The main point

This little post is needed to be on the frontpage. I think this is one of the reasons why about half of my diminished friendslist and guildies are starting to say seriously that they are quitting or at least taking a break.

Joe

That's rather a pessimistic view, but it's all in the eye of the beholder ofcourse. This is how I see things:

1. PvE doesn't have to sacrifice anymore to make PvP more balanced. While at the same time improving the relation between the PvP and the PvE comunity .

2. I think this will give Anet more freedom to balance PvP without the pressure of the PvE playerbase. So they're actually not giving up the quest for PvP balance, on the contrary.

3. I don't see where they say they do it for PvE balance. Only this quote:
''In order to reduce the possible negative impact on PvE play, we will be reverting the changes on May 1st. For future tournaments, we aim to focus on changes that will not impact PvE play at all.''

On a final note, they talk about tournaments only at this point.

So you vote for removing everything from PvE saying "just use Ursan" for your precious PvP. This is why I hate damn Elitism.
There are two halves to Guild Wars remember that. We need separate skill tracts not more balancing at the cost of PvE. (I am not saying we should forget PvP, just think of the other side, and with the addition of In game prizes PvP is no more serious than PvE, with real money involved I can see concern, now one is just fighting monsters the other is fighting people.)

Dreamwaver is correct in pointing out the 3 main points over A-nets statement.

I also have a few facts that I'd like to add as well.

"PvE balance" is more focused on the level design and mobs AI not necessarily the skills used.

Second is that this game is designed as competitive/cooperative game, so any complaints about your solo farming build getting nerfed should not be voiced/listened to, because the game was not designed by nature for this type of play but does reward creativity if a profession/skill combination was found to work function in this fashion until such time that it was righted.

Third, as long as UB is the over-powered skill that it is, any serious balance arguement about "PvE balance" is a joke.

Fourth, by Anet only doing a balance for a tournement and then reverting the changes back to crap means that PvP will not be worth playing and destroying completely what remains left of the serious PvP population. Who is going to stick around if for half the month the game goes back to being crap and having to wait for the short time that a tournement is going on to have a fun, balanced gameplay. Not me, thats for sure.

Fifth, what happens now will reflect in GW2's sales. If Anet screws things up too much, people will not come back to try out GW2 when it comes out no matter how good it might be because of lack of faith in the company.


For those of you that hate any balances at all, I feel sad for you. With all the different profession and skill combinations available to you, the variety that is available to you, you choose only 8 skills to play with and thats it. You have such freedom in this game to easily meet any challenge but you refuse to enjoy this freedom and variety available to you. So a new skill cost you 1k and 1 skill point. Skill points are easy to attain by just playing the game as well as 1k by merchanting items you pick up as you move from on area to the next. Everything, other than the vanity items that are not truely needed, is easily attainable.

If Anet truely cared about "PvE balance" they would adjust the mobs in the areas, tone down UB, and adjust certain classes to have better function in PvE (mesmers and sins), not destroy PvP by making the format crap except for a week or two for tournements and then reverting the changes back to the imbalanced state.

I think this should be closed because there is only one direction this thread is going, and we've been there far too many times.

Keep in mind that GW is really just a testing ground at this point for GW2.

Even Anet must have realized that thier method of merging PvP and PvE just doesn't work so they are trying new ideas here that will help them impliment a much better system in GW2, or so I dearly hope

Point is, PVP skill balance should be separate from PVE. I am sure they can come up with a way to balance skills in PVP and leave the same skills in PVE alone(yet not tweaked only for PVP). Which is probably what they will do in GW2.

I don't play PVP, and probably never will so when they adjust skills for PVP it usually messes them up for PVE which I hate. But then again I haven't really looked into all this and I could be way off base. Just my 2 cents.

I just want balance for both sides and not have things sway to one side or the other.

There are those of us who don't use UB... perhaps anet is thinking of us when it says they're reverting the skills for pve balance?

Just a thought...

I am the only person who seems to find capping elite skills, doing missions, finding quests I've missed and completing them, helping others and getting green drops out of random to be fun.

People get bored for one reason and one reason only: The effort to do something is too much, so why bother with it...

It's a nice thought but what skill on that list is suddenly making PvE impossible?

ummm.../search? There are tons of threads on balance...PvE, PvP, PvE's affect on PvP, PvP's balancing affecting PvE, and so on.

As far as skill adjustments go, this one was a feather, not a nerfbat.

I love how everyone thinks A-Net is evil and doesnt care about us.

Thanks Pah01 for pointing out what I said in the other thread.

The thing that is sad is people are continually discussing balance in those threads...which isn't the point of this recent update at all. I think Anet has sent a larger message to all of us...and PvP fans better run away as fast as they can.

The problem is, PvE makes very few sacrifices. All of the recent skill updates have little to no effect on PvE. Get back to me when a thread is made discussing PvE being too easy, and the skills that need to be nerfed to make it harder. How about Ursan? I can basically 90% guarantee that Anet will never touch it. It was essentially MADE for people conquer PvE.

If you think this improves relations between PvE and PvP communitys, I have to laugh. If anything this just makes PvP players resent Anet and the PvE community even more than they already did.

No...it simply means that Anet will NOT balance PvP because they are getting pressure from the PvE playerbase. They have given up their freedom to balance because of the PvE backlash they would receive.

They aim to focus on changes that will not impact PvE play at all. So they can only be doing it for one of two reasons. Either PvE balance, or to make PvE players happy at the expense of PvP. Obviously the PvE balance theory is thrown out the window because of Ursan still existing. The other choice is the only option.

You sound like a spoiled kid who's world is coming to an end.

The message and the main point is: we don't want to hurt PvE play while balancing PvP for tournaments. Nobody gets hurt, we have a win win situation.

PvP doesn't have to sacrifice jack sh1t. PvE sacrificed over the past 3 years all in the name of balancing PvP. Which I understand but it created tension between the PvP and PvE playerbase. If there's a better way, Anet can go ahead and test stuff imo.

I have to agree on you though that a lot of the PvP players recent PvE and that's exactly why we have those doom posts now. You guys can't stand it PvE won't take collateral damage it seems.

agreed with joe.

Anet should never has stated they will delete this update after mAT just for the sake of pve...

what's Anet trying to do? making a full pve game out of GW?

Dreamwind: You know what I really, really resent? The use of 'ursan' as a "hah! I win the argument!" tactic in every post you seem to make (I know you're not the only one to use this tactic, but you're here, so hey).

Look: not everyone uses it. Seriously, there are a ton of people who don't even HAVE it, and of those that have it, not all of them use it. Certainly there are relatively few people who use it ALL THE TIME, FOR EVERYTHING.

So, that said, there are hundreds, if not thousands of OTHER skills out there, many of which are useless, underpowered, flawed or otherwise in need of attention. Your argument is simply "Who cares: you idiots all use URSAN!" and then streams of poorly concealed hate.

This is a woefully flawed statement and a poor tactic. Remember, a great many games out there have godmode settings (usually for debug purposes), and you never hear game devs saying "HAH, who cares about the actual game mechanics, the players can just turn on godmode."

This is because it's stupid. The fact that an effective godmode exists in GW does not IN ANY WAY detract from the fact that "non-godmode" stuff is in need of attention. Funnily enough, not everyone LIKES to play in godmode. Some of us like..well, things like "skill", or "playing the way the game was intended to be played".


Now, aside from all that: consider the statement "focus on changes that will not impact PvE play at all" and actually look at some of the changes that have been made: loads of stuff that stops guild NPCs from being ganked/buffed to invincibility. Oh, look: Guild NPCs crop up fairly rarely in PvE, don't they? So that's not impacting PvE play at all, and it's not even really changing the functionality of any skills at all.

To be honest, I'm really just astounded by how much completely baseless screaming is going on about what is essentially a fairly ambiguous statement. If they'd said "we're just testing these changes out, and may revert them later" (as they HAVE said in the past) I'll bet there'd be far less whining and raging.


So, to summarise: for god's sake stop being so damn overdramatic, all of you.

By all means prepare your wonderful GW IS DOOOOMED manifestos, but don't actually post them until your OMG WORST FEARS are actually CONFIRMED.

As much as i am very pessimistic about the future of pvp's balance, i'm going to wait.

Until we see what these "balances with pve in mind" consist of.

Until then i'm withholding judgment.

If you can't see the difference in importance of the two with regards to balance then I'm not sure why you are in this discussion.

PvP tournaments can't take place without a PvP playerbase. If you don't have a balanced game, you wont have a PvP playerbase.

How many people would play Chess if one side got four extra Queens?

PvE does not rely on balance even nearly as heavily as PvP. At worst a skill balance may make your lives a little less easy, but it isn't going to break the game for you. Bad skill balance in PvP means going into matches and getting destroyed over and over again by people playing some lame gimmick. That said, I agree that something needs to be different in future to prevent this conflict arising.

Making balance changes just to revert them later is pointless. Yes it would be nice to have a mAT not ruled by gimmicks for once, but that is hardly a big deal. The bigger picture of actually improving the game involves lasting changes.

Because testing stuff without actually committing yourself is NEVER worthwhile, right?

If the changes work, they'll probably be implemented permanently at some point in future. If they don't they won't. if they sort of work, they'll sort of be implemented.

The point is they get to SEE what effect these changes have without actually committing to a permanent change, which is what they should be doing all the time, to be honest.

They have a test server, with testers, exactly for this. You are basically calling Anet stupid to make a skill balance for PvP for a tournament with double the amount of prizes on the line, without testing it already.

If they're testing changes, they would simply say so. They have done so in the past.

Now they actually said they'd be reverting them. And that is simply useless. Leave PvE out of the balance issue.

It's ANET's game to do with as they see fit, not ours. We have the option to play the game as it is presented to us and the option not to play if we are not happy. If ANET makes choices that ultimately drive people away, they will realize they made some wrong decisions. I for one just really enjoy the game and adjust to whatever they may present to us.

Testers != entire GW community.

They're not perfect. If they were, there wouldn't BE gimmick builds, because they'd be spotted well in advance.

You're really not thinking this through. And you're all still massively overreacting on what is still a tentative statement.

Thanks, from all the PvE players who actually use skills, and don't bother with Ursan. (I'm one)

You actually think the imbalance in PvP is anywhere NEAR playing chess with four extra queens? LOL!

Do we really need all these threads that revert to the old PvP vs. PvE arguments? Perhaps the mods can clean up this forum a little, possibly consolidating all this stuff into one thread?

gimmick builds mostly only happen in HA because the format supports them. Gimmick builds in GvG are spotted well in advanced and almost always taken care of shortly.

How can you test this sort of change on a test server? Zombie Jesus.


Some in this thread are just basically saying "Mine MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!"

This would make perfect sense if the changes being made were in any way major. They're not. If ANet wants to implement temporary changes for testing, they should be much larger overhauls of skills and mechanics, but this is a small skill rebalance.

The quote in the OP is spot on. GW's PvP, R.I.P.

And when PvP is dead, GW will have lost everything that made it a unique and potenially great game. Let's see:

Grindless PvE - Say hell to "LOLZ u muzt hav r8 norn 4 Urzan!!£"!11231!" or other PvE skills

Supported PvP - Got shot at Nightfall. Dead now.

Different from WoW - Well, most PvErs just want a WoW clone anyway.

[QUOTE=Tamuril elansar]agreed with joe.

Anet should never has stated they will delete this update after mAT just for the sake of pve...

what's Anet trying to do? making a full pve game out of GW?[/QUOTE]



One can only hope


Truthfully, GW should have been 2 games not one in the first place. Integrating PvP and PvE just will not work. Think of it like this, would you want to face a complete AI team in GvG?

The dynamics of both are very diverse, creating a single set of rules/skills that work in both forces a constant shifting of imbalance from one to the other.

YES there is balance in PvE, its just not the same as balance in PvP. In PvE you have a variety of mob sizes to deal with and monsters that get bonuses to thier HP/Energy/Damage/Number of foes.

How can skills balanced for 8vs8 work in an 8vs100 setting?

PvE and PvP must be split!

Or ANet could not design 8v100 areas for PvE and instead make monster groups of 8 or 10 with varied classes and actual skillbars, thus enabling balance to be relatively similar across the board.

Course, that's harder than just putting in multiple copies of the same monster with jacked-up levels and area effects in place.

I never said they are the same, just one is no longer any more important then the other at this point. They both reward with in game stuff, so like I said they are the same level of importance. Yes both need there balancing, probably PvP more so because as others said you could do the vast majority of PvE with a 5 skill bar and proper tactics. But I don't think that either should be balanced at the sake of the other. We all know that PvE has been taking hits for PvP balance and if you could name 10 skills balanced for PvE that hurt PvP I would like to see that. We just need separate skill tracts.

The problem with that is your creating a PvE game that is basically PvP vs an AI foe....

PvE is all about the massive mobs and overpowered bosses.

In every MMORPG we find discussions between PVE and PVP. Everytime someone change something to improve or change one aspect of one of the playstyles, people from the other side complains, this neverending battle between PVE and PVP is not GW only, every MMO suffers from the same problem. If we find this in any game why the game designers insists to put PVE and PVP together if it doesn't work, why?

IMHO, as Crom said, PVE and PVP should be split.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale PvE is all about the massive mobs and overpowered bosses.

I agree wholeheartedly!

I don't see any problem here. The only things that would lose out are;

a) Farmers
b) Players that rely on one exploitative tactic (tanking, for instance) to clear huge numbers with no effort,

while players who wanted to be more open with build design and experiment more would be rewarded as there would be more viable strategies than 'prot spirit against the 300 damage super boss attack and then charge'.

Fighting the same mob 100 times and then picking anti-boss invulnerability exploit #276 to win the game is hardly what I would consider interesting PvE. It's also the anti-thesis to a game that emphasizes skill over grind.

GW is not a MMO, there is no reason why it should follow the stereotype of MMO PvE when it is trying to maintain competitive PvP with a PvE game.

In fact, PvE styles that are most effective in the massive mob environmentare the same PvE styles that gets 'negatively affected' by PvP balancing. A huge number of the problems could be solved by designing PvE in a better manner, without the hassle of designing two games at once.

Avarre, what about casual players?

I don't think they are the ones who like experimenting with builds and want to prepare, build against multiple foes with different skillbars/synergies.

While a) and b) is the exact kind of group that feeds on bad PvE design, doesn't get bothered by the lack of challange, bad AI, you're forgetting the ones that don't dedicate such amounts of time, and they're probably the majority that buy the game.

I think that kind of design you propose should be for higher end areas of the game which should be much more prominent and multiple, covering parts of the map (so no seperation), be explorable and not lead to some dungeon or "special area" like DoA, ToA. So a casual could stay on the safe roads, paths to outposts, cities while the more skilled player might risk going into other zones or parts that are known to be very dangerous.

So what you're saying is, instead, they want to take the same 8 bars and shit all over every single mob without having to think? Because, it's either 1 or the other.

Using your brain to build for the job at hand takes 5 minutes. If you don't want to change your bars for different situations, stick ursan on it and stop complaining.

Did you not think the bars & AI of EOTN monsters were better? More interesting?

Sure. The vast majority of game content is level 20, endgame PvE areas. These are the kind of thing that would be made of balanced enemy groups. The lower-level areas would, ideally, act as a sort of preparation stage for that - groups that are less varied, or have less effective setups, and so on, so as not to make the learning curve too steep.

Although you seem to take from my post that players would have to build against foes constantly in order to be effective, but this isn't really what I meant. If the skills were balanced appropriately, a single balanced build setup would be able to win the game because it would be able to deal with everything. You wouldn't need to spec specifically against a type of enemy because no area would have a specific type of enemy - so a GvG-esque balanced build would be able to proceed through everything. You might have to use different tactics (target prioritization and such), and while speccing against an area specifically might make you more effective, changing your build constantly wouldn't be definitely necessary.

This would encourage solid build design and open far more avenues for successful build variation in PvE, while at the same time making a more cohesive game overall between PvE and PvP.