Killing two birds with one stone? A solution to a couple of often requested features

Read it all before you make a judgement...

There are two things I think people who enjoy PvP would really, reall love... a place where they can test out their builds, and a place where they can battle 1 on 1. Why not make a spot where both come together? It works REALLY well in competitve fighting games like tekken, and it would address concerns that Arena.net may have as far as making a full fledged 1v1 arena.

Face it, as soon as an official 1v1 arena is made, everyone will want to nerf the best builds or beg to help out the weaker one. The game is to be balanced for TEAM play only, so I support not having something that will easily cause this focus to be disrupted (despite how cool 1v1 in concept really is).

So, my solution is to make an official Build Practice arena a lot like Tekken's practice mode over the last 10 years. Let me tell you, their practice mode is GREATLY appreciated by the community since in came around in the 90s.

As it relates to GW, you and up to one team mate can go in an area with another two people and just practice to your hearts content. Test out epidemic ranges, skill debuff effects, stacking percentages... whatever.

You need to have at least one teammate and two enemy opponents to test out things that affect multiple targets. And, if you eventually want it to be fully fleshed out, you can allow us to put in dummy CPU characters (again, like Tekken) that you can have do anything you wish from an action menu: attack, cast, enchant, hex, run, interrupt, whatever. You select the CPU toons, you select the skills they come in with if you don't want to test with others.

How does this address 1v1 (or 2v2 or 2v1 even) requests? As you can see, the players can fight freestyle if they wish. However, keep in mind you can NEVER die. As soon as your HP is down to zero, there is an auto-flash of Rebirth animation and it instantly recharges the health and energy bar. No need to keep track of official 'deaths' in-game.... just let the players keep track themselves if they wish.

With these restrictions (which exist in Tekken's practice mode), people will have their unofficial way of battling 1v1, 2v1, or 2v2 if they choose. By emphasizing that this is purely a practice mode for testing stuff ,as well as by not having any deaths or stat keeping, you de-emphasize the validity some may try to make of 1v1 play.

That way, absolutely no one but the most ignorant can ask for overall class and skill adjustments based on their experiences in the clearly labled PRACTICE arena. By the same token, people will have a wonderful way to test out their ideas before they put it into real action.

Well sounds like it would be a little useful, but if there is no competition, and very little that is actually changing besides a small way to test your skills, i dont see them putting in the effort to do this. Mostly because it accomplishes very little other than giving you a way to test your skills.

No, I agree. We really need some way to practise skills other than the LA competition arena. I always wanted to sit down and test my bows, but it's hard to find an object I can hit willingly without trying to hit me back

Well practice would be HUGE for all the non-elite players out ther (like myself) who want to improve at a faster rate, or just to get some accurate knowledge of how our skills actually work. More prepared and confident players that improve = more varied and populated competition in the real fighting areas.

I would like to see a practice arena built into the guild halls, a pvp area that anyone in the guild could enter and "practice pvp".

It would be good for guild strategy or even just for fun.

yup, I would love this because I keep trying out new builds but I cant... also make a practice arena at every town just to keep it easier

Ok, well there are places with practice areas. Its called Every mission before ascention. You master your characther, mess around a little, and make them how you want them. Like i said, this is way to small of a complaint for ANet to ever do anything about it because it accomplishes absolutely nothing of value.

Do you have no concept of how infinitely different PvP is from PvE? In PvE, "practice" is seeing how a predictable A.I. routine blindly kills himself from my Empathy/Backfire casts. A real Practice Arena allows you to test ideas that would work against the human brain.

No offense, but newbie Tekken players make the same mistake when they think hours vs. the CPU prepares them for live competitive play against other people. It's not even close to being comparable, and using PvE as preparation for PvP is very limited in its use.

When the top players want to try out new attack schemes, they go to practice mode (with help from a friend or use the CPU setup menu) so they can PRECISELY test exactly what they are working on... skill timing, spacing, evasion, cause & effect, attack angles etc. These things are very applicable to PvP in Guild Wars for those who need to know every single nugget of data that the basic one sentence descrip on the skills don't provide.

Think about it... someone in your Guild says "The 'X' strategy in our last guild battle just wiped the floor with us. What is the best way to shut it down or control it?". There may be a simple solution using one skill and one person, or it may require two people co-ordinating their timing. Perhaps the best solution is something different altogether.

In a Practice area, you can whip out a copy of the enemy toon, make him do the offending strategy, then work on snuffing it over and over with no restrictions. Create a strat, test it, evaluate the results, repeat until perfected. Next time you see someone with the 'X' strategy, you'll be more than ready.

Read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". Knowledge is power, and a Practice area will provide us with far more knowledge than you may realize. Not to mention, it unofficially provides a way for people to unofficially fight 1v1, 2v1, or 2v2.

also, you should be able to do practice guild battles against people you dont know. IE: and unrated guild battle with an automatic match! to test out your strategy before you actually kill your rating/rank (which happens to me alot )

Excellent idea - im all for this

I like the idea of guild skirmishes too. You can fight against your own guildmates in your guild hall for the hell of it. You could split up into two teams of 4 or whatever you wanna do, just beat each other up. This would give guild halls a bit more importance, and allow people to practice against people they already know. Make it so the guild-hall henchmen, once hired, will actually walk around with you.

Attacking each other would be disabled (obviously) when fighting in the guild hall.

Excellent Idea but add this. When you enter the pratice arena your attribut stats are stored. Ehen in the arena yyou have unlimited redistribution points. When you leave the arena your attributes and redistribution points are set back to what they were when you entered the arena.

haha swearnt ur awesome i love how your bringing in your old post to this and thats awesome because i can agree again , PRACTICEING is key to winning games i think all ELITE guilds would even use it to become a better team which is the purpose of this game? having the best guild? undefeatble? exactly why not only nubbies (like me) and elite groups should have the chance to practice

Another point is say an elite group is practicing and your matched against them.. then wow u get to study what they do as a team and try to figure out how to stop that so not only will your guild be better vs that guild but better against other guilds

Great support fellas (and any felletes).

Tell me, what competitive exercise can one greatly improve in without practicing away from real matches? I can't think of any. Analysts say about Phil Jackson of my Lakers that he does the meat of his hands-on coaching in gym practice, not the actual games.

Gymnastics, boxing, tennis.... no matter what you name, there's always a strong practice system in place that allows one to easiy repeat isolated skills over and over and over again. Like I said, in many fighting games, you can spend 70% of your time working hard on your technique in practice mode so that you're ready for real fiights when they happen.

Guild Wars would receive overwhelming support from PvP players if they implemented this - ESPECIALLY if it allowed for 100% unofficial 1v1+ play. I was "practicing" in the arenas last night. If I were near death as the last person, I'd beg the other team to let me test something on them. I was on teams where in the setup period, they'd announce not to expect much from them because they are testing something.

At times I'd find myself unconcerned with general teamwork when I really want to know about the properties of my invented skill. I'll rush a Elem and cast away, ignoring the whallops about me to get right to the result I came for. Rarely would I be so "selfish", and if possible, I go to PvE... but I need a HUMAN mind to test my theories so for now, the PvP arenas are all I have. Unfortunately even that's not nearly enough to get the perfect conditions in place that are often needed, so...

Add Practice Arenas please!

I just thought of an idea to go along with this...how about the option to practice with NPC's as well as real players. In the invent that you're having problems finding enough players that are intrested in practicing and/or you'd like to add some NPC's to fill up the gap or add some more challenge.

Actually, I did mention that in the top post.

They way it'd work is that each NPC can be selected for a particular action from a drop menu that allows repeated casting, melee attacks, lateral dodging of projectiles, Mesmer interrupts, and more.

Also, like in Tekken, the value of NPC use is that you need to have a RECORD mode. In the record mode, you hit a 'Record' button and you control the NPC to do EXACTLY what you want him to do.

MeNe NPC record example: walk forward 5 paces, Cast Distortion, Cast Chilblains, Cast Send Plague, Cast Distortion, Cast Virulence, run behind wall and Cast Energy Tap.

That's a random example, but you see what I mean.

oops must have read too fast, lol

yah programming a set team of NPC's would really help.. example; you just fought your rival guild and lost horribly.. you can just program the same 4 primary/2nd professions into 4 NPC's and tell them what the other team was doing (not exactly because people can do EXACTLY what they did. so some error is alright) and you can practice against that. Even just making up your own strats to fight against would be nice. Say you hear about a strat thats really good... Well just set it up n practice against it so if you face people doing that strat you will be ready to fight it.

Even tho this suggestion would be horribly hard to set up im sure its possible 2 add into GW.

Another Feature that would go nice with the Automatic Fighting NPC would be, being able to save your strats that you were making the NPC do, so that you wont have to redo it after you fight that battle


Any comments on this?

Well, that idea takes MAJOR A.I. programming that doesn't exist yet for games, heh. The simplest method is to have the ability to record yourself doing a series of moves and skills, then play back with repeat turned on. Works really well in console fighters, and they've had this for almost 10 years.

good point and yah it would be pretty daym hard to program the A.I. that way but hey never know? But making a replay of yourself would be a nice feature it seems pretty easy to do

Ya, and by the way has anyone noticed the slight increase in PvP games lately?

I used to notice that once or twice It had to repeat because there was no opposing team? (sorry bout not bein on topic, or is it? sorta off sorta on )