Promise not to 'maintain' future releases

This post is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I wouldn't be terribly upset if Anet were to actually do it. What I would like more than anything as regards future releases (GW:EN, GW2 and its presumed expansions) is for Anet to promise not to 'maintain' it. Think about most of your complaints about the game as it stands - we all have different problems, some more than others.

With a couple of possible exceptions (auction house, mainly), all of them are because of Anet's 'maintenance'. I can't think of anything which has been wrong with the game (ie that works differently from how it logically should) that was there when my copy of Prophecies arrived on release day. All of them - AoE nerf, Spirit Bond nerf, antifarm code, droprate nerf, HA party size change, constant Paragon nerfs, Soul Reaping nerf - were done by Anet after release. Note that I'm not talking about bugs here, like the NF mime quest that wouldn't complete. I'm talking about actual changes in functionality. Most of these have made the game less fun, and less fun equals fewer sales.

The game as released was excellent, and has been made progessively less fun as Anet 'maintain' it into tedium. I would happily give up the good updates (more storage, Sorrow's Furnace, etc.) in exchange for not having all of the stupid ones. The less 'maintenance' Anet plan to do on GW2, the more likely I am to buy it!

What?
ANet are upgrading the game for balance, sure some nerfs sting but at the end of the day these people are working to make the game farer for every class. I'm realy sick of hearing about the Soul Reaping nerf "WAAHAHA MY ENERGY GOES BELOW MAX *throws toys out of pram*"

You'd trade SF and storage for the game to go back how it was?
I'm sure alot of people that swear by SF would think otherwise
Do we need rants in Sardelac? If you got something on your chest write it on some paper and burn it or eat it or something but we don't need unhelpful rants in Sardelac. (says me after this post) Some people just get me so mad

heh nice jeniM i agree with you lol

I'm not hugely bothered about the Soul Reaping nerf, I was just mentioning it as an example of maintenance that has upset more people than it has pleased. Since this is a game, and sales of future releases depend on people enjoying the game, updates that upset more people than they please are bad. Sure, lots of people agree that the soul reaping nerf wasn't particularly bad, but did you load up your game, read the updates, and think 'Oh goody, Soul Reaping has been nerfed'? I just take Signet of Lost Souls on my Necro and, to be honest, I can count on one hand the number of times I have had to use it. Sure, the soul reaping nerf is 'inelegant', but I'd rather they leave it how it is rather than try to 'fix' it again, which will almost certainly make it worse just like they 'fixed' the Paragon.

I absolutely LOVE SF, the event weekends, and the improved storage. But my point is that the game was more fun without those things, and without the nerfs, than it is with those things and with the nerfs.

I think GW is a fantastic game, but I think the quality of Anet's updates (and I mean the 'balance' updates and other such maintenance-type stuff, not content-addition updates which as you rightly point out have been great) has been way, way below the quality of the actual game releases. My suggestion was that Anet should not nerf future releases, and just let people enjoy hthe game - it was suppose to be a concrete suggestion. sorry if it came out as a rant (which I suppose it did, reading it over)

I don't see why people being very critical of nerfs should be dismissed as whiners. When the AoE nerf occured, some people said 'Anet are just screwing people doing ordinary questing because of their inability to stop bots'. They were called whiners/noobs/babies/any other insults you can think of. Then when the hard mode/loot scaling update occured, Gaile Gray basically said as much ('it was making the game less fun for normal players', I paraphrase). People who criticise nerfs aren't 'cry babies'.

im only going to say one point that would put this to rest..... do you want gw to get stale with the same content and now changes..... no cause if you did you would play.... um WOW.... or EQ2.... lol

We'd still get content updates because Anet will be releasing paid expansions for GW2. I'm just saying that I would happily give up the 'free' content additions in exchange for Anet giving up their nerf habit.

um i kinda like the balances cause if there was no balances there would be 1 or 2 teams in HA that could survive.... no room for strategy, also prices would rise cause farming would not be nerfed.... its seems to me you just want to get easy gold but anet nerfed your farming well think of it this way, because of nerfs your gold is worth more..... study economics and learn about supply and demand and inflation.... it holds as much truth in GW as it does in RL my friend

WTB skill balances. That is all.

The prices of high-end gold items don't bother me in the slightest tbh. I'm talking about ordinary players, who need to get max armour on a few characters. If gold is made harder to get, and the 'fixed price' of NPC-sold items such as armour doesn't fall (it's actually gone up, 2k per piece for Radiants, plus 1k for armour, equals 3k per piece of armour as opposed to 1.5k pre-Nightfall), then logically such items are more difficult to obtain.

I'm not talking solely about farming nerfs - I'm talking about general nerfs. Why should, for example, PvE players (who make up most of the player base) have their Paragons nerfed just because some high-end PvP team found an exploit build for HA? I think the only answer to that one is for GW2 to have separate PvE and PvP skillsets.

Have the full, nerfless skillset for PvE to keep those players happy, and have a smaller, perfectly balanceable skillset for PvP to keep those players happy. At the moment Anet is harming the enjoyment of one group of its customers (people who primarily play PvE) to satisfy another, smaller group (people who primarily play PvP). That isn't good for the players or for the game's future prospects, especially when (by the means I outlined) they could satisfy both.

Radiant already dropped to around 1k, makes radiant armor pieces still more expensive then before, but prices are going down and with other insignia prices are even lower then before.

PvP requires this balancing thing, a million minds creating, tweaking and polishing their builds will find unbalanced skills and builds - which would then become dominant. And it's far more expensive to keep two different games maintained.

See it as a challenge.

SR nerf was needed, but unfortunately ANet will hear poor necros whining about their energy going below 40... I'm really disappointed if SR is un-nerfed after mid-june release. I may even never play GW again...
IMHumbleOpinion, 10 professions is way too much to be balanced, it's just plain impossible to do :/

/notsigned

The big and major updates should just be presented to the community first in some sort of testing form. Not having free updates would defeat the point of an MMORPG. I'm sorry, it's not realistic.

Sure, people have been complaining about new things added or changed in the game, but change makes the world go round.

"Do not fear change, embrace it".

I don't do PvP other than a few RA matches when bored. I don't find the 'nerfs' to be bothersome. SOme I hated, but I learned to deal with them.

When they limited the number of minions a Necro could get to 10, I was furious. I loved rolling through zones with 30-40 minions, and managed to get over 70 on the Battle Isles testing grounds once. However, after playing MM for a while after it was done, I realize I had NO energy problems anymore. Used to be that the high cost of minions, and constant summoning/healing would drain my energy. Since I kept the minions alive so long, I didn't get much SR energy. When the limit of 10 was added, I found that I gained energy from summoning an 11th minion. Since one would die, I'd get the SR energy. That has now changed due to the SR nerf, but my point is, I adapted to something I first saw as horrible.

PvP has a few 'niche' builds pop up that take advantage of a particular skill. IWAY was a huge HA build for a long time. The nerf for that skill was needed to allow people to complete without using a 'niche' build.

Skill balances are not done solely for PvE or PvP. Minions were not a huge issue for PvP, but allowed for EASY PvE experiences. So the limit was introduced. Soul Reaping was not being exploited in PvE for anything, but PvP had spirit/minion issues allowing Soul Reaping to imbalance the game. One does affect the other, but removing any updates will ruin the game for both.

I'd be willing to bet you have 2-3 things that were changed that you can't find a new way to do what you want. If you can't find a 'fix' to your problems, try asking for help with them, not asking for a blatant destruction of the game. If the game was as it was when released, you'd definitely have things to complain about.

I'm not sure that it WOULD be more expensive. I'm not talking about two wholly separate games, just two separate skillsets. There are very few skills that have been nerfed because of being overpowered in ordinary PvE questing (I'm leaving farming out of it since I suspect that farming will not be needed in GW2) so if there was a smaller subset of PvP skills then Anet would need to spend less time and money on skill balances than they do at present.

At the moment, any time they want to change a skill for PvP balancing, they have to make sure that it won't have an overly positive/negative effect when combined with any possible combination of the other 1,000 or so skills in the game. If there were only (say) 150 or so PvP skills, then they would only have to assess the effect of changes within that set of 150, meaning that PvP balances could be done more quickly (making PvP players happier, since they don't have to put up with overpowered builds for so long) and cheaper than they are right now.

I've been playing the game since release (well, the day after release, my delivery was late) and I can't think of anything that was wrong with the game then that caused more grief that all of Anet's nerfs.

I'm see things the other way.

If the game wasn't regularly maintianed it would get stale and die. I found the game more enjoyable with every update they made.

But i might be bias. I don't have a Paragon. But i do have a necro, and the SR nerf was nothing to me.

Not only that, but since loot scaling I been making more money then before in NM. IMHO the best thing they did.

This might very well be the worst idea I've ever seen, alongside with removing healing from the game.
You have no idea how much this game would suck without updates.

Arenanet could follow the way of Magic: the Gathering and make it so only the most recent skills are allowed in tournament play and HA. Balanced and appropriate skills get "reprinted" (like the Factions duplicate skills, or just assigned to multiple chapters) and unbalanced skills do not get reprinted. Grossly imbalanced skills either get nerfed or banned from high level play to fix more immediate problems. Of course, this would only be possible if they followed their 6 month release schedule instead of abandoning GW after 3 releases, but... Eh.

A better idea would be for anet COMMUNICATING IMPORTANT CHANGES A WEEK OR SO PRIOR TO making them. That way if the fanbase doesn't like them or has some concerns Anet has a week to either allievate their fears or to cancel the change until they win over the support of the fans.


That is what I think ANet's big problem, they are so tight-lipped about important changes and spring them on us so suddenly the players aren't expecting them and the advice they could have given in time to make the change better only happens after Anet leeroys in the change and everyone gets upset.

Another moaning thread about farming nerf ? And " don't change anything we often use to farm because we like cookies cutter builds and refuse to use my brain to adapt to any update" ?

Maybe, reducing the choice could certainly make balancing easier for them, but now you have a incredible rich pool of skills to choose from, for PvP. Otoh it could mean there'd be the 1000+ PvE skills there are now plus your 150 PvP skills to balance. Although the PvE only skills migh be less critical, they can't be left alone completely, there has to be a balance between the different professions to allow them all to become part of groups.

And then there's off course some confusion for people who want to PvP with their RPG characters.

And players would be forced to buy the sequels? Right, they could as well introduce a monthly fee then, that would at least be more honest.