Solutions for fixing HA and other formats

Let me help you, then.
The game is six years old. Most of the current r8+ started to HA a long time ago, when there wasn't that many other r8+ players to begin with, or they had friends or guilds interested in doing HA, thus easier way to get into the format.
The discussion is not about whether all r8+ players are jerks and should have rank removed back to r0. It's about getting into HA today, with no rank at all to show off, based only on your willingness to play, learn and get better. Even if there are dozens of PvErs with the right attitude - they wouldn't care about losing, they would really want to learn and improve over time - they can't do it, because they are not accepted into groups... because of rank discrimination or other factors.
It would be much easier for a newcomer who actually, really wants to learn if HA was randomised (or Codex was changed into a HA-like arena, 8v8 with similar maps, but randomised), or if there were many many other PvErs willing to do the same, with skin thick enough to simply play for the sake of fun and enjoyment, not winning. And while there might be quite a bunch of PvErs interested in HA, even with mature and 'right' attitude, it's virtually impossible to gather them all at one place and time, so they can easily form a group.
Thus, with no real help from r8+ who usually whine about how HA is dead, HA won't recover.

e:
Because of limited playerbase and vast difference in the ranks (lots of high ranked people, lots of low/no ranked people, virtually non-existent 'middle class' that would aspire to top groups, but would also enjoy playing with newbies), HA may be now compared to an exclusive gentlemen club. For invitations only - you know, like someone from the club has to invite you there and guide you for a while so you immerse into the group and may become a full member, with your own rights, skills and stuff.
You could start up a new, small club with less restrictive invitation criteria, that would do virtually the same as that old, exclusive one, but - for various reasons - starting a guild for newbies only who want to go HA is not an option, as the guild would collapse really fast without the proper tutor. Having 22 fame myself, i'm in no position to gather like-minded wanna-be HAers into a guild and to lead them against all those high ranked, experienced players, as i, myself, still need someone from the inside to throw me the rope. You can't have blind following the blind, so arguments like 'just gather other PvErs and play, what's the problem' are invalid. You could have done it back when HA was still pretty young and the 'middle-class' still existed, and other players weren't so advanced when compared to you, starting out fresh. You still can do it in randomised arenas and still learn, get better and finally even get streaks when monking in RA, but it's not the privilege of organised formats anymore.

You're still focusing only on rank. People were able to join, participate and improve for a good 5 years. The reason the game is dying and the format is empty save for a few hardcore is because:
-Pool of players who would succeed depleted/moved on
-Poor balance choices/lack of live team resources
-Old/stale game
-Plenty of other high profile games out and coming out
-People farming for rewards in the sequel out this year

Rank hasn't suddenly come and killed every single person under rank 10. The majority of them will just have left and hence the ones who really like the format (ie r10+) are left. The problem with your idea is it will result in the people who quit now at r0 because they lose a lot, will instead quit once they hit the higher rank brackets and encounter the vets. All that results is everyone gets a new title.



1. The only pvp formats left alive are the ones with random enter, short game times and solid rewards. i.e. RA, JQ/FA. Even AB is dead at this point because it just isn't worth it. An arena that can take a good 20 minutes team set up, several enter/exits until you get on a good run and plenty of team coordination isn't going to cut it.

2. I do agree that things would be easier with a mentoring programme. In the past, several guilds used to teach players (kiSu comes to mind) but there just isn't the player base there anymore, and the majority that are just want to get the last of the stuff for the sequel (in other words, pve). As you mentioned, people stick to groups they know, so even if the only barrier was removed (rank) all that happens is the exp people go f-list/guild/alliance only and there's no real point risking a pug who may have held halls countless times or just be fresh out of kamadan.

3. I wouldn't really mind if fame was awarded for participation, perhaps it would make some people try harder to get into HA. I doubt it would result in a surge of players though, simply because the majority of people just don't want to put in the time investment to improve.


But the thing is, all this does is give unranked players an easy way to gain fame by playing low skilled players. When they hit the bracket for exp players, they aren't going to have seen and learned all the different optimal strategies, builds & tactics. The few people who do fight through that would have succeeded from fighting through at r0 (at least when HA had a decent activity level). All this idea does is move the "r0 problem" to the r6+ bracket.

Oh, it would achieve much more.
The main problem with HA is with getting into it. So if r6 players would still be idiots with no skill against experienced players, at least those r6 players would have their groups. Their friend-list would feature other HAers who went from r0 to r6 with them. They wouldn't whine about not being able to form a group, but maybe about being beaten by better players - sure, some vent-rage would go on, but it's not an issue for the guru forum. It's normal to be beaten by a better group until your group gets good enough to start beating them, too. And it's understandable mechanism. Still, at least HA would see some play, and it would be much easier to get into it, find other players to form groups, and so on.

To solve the problem of grouping up, then Missing HB's idea of everything leaving from Embark beach would be much better. If anything, it may lure back more of the mid ranks so there's a more even skill progression in HA as it could draw in any that may have just moved on to other formats/pve. If it could draw back the mid ranks, then you could have a much better progression and it could kickstart it again.

-1. What's the resident elitism-citing minority's preoccupation with HA? Not only is it not even a good format, but it also manages to be more dead than GvG by an order of magnitude.

Oh, and unless you get a ghost or a crystalline, you make less money doing it, too.

0. Why the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO does this thread resurface every couple of months?

Same thing goes for this thread as for the previous one - read this post and a couple of Reverend Doctor's posts, since he's already expressed most of what I'm neither articulate nor driven enough to rewrite.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...5&postcount=43
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=134

The first word of advice I ever read about getting into GW PvP, back in Spring 2006, was to meet people and make friends.

Just sayin'.

The dying PvP scene is not because of elitism itself, but because of the new and inexperienced players spending more time crying about elitism and less time actually making an effort to improve.

Almost every top tier player had the drive to get better. They did this by observing matches, messaging top players asking for advice and guests to their guild/HA group, and most importantly, observing themselves in comparison to better players on observer mode.

All of this, of course, takes a considerable amount of time investment. The way I see it, the newer players trying to come into PvP from PvE expect everything to be handed to them on a fast track silver platter, like they have with their 7 hero teams and a slew of party-wide item buffs.

tldr - We are not the problem. Quit complaining and put in the effort to get better.

the first rule in pvp - any unfairness is a big NONO... just low no lo...

back in 2006 everyone was new born child, but in 2012, there are big companies like Apple/Microsoft/Google, asking a new born child to compete with big companies in 2012 requires themselves to be a genius in the first place, and that wasn't the case in 2006 where there was no built up enterprises reputation that scare off all the children, this intangible unfairness in 2012 is being overlooked.

2006 - everyone was caveman
2012 - there are billionaires and caveman

the difference is the caveman didn't have to compete or handshaking with billionaires in 2006.

how the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO can they improve? its not like they have a way to practice...and going into the isle of the nameless to sync a shit spike on a defenseless npc isnt gonna do shit, people should be mroe helpful regardless of rank, if a r8 was to die(or higher rank) im sure hed want to teach his secrets to others as a successor. and thats just RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing joking, why not make MORE OF THE GOOD PLAYERS?! by helping them?! take a fxn pug once in a while and teach them how to ROCK! find their strongpoints.

in otherwords what im saying is, get off your fatass with "a job at fxn dairy queen" and help someone instead of worrying about your god damn win streak. if i knew more about HA i sure as hell would, im RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOin r5 and i try my damndest to teach a few what i know, but its higher ups that prevent this because the same bullshit spam: "glf r8+ to go" i join im r5, ..kick no question asked. because ive seen some kick ASS no ranked, ranked 5,etc....and ive seen some shitty fame farmers r10+...rank is NOT a good way to go.

I wholeheartedly agree that the lack of middle-class is one of the top problems here, and if there were more active mid-rank players, newcomers might have it easier. Then again, if you only grouped everyone at Embark, you'd get eight newbies forming a group, then getting steamrolled by a r10+ group. Sure, you need a thick skin to get into PvP, you need to want to improve and don't care about losing - but then again, two of those eight newbies will drop. Before you find two other players, one will have to go due to real life issues, and some other newbies won't join your team because you have no ranked player (and they, being unranked, will want to only join at least mediocre team, not formed by complete freshmen). Even then, you will only get beaten by r4+ groups that actually played together a bit.
The only way for eight scrubs to get some play, learn, improve and get rank is if they were paired against another group of eight scrubs. And this would require a pretty big surge in HA population, indeed.

Because it's important to many Guru users, and even if some discussions die out (or get locked for some reason), it still is an issue for the playerbase. The sole fact that the subject of HA comes up every now and then shows that the format might have more players if it was a bit different (either in terms of the current playerbase's attitude or after some changes introduced by ANet).

Lursey summed it up really well. A scrub, nowadays, can't make an effort to improve and learn to play a high-tier organised PvP in Guild Wars, because they'd need to either (a) get help from someone already inside the format or (b) form a HUMONGOUS group of like-minded scrubs (and i'm talking dozens, if not hundreds, of people), so that they might get the off chance of fighting each other, and not only get steamrolled by experienced players who got used to actual teamplay.

That said, i already gave up trying to get into HA, after months of trying. No, i have no fraps to back up my claims, but i'm pretty sure there are other wanna-be HAers who gave up - and not after their first loss or after being scowled upon for the first time. The fun that is available after putting time and effort to get good at PvP is simply not worth the time and effort to even get into groups, so that you may try to hone your skills.

Perhaps if RA and HA awarded the same points towards the same rank it would be easier to find a group - you could have shown that you're r7, so even if it was all farmed from RA only, you still know something about PvP. Both arenas might use the same or very similar maps and other variables, so that RA would work as a pre-HA arena, and not a goal in and for itself.


e:
What i find much more interesting than wanna-be PvPers talking about rank discrimination, as well as much more disturbing, are posts from PvPers who claim that PvP in GW is dead. It doesn't have to be if you ever realise what Lursey said above and help others recreate the playerbase. Sure, the total GW community is much smaller than years ago, but then again, more and more people get their HoM high, get their GWAMM, and would like to dabble in PvP - they end up in RA and never try anything else because they can't, even if they truly want to learn, improve and have fun.


e2:
Come to think of it, maybe HA is just broken by design. Maybe ANet assumed there will always be a constant flow of new players, as well as a big number of active mid-ranked players, so that everyone might get into play. With middle-class severely limited and the majority being already quite high ranked, the psychological homeostasis of the format is broken - no one (save several exceptions) can get into the format, and because of that, some of the older, high ranked players drop out (saying that 'HA is dead').
If that's the case, the format surely needs an intervention from the creators - some incentive to make experienced players tutor newcomers, as well as to lure more newbies into HA. I'm not talking about beefing rewards, although it's laughably easy to get a fortune in this game already.
But how about a new title available for people who are already r8+ - if they group with someone r0-r4, they get X points towards the new title, where X is the fame gained by the newbie. This idea is just a sketch, but you see where i'm going.

Focus on GW2 PvP... leave GW1 PvP alone as it is... nothing can be changed at this point (unless somebody invents time travel and goes back 3 years into past...).

One does not simply try to save the sinking ship... it's sinking ffs!!!

My 2 cents.:

1: Rebuild the tittle.

-It's the only PvP tittle that it hasn't been changed (just curious).
Reason: it's one of the best options to incentivate the game nowdays. I'm not arguing if it's good for high/low ranks (or not).

2: Rebuild the rewards:

-Changing the progression earned fame (there is much less people than in 2005-2006, so much less consecutive maps). Maybe like in RA (step by step) or maybe like in GvG (lower ranked team earns more fame vs. high ranked team than the high ranked team). I know this has been suggested before.
-Little bits of fame per little victories: for example, 0.1 fame per death (one per player and only the first time per map), the hero count as 0.2 fame, and 0.5 per flawless victory.

All of this could be scaled. Also 0.1 fame per point in tactics maps.

3: Rebuild the map sistem:

-6, 8, 10, 12... minutes max. per map (in case of tied the team with more deaths wins and so...).
-In HoH, the winner goes to Underworld again. Think about the impact of this.
-In Hoh, the advantage of the blue team removed.
-Removed the vault map and make HoH like the rest of the maps (consequence of the above).

4: Rebuild the number of players per team:

-Yes. How about 7-man team? Most people think 6-man. And 5-man team like in GW2 lol?
Less people means: easier to gather a group->more time to play; more groups with the same amount of people->more maps played...

Maybe a lot of people will think I'm a dumb suggesting those things, but the fact is that HA is seriously injured. As I said at first, just my 2 cents.

Many people don't get this point however, because they will think in terms of balance, while the place clearly needs to be played before we can even think of balancing...

My point is that it would create some new kind of builds and it could be original ... But, it in fact seems that doing anything of this( heroes in HA, PvP rework, requirements, tournaments , etc...) would be admitting that the game is dead and they don't really want to do so in my opinion( and it's quite understandable ..)

Many players in this thread are talking about a way to make new players have fun in PvP.. In PvE we can use 7 heroes, but there isn't any single place in the game where players can face an other with 7 heroes( or even with 2), how ridiculous is this...Where is the link between PvE and PvP if RA( as it was argued in other thread) isn't a friendly place for newcomers anyway...

I think that is one of the problems, people will always throw in the "balance" card. Seems people fear new builds, innovation, and for that matter any change to the format. As far as it being more newcomer friendly, I'm afraid that still falls on the backs of the current vets. If a new person were to go into HA and try to get into virtually any current group, they are met with a barrage of insults (Witnessed it happen a few times yesterday). I think that is more the reason why the Title change aspect might serve the community better. eliminate the basis for discrimination, and it becomes more accessible. Sure many vets will complain, but in the end don't they already complain about long wait times, dead space in play, lack of attention from the Live Team? Lets be fair, if you were a dev working on this game and saw the abysmal state of HA, would you really care to work on it for the sake of so few? I still think some form of Rank separation or league play would solve more then a few of those issues, but most of the "hardcore" players seem to be threatened by ANY change to the farming of noobs for fun and profit (upstanding folks that they are...)

Perhaps you missed this part of my post:

The ARE options available to people who want to learn, and there are most defintely top players willing to help if you ask them. Creating a system that forces top players into lower tier groups is not the solution.

I implore you to read this post. Trust me.

You realize that 2006 was a full year after the game's release, right? You realize that Tombs was already populated with r6/9+ groups and that GvG had already had a World Championship, right?

It wasn't a rhetorical question. Why would people try to pug HA (a venture doomed to failure, as just about anyone experienced who posts on the topic can and will tell you), then complain about it when it fails? Why would people try to get into HA, period? Just because there's no GvG district doesn't mean that it's harder to get into than HA.

Or it could be, you know, because suggestions by people who don't understand the underlying reasons behind what's going on are flawed.

Or it could be, you know, because people think they understand game balance, and proceed to complain in one thread of the problems , then in another say"don't touch it!". I know, who would do that? Complain about things like skill changes being needed, formats being dead, things like that, and when they get them complain that it isn't what they wanted? Crazy!!!... I get that the handful of "vets"(by the way, don't think we forgot that most of those vets only got past bambi by abusing the hell out of the old IWAY) would want to stay sheltered in their tiny little world of HA, but if the format changes, will they protest? HB died a slow death, sadly, and part of the reason was because a format for the masses was more a format for the few who ran the same builds , against each other endlessly. No one respected what the game was about. and when an option came along allowing for the mass exploitation of the /resign feature, enterprising, albeit wrong, PvEers took advantage. Until that point, HB hadn't seen a 10th of that many people combined since it came out. If hastening the death of HA is the thing players want, then allow it to die with dignity, not as something that the majority of the playerbase views as the dregs of the PvP world, and thats saying something if you look at RA...

Oh and the rant you quoted? doesn't really make the average ranked player seem like anything more then a mere troll with a chip on their shoulder( which i belive is about as accurate a description as can be given)

lol.

We're trying to help you out here, and you just continue to ignore us or write it off and some kind of troll or elitist bigotry. If you're going to keep tossing aside whatever help we try to offer you, then just stop posting and move on with whatever it is you do in Guild Wars or life.

It's like I said before, we are not the problem. It's the low tier players like yourself who cry elitism and want ArenaNet to give them an easy fix. Make an effort, or go home.

What exactly is the help? Perhaps I missed it when the general concensus from the what? 7 people that actually play on here? Is that you want to leave HA alone, that everyone just needs to get better (read try to catch up to 6+years of grinding) or GTFO? You really are pretty blind to the actuallity of the situation. I watched a brand new person to the game who had made a character go into HA ask a simple enough question (whats my rank and how do I find it?) get trashed, told to altf4, told to go to PvE and leave HA alone, and you think you are productive members of the game? Low tier players are the VAST majority of this game, hell when you look at EVERY other format, they all Dwarf HA. Thats a good thing? Does that make it somehow better? Or special? Nope, it makes it either a waste of resources, or in need of DRASTIC repair. Frankly when you say things like this:
You look ignorant, rude, and frankly, a horrible representation of our games population. Meh, you only look worse for wear. Now either contribute to the thread ( read that as post ideas on how to FIX HA) or move along. The adults are talking here.

You'll find, that unlike the format you so want to horde, the rest of the world views that sort of response, and behavior, well, childish.

stated many times from the graveyard threads, it simply just takes too long from caveman to become a billionaire with the current complete collection series than when there was only guild wars: prophecies, which the maps, the skills combinations, etc were totally less complex, plus there was no heroes, players could meet up in pve and form guild easily previously, but now, most of the outposts are zombied with heroes pve players, who they just care about achieving pve stuff, any disturbance is like a nuisance to them instead of joining/picking up into a guild from pve and playing the supposedly original end game feature PVP together, most of the current state are trained up heroes player now I think, which leaving pvp pug is the only option.

At the end of the day, if it is being viewed in other way, pug in HA is a nono, then there can be only reliance from the original guilds to train up new players, since forming a guild and competing from the start is unfair to most players, and once the big original guild stop training, recruiting new players into their guilds, and cutting heads, then the population dies.

ideally in a bell-shaped normal distribution...I wonder if rank 6 could be correctly identified as the middle population in 2006, perhaps in 2012, the most populated part in the distribution are supposedly shifted into the rank 0-1 range, as difficulties and barriers to achieve ranks are significantly higher, however the HA pvp structure continually being maintained its complexity and catering it for the rank 10+ range, there is a wide gap between the expectation from the majority of the players and the developer.

Nonetheless, using rank as a skill indicator is a dumb move, since the intrinsic value in rank shifts from many updates time to time, there is no way to clearly identify who actually plays well beside from actually playing with them, but trying to find players who cares to play pvp is harder than ever because the majority pve players are not trained up for that aspect, leaving players only able to find pvp players in RA/CA, emptied AB, however these arenas are not at par to the complexities of 8 players and multiple objectives maps in HA.

so what can new players do now? Nothing or instead, waiting and relying on one or 2 big HA guilds hopefully won't disband and recruit them.

OR to the extreme, stargazing all the guilds and rank remove and start from the scrap together again, which is highly unlikely for guildwars 1 I suppose.

basically this is the summary of how I picture the grim state of today's guildwars.

Here is an over 2 year old post talking about a proposed HA update.

Anet doesn't care. There is the problem. Its not players, its not elitism, its the fact that Anet doesn't understand their own game and can't be bothered to make updates. If Anet isn't going to bother updating anything, then making mere suggestions is fruitless and the format and the game itself is doomed for a slow death.

I wholly support the OP's suggestion and would love it if HA play and matchmaking was based on the title rank of people joining the queue. I also don't understand why people like that asshole Lemming would be opposed to this. It'd be an amazing way for us to farm the HA chest with our alt accounts reliably and with little effort.

/signed for easy loot

And you continue to prove my point.

Reverend Dr got it spot on. Anet will do nothing to fix HA, so it's pretty much up to the players do what they can to make the most of it.

Oh and by the way, my posts are in no way intended to "horde the format". I've stopped playing casual HA for about a year now. Stop making blind accusations.

Edit: Asking the HA districts for help is a HUGE mistake. There is no help to be had from the massive retards who troll there all day. Observer mode is your friend. And messaging people who actually make it to the Hall of Heroes and win is such a better way to get advice.

Firstly, presuming to speak for all those responding to a thread by using the term we rather then I implies that others responding are of the exact opinion you are. Thus far you have chimed in with a few of these now. Secondly the only advice you have is ask for help... Help with what? Builds, play, getting into a group to be farmed by experienced players? Keeping HA exactly the same will keep people out until they shut the game down, save for the handful of people who still play, a wasteland. As a player who admitadly retired from HA how do you feel you have a bead on what is actually going on there?

He said he retired from casual HA...so that may either mean he has actually stopped playing or is one of the few guilds that holds halls for title.....either way he has 0 interest in things changing...easy title or just doesn't give a hoot. The players who continuously hold halls have nothing to gain by change thus are opposed to change.

One thing I've learned is it is pointless to debate/conversate with the type as it'll never go anywhere.

1st line, ur a parrot
2nd line, u assume everyone stalks you to know you stopped playing for a year, if u stopped playing dont post. shoo, and contribute more to this thread
and 3rd line - observer mode only gets you so far and the majority of the time "winners of ha;lls" fluke it there because of the daily "no competition" / they are set to DND or offline so they dont have to do such things.

gday chap!

It actually does get you quite far. Having a working build very important, and most of low ranked people just bring their own useless builds which they think are good and of course, fail over and over again.
Also, I'm always ready to help people with any advices and I never ignore everyone and I'm never set on DND/offline. If you have questions just ask, there is no need to complicate things. You already have a no, so ask a question and you have a chance to get get a yes.

I'm sorry to say this but that's quite a right post. People should try and play on the two sides, i myself couldn't see the point of all these complaints years ago as i was usually bothering more and winning a lot... But however, let's be honest and take the GvG example as most players posting here aren't realy HA players but GvG ones :

- how many new guilds that noone knew months before are getting good results in MAT's?( by this i mean playoffs i.e top16), i saw guilds that tried and kept getting at best 2/4 or 3/3.. Why? Because the gap between top players and new comers is too high and it's pointless, except if you dare to play hours and hours, but it's a big risk for a small chance of result...

- people might say " there is no people from low level because they don't want to try".. It's not really fun either beating syncers for +1 or either losing against the same players for -7. Add to it the fact that people cannot play if it's not european evening, that you need 8 players, thus have to expect all of them to stay, not leave soon, have dc's...

What the game lacks is :
- an easy way to practice personal skills such as monking , rupting .. , but on a 8v8 situation, not a 4v4
- an easy way to develop tactics, basic moves , etc... event games or herobattles would be good here
- a way to try out with no risk what you learnt.. That's good because there are amical fights in GvG.. oh wait..

You sound angry.

What, you mean the one I linked?

Anyway, as I see it, there's two different criteria that go into selecting players for a group - performing better and social factors. Do you disagree?


For the record, Dark is r12. I'm reasonably sure that at least 90% of that was from playing with friends and their groups.

This year? eLuv, Boo, yK, couple of those French guilds all come to mind as having made the jump from middling-level guild to at least relevance. Sure, it still took them months of playing together, but what exactly are you expecting? If completely new players were regularly in contention for championships, that might be a sign of something weird going on.

There's plenty of opportunity to get into GvG - people like Floor and Ariena work their asses off to help newcomers, there's actually guilds around an introductory level of play (more so during European hours, obviously, although there are some in America), and far more resources exist for making the jump in. It's absolutely perplexing that people are still so fixated on trying to pug HA.

why Anet should care about a dead format when GW2 will be out in a few months and then HA will be really dead, empty and unplayable...or infested with syncers.

Bit late for that. I think people severly underestimate the number of new players to GW1 because of the hype of GW2. Add to that, by the time GW2 comes out, you will have a throng of new players trying this game for the HoM rewards and such, the core players who will not move on to GW2, and the average person just looking for an interesting game thats new to them, not necessarily new to the world, and all of us who currently play (the devs stated early on that the storyline for GW2 will continue to be bridged with GW1, why wouldn't we pop back from time to time?) and we will still have a solid base of players. Look at the companies celebrating milestone anniversaries this year if you need proof that MMOs can go on for ages.

@ lemming, I totally agree that those are 2 factors, not the only 2 though. New players are eager just to jump right in, though at times that can be a detriment, it sure can be a help, if honed and trained. sometimes just finding the person that is willing to learn can be a great start. Sometimes however, people will defy the odds, and just be naturals. What about all those folks who get discouraged and move on, even though they exhibit an ability to perform, but due to the circumstances of HA do not pursue it? As far as GvG, its hardly a worthwhile format either. Different set of tactics, different skill requirements, and a different focus altogether.
You certainly hit the nail on the head. Probably one of the most well thought and well structured responses to this thread thus far. I think every single point you made is 100% valid. Hell, I would love if they allowed for a format to include heroes, if for nothing else , then for the tactics one learns in an 8v8 environment. I'm not saying HA is that venue however, but some better form of training and play other then the current system of "get better or leave now". GvG and HA are about as similar as PvP and PvE are to each other. And yet they suffer the same way, and all because of a gap in the ability and experience of the player base as a whole, and a lack of a true mid-ground for people to learn all they need to, to allow them to be both effective and fun to play.

GvG and HA are actually pretty much the same. Almost the same builds are used, HA also has split maps and tactics and finally the objective is same. Kill enemy team and ghostly/guildlord

Ive seen maybes 2-3 ideas on how to fix things....

its good to see somethings in guild wars are still reliable.... "blah blah lazy pvers" . "blah blah elitism"... and the most ridiculous one "blah blah HA isn't broken its just 90% of guild wars is lazy"... that is the one that cracks me up the most... "don't you dare fix anything so i can keep stroking my ego by telling everyone else to just get better like me"

The thought there are still so many people in this game and its not the format that is broken its the people are lazy... get a clue... its a video game only people that HA are the ones that have dedicated their life to it like it was a team sport... People have jobs, lives, and play real sports already... You can't expect people to take this meaningless avenue of putting the effort in to get a pack of noobs together only to get rolled by already refined teams and call it a learning experience that makes you better in some analytical and magical way...

Just stick 7 hero parties back into HA and watch everyone that currently benefits from the closed format cry about it because anyone would have something that resembles a fair shot...

The Main Problem:

The biggest problem people have is that they can't find a team to play with, not to be confused with not being able to play....

People can't find teams as a direct result of rank discrimination... An experienced team simply won't take you period. ("elitism" problem)

New players will not form a team they don't know how to put together... It does not make much since to lead people into something they don't know... any person with a shred of intelligence knows the result and won't even bother forming a team. ("lazy pver" problem).

Why?:

Format needs to be constructed to be more casual... currently the format is highly focused on wins instead of participation.... People currently don't want to play unless they can win, because its not that HA is actually any fun... its about the rewards and titles in this format. People want to have absolute certainty that they can obtain those long long streaks.

Solution:

You can't make "lazy Pvers" find it less of a waste of time by simply telling them to get better... You can't make "elitists" stop stroking their ego long enough to take someone not experienced on the chance that they might fail them...

Solution needs to take away both reasoning's... there needs to be something to keep new players in the game even if there getting rolled to gain status... and less emphasis needs to be placed on wins so its not all that effective to wait for hours on the right person...

These are the problems that solutions should be focused on (not eliminating rank all together, or dividing a non-existent play population).... I listed an idea i think will work on page 2 of this thread and I think its fair to both groups... but nobody seems to have anything to say about solutions.

My advice to you is: stop whining and get good

@ 2 posts above : you both are wrong, i could say i'm r12 and i'm not finding team easily aswell.. ( i could also believe i'm terrible and only one in this situation, but this isn't the case unfortunately...)..

Rank discrimination is a small part of HA problems, but if the district is empty, high ranked players are on the same level as unranked players : they won't find anyone to play with them..
Many are suggesting to stop pugging, but this leaves you the problem of having opponents, which means you have to find 7 " friends" that will play with you on a busy hour, that's 2 conditions not really easy when you are not from those playtimes...

However , i noticed an interesting point that i agree with : " People currently don't want to play unless they can win, because its not that HA is actually any fun"

This is in fact the same problem in every format, due once again to the lack of players and pugging problem.. I'm convinced it's pointless playing in codex if it's about losing to the same guild team every 2 fights, because i have to play with the only players from the district and because there is noone else to face...

Considering there wasn't any single content update there, apart requiring more players to play a less active format, that's also about having players finding the game still fun( read : doing the same 24/7 and considering it fun), which means having an active friend list.. If you're in the same case as me, which means all friend list left months/years ago, i'm afraid you don't have much solutions for PvP..

Why do you just go and prove half the points in this thread right? Its like you can't even read...

L2 trol fagit

another holy grail of mine to try to fix HA, and Anet can feel free to implement any suggestions of mine in this forum, if intellectual property is an issue.

give a rank to loser, we hereby called it LOSER 1-15, similar to rank 1-15 but to gain it you have to lose, like the fortunate and unfortunate title.

reasons:
1) HA requires winners, losers and players to operate properly
2) rank to loser will attract players to HA in order to achieve LOSER, which atm there is only award to winner
3) it is not an easy task to achieve high LOSER for players if both teams want to play to lose, for example they may have to compete to infuse and degen themselves to death, and also teams gain higher point to LOSER if the teams are in the deeper maps of HA just like rank, if teams lose in very early then the awarded points will be very low just to delay the effectiveness of bot losers, and discouraging early losers.
4) at HOH, players will supposedly play to win, because of RANK, the chest, and also will be awarded with LOSER if they are not competent to win.
5) easy to implement just to give a title without much coding or alternating map/skill structure of gw.

problem:
1) bot maybe too good to make themselves to become LOSER

I might have not understood well your idea and i apologize if so, but doing red resign would profit to everyone since you would progress in a title track no ? Then you can see where this will go for a few time, until many people got their r6 Hero or their r3 Loser( which aren't especially long to get if you even get 20 pts per day...)

Besides, i think the point of your idea would be so that people know who is a " loser" , who is cheating etc... but people are already wearing bravely codex/commander 8 titles without much consequences( apart the few fair people who did get those high ranks in a fair way are getting trolled...)

I don't think it would be a useful solution anyway, because the number of abusers will probably be at least 5 times the number of fair players, and the format will turn into a huge mess..

it depends on whether players want to gain the RANK or LOSER title more.

because if rank becomes easier to achieve, more players will try to achieve rank, and play to win more.

The entire top tier of pvp players in guild wars, say the top 200 GvGers and a handful of other HA/RA players all know each other. We don't form pugs, we only group with people from our friends lists or other players that we know vaguely. For instance Lemming and Dark who have been posting here, I know who they are from within the PvP community so they are the sort of guys who i'd consider playing with. I NEVER pug anyone for either GvG or HA. Take friends or don't play.

Why can low tiered players not do the same? The problem you are crying about is being unable to participate, we play with our friends, why dont you play with yours? I am hoping you dont only care about winning and getting fame, really i do.

Ranks are just irelevant. GvG has actually always had a better system, because since the champ title has always been out of reach of most players, and generally considered worthless even by those who do have it, guilds/teams had to form based on friends lists alone in many cases, rank has never really been considered an important factor in group formation. The guild ladder was always a cool means of allowing people to be competitive with each other, without giving them any kind of direct reward/rank to show off. This encouraged players to play competitively but not for the rewards, because essentially there were none.

HA on the other hand has always just been a cess pool of title farmers, and they are not even good for the most part as a direct result on concentrating on fame, and not improving. Conversely the majority of the GvG population worked hard to improve their own skill level (b-spikers aside admittedly). The best HA teams have been trashed by the GvG teams who go to HoH since 2007 and before. The gulf in skill level is simply enormous.

So yeah, when people say play with ur friends, its not a joke, a troll, or elitism. Its genuine advice. We play with our friends, try playing with urs? If you want to play with us (read: the competitive PvP community) then make friends with us. To do that you would probably need to pm ppl you see on obs. What a suprise, the advice dark/lemming have been giving isnt a troll after all, its actually the truth! unbelievable i know!