- Balanced skills
- Variation in builds
- No grinding
When I first read about GuildWars it was all that I could dream for. Not only did it have no monthly fee, which was a pre-requirement for me. It also was loosely based on Magic The Gathering in the way it was balanced. The ideology of the game was balance, variaton and no grinding. Amazing, everything I could wish for. With the innovative system of both skillsets and dual proffessions the possibilities were endless. You were able to play your character in so many ways and still be succesful at what you are doing, the possibilities were endless. Being able to compete with other players in both PvE and PvP sounded like a blessing aswell, no longer did I have to spend hours and hours just to do as well as my allies or enemies, it was a game that resolved around skill atleast, that was the promise.
Things started our promising, especialy the early areas of the game were quite a challenge if you weren't powerleveling, something non-existant now, but there actualy were players that were playing old-ascalon at level 5. Other then the gorgeous graphics the opposing groups were quite a challenge with the infuse health monks standing behind them, learning us the first important lesson that it's important to go for the monks first. After about half a year of playing Sorrows Furnace came out, it contained powerful groups with strong healers and good team synergy, it didn't take much to figure out how to beat it, but it lasted for a long time and everyone that I know enjoyed that area by far the most, both the setting and just the overall challenge.
Elite Areas after Sorrows Furnace
- Numeric balance, difficulty is purely based on numbers
- Enemy groups have a bad balance proffesion wise
- Enemy groups have bad skill sets with low synergy
- Mindless enemies don't require innovative tactics, new skillsets or proffesions like Assasins or Mesmers
Future "elite" areas unfortunatly didn't over the same experience. Instead of balancing the game in a way that it gets harder because the enemies become smarter, use better skills, synergize better together or just have better reflexes/timing they got numeric buffs, meaning that instead of fighting a 500 HP enemy you were fighting a 1000 HP enemy now, and instead of 100 damage you take 200 damage, for me a big dissapointment. I know numerous of people have been pleading to play more intelligent groups, but either ANet disagreed with it or didn't care enough about PvE to implent it, because it never happened. From Tomb of Primeval Kings, to The Deep/Urgoz, to Domain of Anguish, the trend has been the same, granted you needed a slight modification in strategy, it wasn't the intelligence of enemies that caused this, or their amazing skillsets, only the numeric values got increased and that is ANet's definition of hard. Well yeah.. it's hard alright, I'll give you that much.
Because enemies never got smarter, the skillbars never required much adjustment. Tactics aren't needed, nor is a gameplan, the same logic generally applies for each group in guildwars PvE. With the potential of a 1000 builds on a character, you only see just a couple because the others are quite simply outclassed in PvE. This is much less the case in PvP because the enemies actualy use logic in this, something that the AI in GuildWars is capable off aswell, henchies use it, aswell as the AI in the Zaishen challenge. But alright I've already been over that. So you get parties consisting of already decided skillbars otherwise you don't get a group. Sure, it's not entirely ANet's fault, I mean it's still the peoples choice. However, why would you take a risk, waste your time with something that works slower or worse causes your group to die? I totally understand the people that only use the cookie cutter builds, and by no means, go on with it, the PvE game is designed like this, a couple of builds just are far superior and that has to do with game design, and just the power of the skills.
A lot of skills could be buffed, but then there's PvP which always has taken the priority over PvE, just looking at for instance the elites for Necromancers, you only see 2 really used, Spiteful Spirit and Flesh Golem, making other skills PvE worthy would be easily done but then PvP would get imbalanced. Skills do get buffed for PvP but not for PvE and the same counts for nerfing, when was the last time that something got nerfed for PvE because it was too powerful? Exactly, does ANet even care?
I had my hopes up high for DoA, but it was nothing compared to my hopes for Hard Mode, only to have them trashed as soon as it came out, it was supposed to be an entirely new challenge harder whatnot, but it just followed the same course that ANet has been following eversince ToPK. It's not like I would want every mob in the game to be smart with good skill sets. But would it hurt when 2 or 3 mobs in a mission have a skillset and party setup similar to my own? That doesn't sound too unrealistic.
And this is directly related to why both Assassins and Mesmers aren't needed in PvE, there's no need to mesmerize anything, there's no need to assassinate anything. The enemies don't use advanced enough tactics to reserve a spot for either class in your party setup. And instead of fixing the actual problem, ANet now is trying to make them do things that are outside their job discription. Meaning that mesmers suddenly turn into Elementalist like AOE damagers, and Assassins compare to Warriors and Dervishes with ANets latest update: PvE Skills.
PvE Skills
- Clearly more powerful then their normal counterparts
- With so many and more comming there won't be a lot of room to innovate
- Lightbringer title requires grinding, something that ANet was opposed to before
- The new skills require grinding
These PvE Skills are unquestionably more powerful then their normal counterparts. Again, Anet uses the old trick of numeric balance, if an Assassin isn't working well because of 60 armor, give them a skill that increases their armor pretty much permanently! It makes sense.. except that it makes various of the skills already available suddenly a whole less viable. Going on on the assassin example, with the new sunspear PvE skills they are able to DPS and tank like a warrior, how is it still an assassin this way? What about the deadly skills line that was barely on par with the Dagger/Crits line? Why does ANet keep limiting the usefulness of other skills in comparison?
It started with the sunspear rebirth signet, something that never should leave someones bar as it's in all ways superior to the res signet. Then there was Lightbringers Gaze which did the most amazing thing for its cost, allowing everyone to potentially be an interrupter. Then came, the Sunspear and Kurzick/Luxon skills. So that's 4.... four skills on your skillbar already taken if you want to be as effective as possible. If you're for instance an elementalist two other spots are taken for sure aswell, one for the attunement, one for GoLE and basically there is room for 2 skills in which you can innovate. ANet, this is a direct result of the PvE skills you have added, with everything you have added and changed (or lack of) you force people to play with a certain skill set if they want to play with other players at all.
What's even more interesting is that these skills require you to farm, or better said grind this might be me, but the reason why I bought this game is because of the original ideoligy that you would not need to grind in this game. It starterd with the lightbringer title, that made you more effective in PvE compared to someone who hasn't farmed. Now you're doing it again with Sunspear Skills and Kurzick/Luxon skills. Anet, why are you moving so far away from your original concept that was perfectly fine? And I know things are going to get worse, GW:EN is going to add even more PvE skills and if it follows the path ANet has taken, they are going to be far superior PvE skills leaving no room at all for innovation or interesting builds anymore. The original concept seems to have been forgotten, or just simply thrown away.
After DoA was released I stopped Guildwars for a while, I couldn't believe that this much anticipated area just used the same formula again with a few adjustment, I predicted back then that it would just be another area with one cookie cutter build, I'm not much of a fortune teller but it was a no brainer, with such numeric "difficulty" to the point that your entire team gets killed in just one hit you create a static enviroment where only certain skillsets will be effective. Like I said, I had really high hopes for hard modes, but those were also shattered.
I don't know wether I should give GW:EN a chance, maybe ANet is going to take another way, but I don't want to get my hopes up again. And all clues given so far indicate that it will be about titles (read, grinding) and PvE skills (less room for innovation) which was exactly the reason why I didn't want all those other games.
ANet, or a representative, if you've read this entire thing, I hope you do something with the points I have made, I know that it's better to hear praise as a developper, but I do feel there are serious flaws in this game that need fixing. The group that enjoys PvE and normally really isn't that vocal. The group that likes to create builds and likes to try out all the possibilities that guildwars has to offer, I feel like it's that group that you originally appealed a lot to, but it has been going downhill.
Don't get me wrong GuildWars has given me a very enjoyable experience for a long time, and even though a lot of the updates have dissapointed me enormously there have been a lot of good times aswell,
Knights of Rurik represent,
Naz
Good luck at whatever game you try next. I have my own thread to start to try and fix things here. Later and GL.
- therefore you have paid Anet
