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

how is it a decrease a reward, if experienced players can be more rewarding?

I meant the OP's solution, my bad.

"1. If a very high total ranking team beats a very low total ranking team which is expected, they get zero or very low rewards."

Your solution doesn't even need commenting on...

If people in your alliance were actually interested in trying HA out, then you have your solution right there. Find some people who want to give it a go, get an easy team build set up, and hit the button. Why bother going with the strain of pugging, especially when every advice thread regarding HA in the past two years has recommended that you not try it?

I'm merely pointing out that your attitude is, quite frankly, godawful. If you've just started, you're not good. Don't think otherwise. Go into the experience willing to learn and you'll get something out of it. To quote again:

If your opinion is genuinely a representative perspective of PvE players, then it explains why everyone wants to have their hands held, despite not putting in any reciprocal effort.

Again, training programs have existed in the past. They don't work because most of the players interested in joining them aren't interested in actually learning how to play. Do you think you'd be any different? Given everything you've been posting on the issue of getting into PvP, I'd wager no.

The blind leading the blind does not help anyone. It would do more harm than good....pretty obvious.

I never said I was good...I just said I found the play not that difficult...there is a difference.

Again I'll note that pvp is not my problem...it is yours..Instead of arguing with everyone about their suggestions to try and help pvp maybe put some effort in comming up with some yourself. The constant arguing for the sake of putting others down does not help your situation in pvp. Maybe redirecting that effort to where it actually might help would be more advisable.

There is virtually nothing to help bring pvp back to life, because most new players play like shit and don't want to improve, and forcing ranked players to play with unranked players is just going to kill the format. as it is, the status quo is better than what would happen if anyone took OP's suggestion seriously. There's nothing wrong with shooting down a suggestion that would be detrimental to the game. However, there is something wrong with making really bad, poorly thought out decisions, or telling people they shouldn't argue against half baked decisions if they have none of their own.

That would indeed seem obvious from a certain point of view. Unfortunately, and I mean this in the most positive way possible, that attitude is a result of ignorance. Sure, you can be better than the vast majority of people who start playing HA (though PvE experience does not influence that at all), but you literally cannot expect success when you start. Even being carried by a much stronger bunch of people.

I find it extremely offensive that you would attribute this attitude to lemming. Do you think this is the first time someone has posted something like this in the last 5-6 years (at least). Solutions have been attempted by both players and ANet constantly. This is a very familiar discussion to everyone. You have been provided with a solution, the only good solution. If your desire to think up answers is stronger than your desire to actually compete in HA then go ahead and brainstorm some more.

It is also disrespectful in the extreme to think this is some kind of put-down for you. This is the best advice you are getting, honestly, but some kind of ego clutch is preventing you from gaining any benefit from it.

And this is why we have these threads crop up all the time.

Let's look at the facts: Nobody is playing a victim here and I have not called anyone an elitist. Granted my experience in HA was bad, so I offered a suggestion. Besides I have already mentioned that ranked players may be against this so I am not surprised at all by the response.

In the end my guildies helped out yesterday and we did some GvG. Some more experienced guildies decided to help out the PvEers in our guild. We won some and lost some matches. Overall it was pretty nice, but I am certainly not going back to HA with a PUG, with or without rank.

My GvG experience was nice simply because the people were nice. Our flag bearer made a few mistakes but they were still nice about it, to help him out, and that makes the difference for me.

I disagree, this common excuse is overused and full of BS. If people are not interested to learn, why would they be getting into a PvP group anyway? PvE is still the more rewarding activity in terms of ectos and titles.

The problem is not that they are unwilling to learn, the problem is that nobody is willing to teach. For me, I was lucky enough to find guildies who could help out but if I have been in a 100% PvE guild, and we keep losing every match, then I would probably feel discouraged. Many players are in 100% PvE guilds.

It is extremely convenient to just blame it on all the new comers and say it is your fault, you refused to learn, deal with it. But coming from the point of view of a new comer, HA is very unwelcoming. I don't think it would be that much harder than GvG but for a new comer without PvP friends to help them break into HA, it is a depressing place.

That's kind of how life works...you lose some and win some. What are you complaining about then? Pugs? Don't go for them, simple as that.

This isn't the rhetorical question you want it to be. It has an answer, you just don't want to accept it.

Actually, I have to agree with Lemming, and not because I know a lot about PvP, because I don't. I'm slowly getting into it, but as it is now I'm still almost 99% PvE'er. I agree with him because I've seen it happen first hand in PvE. Most of the high-end PvP'ers will think that this is a bad example, because most of them look down upon PvE harder than most of the Israeli's look down upon Palestinians but I'm gonna use it as an example anyway.

Being an officer in a high-end PvE guild that mainly does DoASC I've seen plenty of people that came in with the sole purpose of making money, without any attempts of getting better at the game. They are the ones that can only run 1 or 2 mesmer roles, because they refuse to adapt and can't be arsed to put any initiative in learning anything new. They get carried by the rest of the team, slow you down, on some occasions, don't come on TS. Don't pop personal cons; in short, they don't care. They don't want to improve, they just want the benefits without putting any effort into it. Those people usually don't stay around for long, but I've seen plenty of examples. I can only imagine the same goes for PvP, and on a larger scale.

I can believe there are such people, but at the same time I have also seen people who are serious into something and improved. Who is to say that such people don't exist?

When I was interested in GvG back in my old GvG guild, I spent hours in observer mode analyzing high end guild tactics and builds, and posting them in our old guild forum.

Sure there are some who are not interested and they dont show up for GvG. On the other hand, there were people who DID show up for EVERY GvG matches and you can't say that they are not interested. Look up hasty generalization:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization

Everyone of us have been a new comer at one time or another.

One huge misconception I think a lot of people are making here is the assumption that Guild wars takes any kind of serious skill.

Politics > Skill

With good politics, you can get into a team with a pro backline. Pro backlines can usually carry bad players past the first two stages. There are plenty of Bitch bars for HA that a player who doesn't really know what they are doing can use and be effective.

And while getting into HA isn't as hard as Daesu says, it isn't as easy as many others ITT are saying either. HA teams are NOT welcoming to new players. You have to go through a backdoor IE:Guilds to get in.

The real problem is that new players are mislead. A new player with no knowledge of HA would intuitively think that he can learn how to HA by going to HA, which is wrong. A new player in ID1 will get laughed at and called bad no matter how polite they are. They don't know that the best way is to go online and search for a guild recruiting new players for HA.

The best fix for HA would IMO be a better networking system were guilds can place an advertisement board in-game. That way a new player would go to HA, and see a sort of in game bulletin board with all the guilds currently recruiting for new halls players. Or something similar to this.

But the point most of us have been trying to make is that it is not a hasty generalization. I have brought in over a 100 new players over my years of playing. Most (95%+) of them cared nothing more than getting an easy win and would quit as soon as that stopped. Though I would definitely defer to people that were involved in XoO or Kisu as having more experience (which they seem to agree).

I used to think the same way, as most of the people that were just naturally in my guild ended up PvPing and doing quite well. Then after the years I realized that this was the exception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance

Now if there was a way to differentiate between those that really do want to learn the game and get better and those that just want to be carried, it would greatly improve things. Though I cannot really think of anything other than guild/alliance/friendlist to differentiate people based upon their attitude.

Your suggestion is impaired by your limited perspective.

Anyway, I actually do have a suggestion that would work: random teams. It'll be even more worthless as a format than it is now, but people will play it, right?

How many of them are there, though? PvEers don't wear hats advertising their competitiveness and attitude, though. Given common perceptions of and experiences with PvEers, do you really find it an unreasonable response to disregard them?

A (potentially bad) analogy: some professional/semipro athletes host training camps in their spare time. That doesn't mean that you'd expect any one of them to spend their time helping individuals, right?

Honestly, as harsh as it sounds, the absence of any facilitated fashion for getting into organized PvP serves as a filter. If you can handle the initial touch of hostility and the overwhelming feeling of being completely lost, then you're worth someone's time. I don't think this is perfect at all, but I also don't see a way to fix it.

It's true. It's just that the common perception that HA players are intolerant of new players because they're assholes that I have an issue with - sure, many of them are indeed assholes; it goes with any competitive activity of the sort. However, that has little to do with them being uninterested in bringing you along - that's merely because of motivated self-interest, in the case of most people.

I can't help but feel that this is one of the things that an official forum would genuinely be helpful for.

A final thought: Michael Jordan got cut from his varsity basketball team in 10th grade. He subsequently attributed this incident as sparking his drive to excel for the rest of his career. Shouldn't this be what prospective PvPers seek to emulate?

Yes, and so was I. I for example never DoASC till August, at which time I joined a DoASC guild. But I am one of those people that only wants to improve. I learned every mesmer role within a week -except VoR, it took me 1 more week until they let me run it- which isn't an unusual feet by any means cause the mesmer roles are brainless anyway. I learned monking and emo'ing after 3 weeks, and tanking not long after. But I am one of few people that are like that. I've also seen people improve incredibly fast in a very short amount of time, don't get me wrong. It was my mistake not to say that in the above post. It's just that the majority of players that wants to get into it, isn't like that.

That would actually drive potential players who are interested in pvp, away from it. It gives a horrible first impression of HA to new comers and first impressions stick for a very long time.

PvP is not basketball. In basketball you can play in the court by yourself and improve your shooting and handling. You can also improve your skill by playing with just one other human. PvP relies more on the team and less on an individual "hero" player to carry them through. Therefore the new comer needs a team of decent players who needs him to be a part of their team as much as he needs them.

It is about RISK and taking a chance to help other people out. But in this case, my suggestion would have given a chance to reward those who actually took that risk. In real life and in many areas of the game, those who take the higher risks generally gets the better rewards if they win, so why not have it for HA too?

If taking in new comers presents a higher risk but the reward stays the same, then people would deem the risk to be not worth taking, since their goal is to win.

And unsurprisingly, you missed his point.

Surprisingly you missed my point.

Well, that was a very nice read. We'll have to do it again in another four months, chaps.

Closed.