Did you ever think that...

A player in game tweaked my interest with a remark. They said..

"All the changes, nerfs, and basic way the game is run, played and operated comes down to one thing really.. The devs like to see what we'll do, it wouldn't surpise me if they sit and watch us complain and laugh their ...'s off"

At first I thought, "ok buddy step away from the computer, your tin foil hat is getting too tight". But after I thought about it, some of the things they have implemented or failed to implement make me wonder sometimes. I mean how do we know that they give a rats ... what we want? While it's true you can never please everyone, I have seen online games go down in flames from changes, nerfs etc, and the player base screamed and the devs ignored them.

So my question is, what if any is the thought process in deciding what is done in game? So many things in game seem designed to make some players miserable, and make the game way harder than it needs to be. Boredom is the biggest factor in many of the arguements in towns and camps in game. Many have said if they found a game that was similar and was not pay to play (monthly fee) they'd try it, so the gaming companies cannot really rely on the loyalty factor forever.

May say the game is too easy, others say they can't get anywhere, pvp wants this, pve wants that.. I wonder how many of the devs are going gray and thinking they should have taken a different job by now.

Personally I believe the entire Anet staff has their ears open, but I really think it is being used on the wrong people.

May not seem this huge, but I would bet 80% of the people who play this game are PvE, mainly and only. This is the fundamental problem of the game.

Since the majority is PvE, it could also be said that mainly PvP'ers are "full-time" players, which I believe Anet turns a blind eye to compared to PvE.

They have to appease the bigger population of the game, PvP nerfs directly affect PvE. PvE doesn't like it/doesn't care.~ This is true.

Yet most PvE'ers aren't even interested in the mechanics or depth of the game as much as PvP'ers on average. This is why there are alot of complaints PvP'ers have and why they appease to PvE more so then often.

A great and awesome example is the Avatar of Grenth issue. I personally have posted huge huge arguments against why this skill should even exist with the mechanic it has. Pointing fingers aside, this skill was agreed by the further most of the PvP community to be overpowered, and over 90% of the suggestions I have read recalled to "mechanic change". The other 10% said to "leave it as is your a nuub! hax!" etc etc. Yet what does Anet do? To appease the PvE'ers and the extention of time, they just reduce duration of Grenth, making the dervish basically amputate its very own legs in PvP, yet Anet said to PvE "Sorry your PvP brother broke your toy, I tried to fix it."

This is how much PvE affects PvP, a very different side of the argument that has not been pointed out before. It's not Anet's fault entirely, it's just they have to prioritize who will they listen to: The full-time PvP'ers, or the Part-Time PvE'ers.

I have a feeling they ruling body at Anet are programmers. If so this is a big mistake, they need business minded people running it. Why? If they do not appease the largest possible faction of the players, the game will cease being viable and lose revenue. Plain and simple.

I have heard over and over, "why don't they post a poll at login and let the players show how they feel?" The only answer I could think of was "Anet doesn't care". I mean, what other answer is there? They have weekends and only hear from the die hard players that live in game and base global changes on that limited view. I really wonder sometimes. I can understand why so many established brick and mortar business's still think gaming companies are a fad that will fade as quickly as it started. In many many cases they were and continue to be exactly right on the money with that analogy. And with that in mind, perhaps gaming companies are not in it for th long haul, they willg rab all they can then retire at 40. Not bad I guess, but it shows how jaded people are becoming (if true) and how sad that ideal really is.

Okay.........I'm usually the one to gripe and complain about stuff, but not this time.


Its a huge insult to say that the Devs do not care about this game. They invest a lot of time and effort to keep the game balanced, and for you to say they dont care about us is just plain rude.

You might say that your mother doesnt care about you because she yells at you, but guess what, she wouldnt bother to yell at you if she didnt care.

The rule applies to Anet and the players of Guildwars, Anet wouldnt bother to keep the game balanced if they didnt care for the welfare of the game and its players. Skills get nerfed because someone in PvE or PvP has found a way to abuse the skills, thus creating a balance issue in the game.

Note: Huge difference between imbalanced and abused.

Gift of Health, Orison of Healing, Protective Spirit, Spirit Bond, Reversal of Fortune.

The absolute most abused skills in this game by the monk profession. They have not been nerfed.

[QUOTE]since you obviously are not aware of reality i will fill you in.

they have continous logs of how people play and nice neat charts showing who is playing how and for how long they did it.

the event weekends are used to see what draws the most interest and how to best fit it into the game if enough interest is shown.

if they had an event nobody came to for more than a few minutes than stayed away that idea would not be seen later in game.

Last time I checked I thought that Spirit Bond got nerfed a bit. The other skills you mentioned are not over powered. Ever hear of Desecrate Enchantments? Backfire?

Guild Wars is a cooperative/competitive online role-playing game (CORPG) with a key design feature being "balanced competitive gaming". The primary focus is PvP even though there is a ton of PvE content. I suppose it would be nice if PvE and PvP were separate, but I dont see that happening anytime soon, at least not with the current chapters.

The Spirit Bond nerf doesn't affect PvP much, since it's mainly designed to counter spikes, which generally have 10 or less hits.

And besides that, you failed to see his point. "Abused" and "imbalanced" mean different things. Those skills are "abused," not "imbalanced."

next time you post please look in the dictionary the word abused.

thanks.

Avatar of Grenth is one of the worst avatars in PvE. Somehow I don't think PvE was the deciding factor in how they adjusted the skill.

Okay, let me give you a 101 of real world economics here. There are three types of people working in any industry:
- the creators, that make everything out of nothing
- the parasits, that serve no purpose but their own
- the bureaucrats, that make nothing out of everything

Every successful company evolves from having a few of the first, to having lots of the later ones, and the more "business minded" it is, the more people of the later categories it has.

........ oh man, that's comedy. A+++, your jokes are the best.

The Reversal of Fortune and such do kind of annoy me, in the sense that all 90% of the other skills are so awful in comparison. It annoys me since it's like our skillbars are pretty much built for us.

Having 600+ skills to choose from means nothing when they have such a huge discrepancy in power levels. In this game the bell curve for skill power should be heavily biased toward high, instead of toward the low that we've had forever.

How did we get to arguing about skill balances..? LOL

The reason for the change was because it was abused in PvP.

Though its hated in PvE most likely because they don't like to give NPC enemies weaknesses. And in Nightfall, I don't know many enemies that are affected by Cold damage. As for stripping enchants, it seems that only Dervish enemies use them the most and can be double edge sword if removed.

Could be useful against Titans, imps or Ruby Djinn/Roaring Ethers. But anyhoo...

I had a hearty chuckle over this:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news...-frontline.php

Just exchange the "WoW" for "GW" and chuckle away.

Skill balances are the number one thing that affects the way players play the game, which in turn drives their satisfaction (or lack thereof) with the game.

All the skill balances are GOOD in the long run. Every one of them. Imagine if they'd never nerfed the AI? Gold would be $2 for 100k on eBay and items would be worth like nothing. What if they'd never nerfed AoE? We'd have eles running around like gods, wiping entire maps clean. What if Rit spike had never been tweaked...?

At least now we are getting some answers as to why some updates are implemented. I still believe that, while I do not agree with some changes that have been made, balancing, maintaining, and governing an online community of thousands is about as easy as running a nation. I couldn't do it better, or at all for that matter. In all liklihood, devs/gms and all those guys are sitting in meetings and carrying on lengthy discussions throughout the day as to how they might improve gameplay and keep their players happy. I can imgaine they do this to the point where they are bored to tears and frustated over things like a drop in playerbase or community outrage. Anyone who devotes that amount of time and empathy to making our gaming experience excellent should be praised.

Look, I know used and abused are very similar-looking words, but they're actually not the same.

No one would ever in their right mind say that Orison of Healing is "abused".

QFT
4,5,6,7,8