, post a time + date + whats professions are needed (inside the pug section). Then people sign up for it and you go play a few rounds. So you can grow new HA players through guru. Once people learned some more about HA they can start making their own groups without getting completly stomped and therefor quit due to frustration.

I know that someone probably gonna bash this for whatever reason but before doing so come up with a better idea.

Don't play. Experienced players voted with their feet. As others have pointed out, the players that would respond would largely tend to have poor attitudes and not be worth the time investment.

I do have a real solution, though. What is needed is some sort of less prestigious PvP system that produces published individual rankings. That way, players could work on developing individual skill in that format and separate themselves from the generally lousy pool of candidates you'd get if you openly recruited to train for GvG or HA without restriction.

Suppose a Random Arenas format existed where the teams were scrambled every match and you couldn't leave after winning in order to attempt a resync without getting dishonor. Now also suppose that it kept track of your results by character class, so that the entire top 100 was not full of Monks. Now suppose that it reset every month in order to avoid punishing you for being bad in the past. Finally, suppose that it didn't give out any rewards other than ratings increases and decreases, and calculated that on the basis of the strength of your team and your opponents.

That system would let good teams in need of players easily identify those players that are serious about getting better at PvP and are worth investing time in...assuming you could keep it sufficiently populated with players.

i actually thought his idea was good and i would be happy to devote some of my time too it. and srsly lets be honest. Anet aren't going to do shit for us. Maybe we could start some sort of Guild Wars Guru HA training event. were we get 2 or so good players and 6 new/semi good players from guru and we set the event up with a-net and have it on the notice board when people sign in.