Games For Windows Editor cracks under RoT pressure

Somehow, explaining that rewards for something should equal or exceed the level of difficulty required to do it is the same as explaining quantum physics to a a native French speaker - in Mandarin Chinese.

I'm not playing through the Nightfall campaign right now because I drove my self insane with it. After gaining a few NF specific titles for my warrior, I became sick of it. I tried to start a Dervish and Paragon, but I just can't stand Elona right now. I think that's a whole other problem entirely, though.

Once I reach twenty, I never bother to do the side quests. As has been stated before, you get little to no benefits from them.

As to RoT: I'm with Gareth on that. While it isn't really hard, you can totally bork your party up if you aggro more than one group. This pertains to Ensign's point also, that you don't really need a whole lot of skill, just that you know the patrol paths.

How is that? I'm a little confused about that statement...not the analogy, but what it pertains to.

Everybody is flaming him for saying the area is hard and he should be better, instead of actually realizing he is talking about effort vs reward.

I dont get it. You get the Book of secrets for going through the WHOLE game and yet he's complaining about getting a small reward for doing RoT. It's not about the reward, it's about playing the game.

Story is not a reward. Especially for obsessively difficult areas and subpar stories.

The Realm of Torment is easy and actually quite fun with the right build

The Domain of Anguish on the other hand is incredibly difficult and only open to a few viable builds, and therefore not very fun to most people

RoT is not fun.
and if the next chapters continue to bring it on like RoT did - there is no point in me buying them. since it seems that GW is starting to cater a specific player and i can no identify with it.
i play the game for fun - and if i dont have it - its not worth playing.

The number of hours he's spent playing is equal to that of an account less than 1 year in age. I also wouldn't consider beating Proph/Factions enough to make someone a vet to the game. His blog also leads me to assume he's lacking the skill level most people posses, if they've been around since original release. I'm going to have to guess he's probably one of the people who spent weeks on THK, and he probably still would. >.>

For an idea of how GW treats effort/reward: What's the incentive to get a Master's level on a mission? You get 2 extra skill points... but only 350 more gold. It'll cost you 2000 gold to get anything out of those skill points.

Bingo. They fired everyone who could do math when they were making Factions it seemed like. They started wanting you to buy all your skills (not to mention the exponentially price increased armors - even basic ones), but never gave you even a fraction of the money it would cost you to do so.

He's had the game longer than me, and I've spent an eternity playing this in comparison. Not that that means anything really I guess, but during that amount of time I've experimented with a lot of different tactics to the game. Lets face it, monsters cheat, and if you beat them at it, then there's environmental effects aiding them, and more monsters! Some of those high difficulty quests are a bit ruff but it's all about pressure, so I'm not really sure what normal quests he's talking about. If they were the ones that just get you to the next mission, those are pretty simple actually. My first run through NF on a dervish character kind of threw me back a bit when I got to the RoT, but once you get the idea, it's not too hard to deal with really. Unless you want to run out like Leeroy in the domain of fear, and get spawn ganked faster than a monk can cast reversal of fortune... I would stick to monitoring their patrols more, then take out the smaller groups first, etc.

That is why PvPers go to the Pub packs right?

What does make someone a veteran? If playing THIS game casually for almost 2 years isn't enough what is? Completing titles? Top rank in PvP?(I hear that even that is a joke now) Winning the halls every night? 2000+ hours playing 8 hours a day?

The Dictionary says that Veteran means A person who is long experienced or practiced in an activity or capacity.

Even I have about 1000hours+ across 10 characters(each a different profession) and I consider RoT not fun either. Only ONE character has beaten the game so far. Matter of fact I like to avoid that area once I get to it because its not my idea of fun. End Game in both Prophecies and Factions wasn't anywhere near the difficulty that RoT is.

His blog says that he is frustrated with that part of the game, and the risk/reward ratio only adds insult to injury. He did not say that he couldn't get through it.

And to quote him:

Funny how many in this thread seem to have missed that simple point.

It’s not about him being a Veteran, Professional, or an Hardcore GW player. He is letting his emotions get the best of him, especially anger and frustration with the gameplay mechanics. In his writings he sounds obsessed with GW, to a point where he thinks there is a great reward in doing what he is doing. Remember it’s just a game, and not all games are perfect. Everything that has happen to GW is contributed to the developers who made the game, the players who plays the game, and the press how spins the information. It comes full circle. Again I ask, “Did we not ask for this?”

He has all types of options open to him, he simply will not take. Given it be real people to help him out; whom he states he uses mostly henchmen and heroes to get him by. Even to read up on some new strategies, to get what he needs done. He talks that he tries to switch skills and alternative strategies, but who do they belong to him or some else. He even has the option of taking a break from the game and coming back in a latter time, but he probably won’t do this. He is just playing to quit.

Two proverbs comes to mind, “if you fail try, try, again,” and “patience is a virtue,” Which it sound from his writing, none of those apply.

dude.. awesome post.

I agree that GW definately needs WAY more things to "work toward" for the PvE players(like me hehe). 15k armor is fine, rare weapons are cool. But I've seen every weapon mod and rune. They will have to add something new (no, not titles) that people can shoot for. More missions & story? yeah, that's cool.. but we've done it 3 times. And after farming the desolation a million times to find a Firey blade axe, it's gets old to rely on luck of the drop. I dunno if they can pull off mounts, or pet armor or some other thing they can think of, but there need to be more options in terms of goals.

You came into Guild Wars expecting another Dark Age of Camelot, while you should have been expecting another Magic: The Gathering. GW is about collecting skills, combining them, using them & using the limited landscape to do things no one has thought of. It's not about grinding 6 months for your complete lvl 60 epic gear set and it's not about clicking "combine" x 200 and "crafting" for an hour. I agree with the auction house/storage comments, but the basic expectation that you had for this game was wrong (and I had it too, and it was kind of a shock to adjust to thinking of it as a card game - because that's what it is).

Funny... I swore we just had a contest where people posted all their titles and so-called "experience" which mocked this kind of post. I'm a bit afraid to ask about his skill combo experimentation.

I notice he was calling us out, but I wonder how and why. Some people huh. I think it can't get any harder, if you’re that pressed to show you have the much time on your hands; which does not prove you’re the best of the best. There are many others who have that title; I am not one of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GWFRyan EDIT: Also, for anyone who's questioning the integrity of my PVE abilities or my knowledge of the game (hi Guild Wars Guru people!): "You have played this character for 394 hours 9 minutes over the past 9 months. Across all characters, you have played for 661 hours 41 minutes over the last 21 months." I've been through the collective entirety of Prophecies, Factions, and (barring a portion of the Realm of Torment and some bonus mission goals) Nightfall, and I've unlocked a whole hell of a lot of skills. I've probably spent as much time experimenting with different kinds of skill combos and character builds as I have playing the game, and I certainly DID have to make some significant changes to my play style and hero builds to even get as far as I did in the Realm of Torment. I'm not slinging baseless hate here, folks.

And this is what "nobody cares at Guild Wars Guru" looks like:



An article full of QQ'ing, with nothing to back it up, except a few statements of the "it's too hard" nature. Sure, the rewards are lacking in a lot of cases, and the "difficulty" seems to be determined simply by how many mobs of super-powered foes AN can cram into an area... Still though, people who have yet to properly l2n2pve should not write articles about it, in my opinion.

There's also a whole other part of the game out there, called PvP... Just in case you happen to be following this thread, Ryan.

Or he's calling out Anet for being lazy. Instead of creating fun, challenging levels they simply cram high-level monsters into a small area and say "enjoy!"

Gee Savio you think my 5000+ hours and 19 chars qualifies me as a vet of the game.

Granted unlike some of you here, i couldnt give 2 rat shakes to a moles backside about PvP.

And I say I dont care for the unfunness of RoT. Its not fun. Plain and simple.

I think alot people forget that Nightfall is completly optional to buy, you don't have to have it, you can enjoy the game with the other 2 (or just one of them for that matter.)

Yes, Nightfall upped the ante with the Realm of Torment making it harder than previous required areas, I agree to an extent that places like Gate of Madness would best perhaps serve as an optional quest rather than a mission.

For the people who are asking for something more than "mass amounts of over-powered monsters", and want a "real" unique challenge, I ask you for an example of what you mean?

The torment creatures ability to self replicate is, in my opinon, one of the coolest additions to challenge that we've been handed. Frustrating yes, but any good challenge is frustrating, otherwise is it really a challenge?

I am not an A.Net fanboy, I do however think that most of the time they get things pretty good, above average anyway from the other MMOs I have played (CoH/CoV, SWG, WoW, EQ, EQ2, DoaC, Wish, FFXI, Auto Assault, Lineage 2 and several others). I pretty much dislike most of Factions, outside of the professions and alliance battles (though adimtingly the professions are kind of sub-par compared to Dervish, I dislike Paragon immensly too, deleted a level 20 with 15k armor after the paragon nerfs).

I really didn't find any of the quests/missions in RoT to be that hard at all, Gate of Madness being the one exception. So maybe my perception on that issue is a little bias. I do however find Nightfall to be about on level with Prophecies for enjoyability, as replayable (if not more-so) and overall much improved over Factions.

Every Guild Wars player could argue their valid point and no one would change their mind based on someone else's arguement. Their are what something like 3 million GW players, A.Net can't please them all, but they should take serious consideration to complaints like these, whether or not I agree with them myself it is a valid arguement based on HIS experience. Perhaps making areas like Gates of Torment only optional would be the best bet, perhaps somehow coming up with better ideas than mass mobs of demons would too.

My suggestion to people who are going to continue to play but dislike some of the recent actions is to not pre-order or buy the next expansion right away but wait and read varying opinons on it, as well as asking guild mates/friends what they think of it. You'll see alot of BS posts ranging from fanboyism OMG best game ever, to cyncial this is the worst game ever, F' Anet, but out there somewhere will be some fair, balanced reviews of the game.

I do understand that new skillsets and such make it hard not to buy the new expansions even for people who don't want the full campaign, PvP skill packs are a great thing for these people. I do not think they should add PvE skill packs of any sort and I see that as being one downside to not buying a "crappy" expansion. If nothing else I'm sure it'd have some skills that would be useful even for someone who would otherwise hate the expansion.

People that suck are everywhere and we can't do anything about it, but it becomes pretty sad when they get in a position where they can shout out their hate loud. Poor noob even shows his meaningless hours spent on playing, but that only confirms that in GW skill >> time played.
If the basic simple Realm of Torment caused so much hate, better not show that guy DoA or he'd go and blow up Anet's offices xD

Ok I didn't read the whole thread, but I read the article. This guy made me laugh right here...
Lmao, I have over 3,500hours over 21months and I still don't know everything about this game (although I do know quite a bit). After reading this it seems like he tryed Questing purley with H&H(Hero and Hench), the [Master] quest he is talking about (I know it, forget the name) does req Rez+kill if you do it with H&H, wich is why it is labeled [Masters] (btw it gives 100 LB points, most from any quest)

The next part sounds like Gate of Pain Mission, I got pwned many times going just straight into it. I finally looked up strategies and found that if you go directly left you do ALOT better. He is a big "game guy" and sounds like he expects to know how to set up a build and jump right in and figure it out.
I would understand if he is complaining about DoA, but just RoT in general? Come on. Ok so I'll admit it was tough my first time but after doing it once I knew the ins and outs and just breezed through it the secnod time

PS: Guildies (or of course Friend listees ) and even some PUGs can do missions/master quests better than H&H. He needs to stop whining about the game and actually try.

*sigh*

I don't think enough people are getting the picture here...

For many players entering RoT is like stepping from pre-searing into Hell's Precipice
The difference with the rest of the game is huge. Its like entering an Oblivion Gate for the very first time with a low level chr. In Oblivion you grow stronger and once you figure out the concept of the Oblivion Gates they will become a cakewalk in the end. RoT also needs you to re-adjust some builds like changing AOF dmg builds to Spike dmg builds. But it never becomes a cake-walk.

What I'm missing in RoT is the glorious feeling of heading towards a Grand Finale. It's all dark, depressing with an anoying amount of creatures. And it stays so even after beating the final level of the game.

I would have preferred a differend 'reward': Not DOA, but a completely reset RoT, reset to a land of light like in pre-searing, with all kinds of quests, funny, hard or easy, with puzzles to solve, something that gives the feeling: 'Hah, we won, and the nasties are gone!'

That is the problem though. This game only caters to people with very low expectations of what they want in a MMO. There is just not enough content there within the 3 campaigns to make me want to buy another chapter.

But as many people have said, this forum is NOT ABOUT RoT or DoA, it is about risk vs. reward. I feel no need to play this game anymore, since my only reward is new skins for weapons/armor, useless titles, or new skills that allow me to kill monsters faster, and more quickly get even more useless rewards.

I agree Pandora.

Just one comment. You might get the puzzles, game developers are good at that. Humor is more rare.

In WoW's new expansion there is at least some humor, not nearly enough though. You are visiting an admiral on the beach whose ships are stranded. He asks the cooking trainer standing nearby, "What's for dinner tonight, Cookie?" By way of reply the cooking trainer pulls out a gun and shoots a nearby chicken who dies with a horrible squawk. "Chicken!" says Cookie. "You don't know how much I hate you Cookie!" says the Admiral.

RoT does have Domain of Secrets which is not as hard as some of the other areas, and is sort of fun, but most of it is darksome and gloomy, the sort of place I would rather not be. So having finished the game with three characters I tend to spend my time in Factions and Prophecies.

It's sad you don't comprehend his point. Why did he add the time he's played? Because THIS forum flamed him for his article. Perhaps instead of assisting the flaming, you should do something with that black name of yours and moderate this thread, hmm? You and Savio both, but no, it's easier to join the pack-mentality and flame someone who doesn't waste every second playing like you do.

To re-iterate an earlier post, he never said he couldn't do it. He's complaining about the effort vs. reward (mentioned at least 5 times in this thread, yet you missed every mention. gj reading), and he's right. The rewards for an area like that are laughable at best. But I guess he has no point simply because you have no life and can waste 3,000 hours in 12 months. Well good for you.

He's played ~1 hr/day. Cut out AFK time, group formation, and then look at things everyone knows will simply take more than 1 hour to complete. Yes, he did create an account at release, but that doesn't mean anything; he doesn't have enough play time. The fact is he lacks the "long experience" required to consider yourself a veteran.

What I want to know: What % of unlocks does he have, what are the builds he's been running (they might be a decent giggle ^.^), what's the average time he's on at one time, is he running only heroes and/or hench? And questions of the like.

The RoT isn't that difficult to get through. Yes, quest rewards suck for the majority of the quests, but you can easily abandon the ones you don't feel are worth the effort. I'd also say chain deaths counts as failing to get through the area properly. Failing @ a game always leads to frustration.

I don't get it... risk vs. reward isn't good enough? I just brought my rit through RoT, doing all quests but Troubled Keeper, and made at least 20k just questing, picking up drops, doing missions and going to the treasure chests. IMO, Nightfall gives out wayyyyyyy too much money as it is. I never made money at this rate in the previous two chapters. And the thing is, in GW you don't need lots of money or experience. I guess some people will never be satisfied.

As for the "risk" part... RoT is NOT "risky". Sure it takes a little getting used to. So did the harder areas of prophecies and factions. It's like the first time I wandered into mursaat without even knowing about infusion. But you don't just give up because it's not as easy as pre-sear. And having just played through RoT with my rit... she OWNED it. I had no more problems than in vabbi or the desolation. If you can't adapt, then that's your problem.

There is one valid point though, RoT is dark and depressing. However, I personally think it's pretty cool, and have some awesome screenshots of the place. I mean, how does it compare with the city in factions? Or ruined Ascalon? Personally I really really REALLY hate the city in factions. It's a slum, and there are gross afflicted everywhere. And both these places stay the same once you've beaten the game, just like RoT. It annoys me that I've beaten Shiro... twice... and STILL there's those wretched afflicted everywhere I go in Kaineng. At least RoT has some really cool, surreal aspects to it.

Finally, if you really don't like RoT, then just DON'T try to hench the master's quests. No one's forcing you to.

Now you are understanding what he was talking about.

Really? No kidding, I'm not sure why you guys keep stating the obvious. What I think a lot of people are responding to is his entire article, not just one portion of it. Myself, I don't believe everything I read without questioning the author and/or source involved.

I think it's fairly obvious that part of what he wrote was about effort vs. reward. But let me ask you this, how much effort do people put into the realm of torment quests? Somebody who's more experienced, or somebody who's less experienced? What should the rewards be for somebody who's more experienced and breezes through it as compared to somebody who takes weeks to complete it?

Well, to play GW a lot of money isn't necessary...but if you want more than blue collector's weapons and the 1k/1.5k armour, you suddenly need tons of money. To put one character in 15k armour (cause you like it) is no less than 60k + materials and 75k + materials if you need 5 parts to it. Suddenly 20k isn't that much anymore, then it's 1 piece of armour...HOWEVER...it's not just money that is a reward.

Skills can be a good reward (which incidentally at some point cost 1k each to get anyway). Keep them at the skill traders but give people the option to gain them with quests aswell. Also if inscribed secrets could get you more than an expert salvage kit it might be worth collecting them. Maybe some golds like they did in DoA....Any area, like Vabbi or Kourna has their own flavour of armour, why not weapons? Make them available only to people who do a minimum amount of quests in that area for example.

Side note: It's nice to have characters with 1 million xp but at the end of the day what difference does it make? You're still level 20 so xp is besides the point for me, but it is odd to get less xp for more quests in more advanced areas.

RoT was very hard for me the first time I went through...once I knew how it worked it was easy. It's far from my fave area and since I have no specific goals there other than to finish the game I spend little time there...

RoT is kinda like holding your breath when you pass someone who just farted.... Easy to pass by but you're not gonna stay.

But my point is that, just by doing the quests, I've been getting tons of money. One character got 20k going through RoT. She also got a lot more money in the Desolation, Vabbi, etc. More than enough to buy 15k armor. I remember back in prophecies, when I had a character that finished the game, I still had to do a lot of farming to get 15k armor and cool weapon skins. Now, with inscribable weapons, and hero skill points, things are cheaper than ever. I haven't farmed in months, and I've bought Urgoz Longbow, 15k armor, a dead sword, and other things. And I have more money than I started with. All just from doing quests, missions, etc.

It just seems a strange thing to get annoyed about. The rewards need to be bigger in RoT? Anyone remember waiting for hours to put together a group to do the Titan quests, only to fail because someone "has to go eat supper" in the middle of it? And for what? 20,000xp and no money, no skills, no golds. The reward wasn't worth it. But did that cause people to ragequit GW? No.

I can see being disappointed with aspects of RoT. But this guy's reaction is just... too much. Obviously the underlying fact is that he's angry that he's doing badly in RoT.

As I said before, I really don't like the slums in factions. But I still played through it. I didn't tell people to not get GW. So yeah, not all things in GW are perfect. But that's not what this is about.

Because looking back over the majority of the posts, most people don't understand the topic.

Right, just by doing the quests. So you don't even need to do the quests to get the money. Sure, you may get a trade contract or an extra 200gp, but I've found it more profitable to just farm instead of doing the quests.

To those of you defending Ryan's playing skill (ie. "omg stop flaming!"), let's forget about the relatively short amount of time he's played and just consider what he says in his post, specifically:

This isn't DoA guys, this is RoT. If this is the kind of experience you're having in RoT, you simply aren't going to get respect on this forum, because a lot of the people who post here (especially the most vocal ones) can do RoT with heroes and no DP. Therefore, people aren't going to take his opinion seriously.

As for work vs. reward - what do you want? More XP? More gold? Free itamz? I'm sure Anet could double the quest reward and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference to anyone. If you think RoT is too hard or not fun, you're not going to stick around no matter what the XP/gold reward is - and it's not difficult enough to warrant any special non-XP/gold rewards.

I agree that the difficulty of GW PvE may be exceeding the skill level that the majority of players care to have. That's not surprising, considering how low average skill level is. Optional difficulty modes with improved rewards is probably the only solution to this, because if you reverted the difficulty to be in line with average skill level, you'd lose all of the good players to boredom.

As for beating GW: Nightfall takes 20~30 hours to beat. Several of us had it beat the weekend it came out.

It would actually make a really large difference. It would be great to be able to get money for skill points, get good equipment, and be able to afford other supplies. Like I said, you can get these items without doing the quests, which makes the quests that much more pointless.

70 hours and still in Vabbi. Some of us like to enjoy the game as we play it.