HA matches need to take the total rank levels in the team into account

Simply put, you can't have your cake and eat it too.


Technically, there already exists some incentive in cultivating new players - expanding your contact list, which is genuinely important in a format that is as reliant on pugging as HA. I can guarantee that it would be more popular if, well, most new players weren't like what Elektra Lucia describes: arrogant, presumptuous, and mostly unwilling to learn.

You can't hope to fix the entire game's pvp format just by one or two high ranking players who helps newbies from time to time. It does not work that way, because they can't be there all the time or even most of the time given 24 hours a day.

Most high ranking PvPer do not think that a contact list of rankless PvE players is that big a deal really. Otherwise, we wouldn't have this problem of rankless players not able to find a team in the first place.

ANet needs to step in and fix their own game! Face it, without incentive rankless players are just more risky to take in HA than high rank players. They are not dumb, if you know that then so do most people in HA. So why would they want to take that risk when they (being high ranked), do NOT need to?

This is why high ranking players tend to group with other high ranking players. The present format actually ENCOURAGES this.

No shit sherlock, I'd like you to point out something i said that even implied otherwise.
And like I said, if new HAers really wanted to do HA, they'd try to learn shit about it. They'd have looked into the stickied thread which contains links to some good guildes for new folk trying to get into pvp.
The point I'm trying to make myself, is that if low ranked players didn't play like shit, and weren't too dense, or unwilling to learn to play properly, then people wouldn't be so hesitant to group with them. There are guilds that recruit new gvgers and HAers, but some people don't want to leave their pve guilds and join, or they join, and don't learn anything and continue to fail.
Yeah, grouping with high ranked players is great, taking an hour to form a party to go against other high ranked players and lose in UW, or win and wait 10 minutes for another match.
Like I said earlier, and what was said in Lemming's link, Nobody plays with new players, because they think they're doing shit right, but they're not, and many times they fail to listen to instruction, and don't seem to want to learn.

Everything Del said.

It's a team game. Rookies in professional sports see playing time because they have a vested interest in helping them improve as players. Why would you expect anyone with experience to help a random PvEer get better at HA or GvG? Altruism?

After all those complaints in the GvG in Crisis thread about there being a lack of instruction for what's indeed a rather complex format, I did my best to offer some introductory-level instruction. What came of that? People just weren't very interested, even when resources were proffered.

Used to take new people into HA. About 2 years ago we could bring 2-3 fresh players and do pretty well. Currently bringing one experienced player that just hasn't played with us enough to gel with our team is far more of a handicap.

Sorry that I haven't read any of the thread apart from OP, this topic has come up too often that I've most likely read everyone's comments countless times already in different threads.

High ranked teams don't form with PUGs in the first place. Your friends list is so important in HA, because you keep track of certain players who you know are good and will play for you. Even if a random PUG is r11, if no one on the team knows that person, they're seen just as low and any other low ranked player.

I did go through a phase of helping low-ranked PUGs by carrying them as backline. I quickly gave up when a team flamed me for, after 20 minutes vs rspike in UW i decided to stop infusing because we hadn't even gotten a kill. They all went on DnD and whispered me on several accounts. Epic. There have been many uproars throughout the years of players complaining that they don't get the chance. Problem is, these PvE converts are so stuck into their ways, they don't even understand Guild Wars gameplay. Just like how people want to solo PvE areas... This game is unique and some players are too ignorant to see it. I've found the better PvP players, and players in general, are those who had Guild Wars as their first online game. It made them more open to the format and competitive nature.
Sorry to rant on, but I'm basically explaining that the lowbobs of today are mostly terrible. No offence to those who possess some skill. For example, quite a lot of players will LFG as a specific build. Really? Lingering Curses Necro LFG? This will be the very same person who will QQ on forums and to his friends that HA is elitest. Really?

The incentive you suggest is only to create merged teams with high and low ranked players. This doesn't solve the problem in general. The format needs to attract entire teams of new players that believe there is some sort of gain. You need low ranked players forming with low ranked. And then to subsequently enter and fight versus other low ranked teams. As the format stands now, there are just so few teams that you're always playing against die hard HAers who need to learn to quit, or fame farming wannabes (BBway guilds LOL).

The simple solution is for teams to be fighting teams of similar strengths, which is ultimately what Heroes Ascent (Tournament style progression) is supposed to do, slowly weed out teams until the best hold halls. But you need more teams to accomplish this.
It's dead. It's like GvG, only worse because of map skips and lack of build balancing from Anet.

Incentive for high ranked to teach/play with low ranks - more people to play with when your core team isn't online.

Not all newbies are people who are unwilling to learn and assuming that ALL newbies are like that is probably an exaggeration. All I have to do to prove you wrong, is to find just ONE newbie that is willing to learn right?

However, newbies don't wear hats that they says who is willing to learn and who is not. When looking for high rank players to party with, they would all say that they are willing to learn. It is up to you if you want to give them a chance.

What my suggestion is trying to do is to stir the "soup" of pvp players a little rather than having a large concentration of high ranking players who only parties with one another. This makes it more difficult for inexperienced new comers to gain a foothold.

Anyway, I don't expect people with higher ranks to like my suggestion. Why? Because they lose their edge. Why change when they can continue to group with their other high ranking buddies and beat the crap out of rankless teams for equal rewards right now? Let other people climb the slopes rather than make it more level.

That is why I think the decision has to finally rest on ANet's shoulders. Do they want a change that would make the distribution of ranked players more uniform among teams and make HA more conducive for new comers? Or do they want the new comers to really stick it out for a long time trying to find people to party with them or give up pvp after feeling frustrated that no experienced people are willing to party them?

just a question...Why do the alot of ppl immediately shoot down every idea anyone has to "help" pvp? I don't really see any other ideas comming from those who are so quick to say "thats stupid" or "feel entitled much". If you don't have any other options or any constructive input on the matter....you're not helping the situation.

If you don't understand the root of the situation and start spouting off on it, you're not doing a hell of a lot of good either.

With the current state of powercreep a new player is such a huge liability. One player that doesn't gel with a team is enough to turn a great team into a terrible team. It was not always this way. If you want to blame someone blame Anet as every update is making mistakes less forgiving, which in turn makes less experienced players even less desirable.

The other assumption people keep making is that any attempt to "help" or "reach out" must be about grabbing PuG's from ID1. Despite this at best being terribly ineffective and at worst a complete waste of everyone's time.

I think this is a start to improving HA.

Many new comers have told me that they cant even find a group in HA and it is just boring to stand there and LFG for longer than 30 minutes when they could just RA immediately, or party up with their heroes for some PvE.

All these are the result of rank discrimination in HA that ANet has a role in building. They ought to fix it. Not everyone is in a HA pvp guild with nice experienced guild members to help them.

pvp is a lot more sensitive to changes than pve.

I won't disagree that there are people who shoot ideas down just for the hell of it without considering it as a feasible idea for the game but when it comes to HA its even more sensitive than RA or codex and chances are it will receive much negativity by people who actually play HA and take it seriously. Doing anything to the ranking system which is the reward people play HA for is nearly impossible to change and I don't think forcing higher ranks to play with lower ranks is the right way to go at this stage in the game.

Has it ever been suggested to make HA 2 random teams of 4 as a team of 8? Syncing wouldn't be a huge problem either as you could just shuffle teams as you change maps so a sync team of 8 would get shuffled after the first map.

Have you even read anything anyone is saying or do you just repeat the same garbage repeatedly?

Nah man, don't you get it. The only problem is rank discrimination. So clearly the solution to rank discrimination is for the match selection process to rank discriminate.

Finally, someone got it!

It seems logical but HA elites would be downright pissed to see all their hard work become deluded. There may also have to be adjustments to the title so it doesn't take a decade to reach r15. If this were implemented however the people whining in HA on the first day would be lulzy.

Realistically how many ppl are we talking about? 100? 200? 500? I would think for the greater good they could just suck it up. And btw thx for actually answering my ?s b4 unlike ..... Anywho..since the main issue is getting more ppl into pvp...would it be reasonable to set aside other issues until this one is addressed?

Depending on how ANet chooses to implement that may or may not be the case. ANet can leave the rewards the same, but grants MORE rewards on top of the current rewards if a lower ranked team beats a higher ranked team.

This will form an incentive for high ranking players to join low ranked teams so they can get more rewards should they beat a team that is higher ranked than theirs.

Of course, there would still be high rankers who prefer to continue to exploit an easy unfair match where experienced high ranking players group together (with their Vent and organized spikes) against newbie teams. They can still do that, but their rewards, if they win, should be lower than if the newbie team wins against them.

So we're suggesting that high ranked teams be forced to put some low ranked people on their team to drop the team average and therefore obtain more rewards?
This could be ridiculously abused with alt accounts.
This isn't a playground and we're not all children. We can't be forced to play nice with the other kids by our Mom (Anet?). There will always be better players forming groups and excluding bad players. In every game.