Jumping The Shark

Originally Posted by Darkobra

Prophecies was good. Then it was all downhill from there.

Originally Posted by Eldin

Aside from heroes killing PuGs,

Originally Posted by Hyper Cutter

And nothing of value was lost.

Originally Posted by CHannum

If this is mediocre rubbish then I wish 95% of the games I've played over the past two-plus decades were more mediocre and more rubbish

I think most people are just too dense to move on after they've effectively seen and done it all. Their own refusal to admit they've gotten all they're going to get out of the game leads them to delude themselves into thinking that the game would still be great if not for X. It's not X, it's not even Y, you've just gotten all the entertainment that there is within the core game mechanics for you. At the point you're complaining about how bad a game you've put hundreds or thousands of hours into is/has become, you've lost perspective.

The bonuses from the titles are absolutely no different than levelling effects in other games. Ironically, even though I find the system fairly brilliant since they allow you to target what you want to improve, it misses the mark with two of the major camps of players out there. One camp can't figure out that these title related skills and bonuses are post 20 levelling and bash GW for it's "stupid" low level cap. The other camp wants the "glory days" where there really was a L20 cap and it was just your skill, only they can't realise that 3+ years after the game launched it would be as dead as three out of four of my grandparents. Without the power creep of the expansions and modifications to the core game rules the average player would have little incentive to play for more than a couple of months and the only people still around would be the PvP'ers and the same couple of thousand hard core players who thought GW peaked with pre-Factions Prophecies.

If you want to sell expansions, you've got to give players a reason to want to spend money. In the "perfectly balanced" game universe so many vocal board denizens imagine, there would have been no incentive to continually buy new expansions nor keep playing. If people think the player base and economy is bad now, imagine playing in a game world where the average player only invested a month or two into each edition because there was nothing to keep them interested.

I see no evidence that the series jumped the shark. That it's been a work in progress where the game developers continually played around with different game mechanics is obvious, and some work better than others, but the key point is that they work.

Originally Posted by CHannum

If this is mediocre rubbish then I wish 95% of the games I've played over the past two-plus decades were more mediocre and more rubbish

I think most people are just too dense to move on after they've effectively seen and done it all. Their own refusal to admit they've gotten all they're going to get out of the game leads them to delude themselves into thinking that the game would still be great if not for X. It's not X, it's not even Y, you've just gotten all the entertainment that there is within the core game mechanics for you. At the point you're complaining about how bad a game you've put hundreds or thousands of hours into is/has become, you've lost perspective.

The bonuses from the titles are absolutely no different than levelling effects in other games. Ironically, even though I find the system fairly brilliant since they allow you to target what you want to improve, it misses the mark with two of the major camps of players out there. One camp can't figure out that these title related skills and bonuses are post 20 levelling and bash GW for it's "stupid" low level cap. The other camp wants the "glory days" where there really was a L20 cap and it was just your skill, only they can't realise that 3+ years after the game launched it would be as dead as three out of four of my grandparents. Without the power creep of the expansions and modifications to the core game rules the average player would have little incentive to play for more than a couple of months and the only people still around would be the PvP'ers and the same couple of thousand hard core players who thought GW peaked with pre-Factions Prophecies.

If you want to sell expansions, you've got to give players a reason to want to spend money. In the "perfectly balanced" game universe so many vocal board denizens imagine, there would have been no incentive to continually buy new expansions nor keep playing. If people think the player base and economy is bad now, imagine playing in a game world where the average player only invested a month or two into each edition because there was nothing to keep them interested.

I see no evidence that the series jumped the shark. That it's been a work in progress where the game developers continually played around with different game mechanics is obvious, and some work better than others, but the key point is that they work.

Originally Posted by Cosm01

Went downhill when Nightfall was released

Originally Posted by StormDragonZ

So I ask you all: Has Guild Wars jumped the shark?

Originally Posted by SerenitySilverstar

I'll poach a Malice quote from a similar thread not long ago:

"People confuse nostalgia with quality"

And if it's taken 5 pages to point that out, as per usual you're all too busy listening to yourselves talk.

Originally Posted by SerenitySilverstar

Titles are a choice, not a pre-requisite to enjoy or be good at the game.

But that's a broken-record discussion. No one listens anyway, because they'd rather moan that their choices have been taken away.

Seriously, it's all in your head.

Originally Posted by MSecorsky

Fonzie quite literally jumped his motor-cycle over a pool full of sharks.

Originally Posted by MSecorsky

"Jumping the Shark", as you may know, is (in the original meaning) a desperate attempt by a program that's failing to save itself and it's ratings which fails miserably. It's usually so far outside the original premise of the program that people feel they completely sold out. It actually gets it's name from the moment in the show "Happy Days" where Fonzie quite literally jumped his motor-cycle over a pool full of sharks. That episode was considered the beginning of the end of the series.

Sales figures seem to indicate that this moment has not yet occurred in Guild Wars. People continue to play, new people continue to join. People leave to find something new (time has that affect), not (usually) because any one defining moment ruined the whole "definition" of what Guild Wars was/is.

Originally Posted by roshanabey2

Actually factions made pvp better, but I agree in the idea Nightfall created an unbalanced game.

Originally Posted by dan-the-noob

Factions brought with it sins and shadowstepping. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Originally Posted by MSecorsky

"Happy Days" where Fonzie quite literally jumped his motor-cycle over a pool full of sharks. That episode was considered the beginning of the end of the series.

Originally Posted by fRag_Doll

I don't know where you got that info from.
Fonzie jumps the shark

Originally Posted by SerenitySilverstar

I'll poach a Malice quote from a similar thread not long ago:

"People confuse nostalgia with quality"

Originally Posted by Cjlr

The stupidest thing they ever did was add PvE-only skills, though. Hands down. Worst. Idea. Ever. Rest assured I was on the internet in minutes, registering my disgust.

Originally Posted by Cacheelma

Name me a MMORPG game that doesn't have what you called "PvE balances to mirror PvP" please.

Originally Posted by Cacheelma

Name me a MMORPG game that doesn't have what you called "PvE balances to mirror PvP" please.

Originally Posted by Abedeus

Ragnarok Online. Skills that are good in PvE are often unbalanced in PvP. How they fixed it? Those skills are a bit weaker in pvp mode or against humans. Like...

Deal 10 times x your magic attack x element to target. Very, VEEEERY strong spell. How they balanced it in PvP? You have to be enchanted with a special spell, but you can't use it on yourself (so you need a help from other player). And even then it's only 5x magic attack. If you try anyway, without enchant, you are stunned (almost like KD, but you can heal via potions) for 2 seconds.

Or all shadowstep-like spells have range cut down in half in pvp. I wish GW had something like that.