Anet listened to us didn't they?

I would enjoy it if Anet decided to go against the views of the PvE community, and decided to do some good PvP changes, while ignoring PvE entirely. That would mean we could finally get the changes we want, without constant whining from players who cannot adapt in PvE. Even better would be if they did some nerfs to remove the really imbalanced skills from PvE.

It's about time they listened to PvPers, splitting it was just the first step.

So why not fix what is broken? Namely the mobs?

This comes from trying to copy Epic Bosses into a game model that doesn't work. In WoW you have such situations.

But in GW, the concept of scaling mobs upwards doesn't work, never has, never will.

It was giving mobs Monster Only skills that was the cause of all these problems. DoA and RoT were greatest blunders ever. Why are suddenly there effects and skills in place that have no counters, that don't fit the game model, and that completely break the gameplay?

Monster Only skills and Environmental Effects were the first wrong. PvE only skills were the second. Unfortunately, two wrongs don't make a right. They create Epic Wrong. Currently, were have Lesser Wrong which is Ursan. Once the split occurs, people will see what happens with lack of balance. Unless you're a title grinder or farmer, you won't find much enjoyment anymore.

Dear ArenaNet,

The following idea has been passed around for some time. It is the best idea you can possibly listen to for PvE, out of all the ones coming from Guild Wars Guru.

Can we see changes that make your game good again? Let's be honest, WoW has better PvE and they even have televised PvP competitions now. You've tried to do everything at once on a smaller scale, and in the process end up mediocre at it.

Stop listening to bad suggestions. Stop taking ideas that you think will make you a quick profit. Do something to make your game revolutionary and unique and you'll still be here ten years down the road.

They CANNOT change the mobs.
There is a limit of what can be done with AI without making the enemies too hard.
NPC mesmers interrupt 1/4 spells, for Lyssa's sake!

Take the 'best' AI they currently have: The Zaishen guys in the first step of HoH. Are they hard? No. They are quite a joke.

Once you reach the limit of AI, you can only increase power.

Just remember that this is not a change to completely split PvE and PvE, is to be able to make better changes in PvP affecting less PvP.

A skill that may bbe too powerfull in PvP, giving too much armor, may be a joke that no one else would use in PvE. And better than having some skills that people use in PvP ad some skills people use in PvE, is having a lot of skills people use in both sides.


NO. When I say 'functionality' I'm using Anet's Official term. The term they use in updates.

You could consider 'burning' to use fire skills, but NOT all fire skills burn, neither all burning is made with fire skills, even if they deal fire damage.
That's because "Burning" is an official term that refers to a condition.

A functionality change means that the skins behavior changes, not its numeric values, type or attribute line.

Just check the Glossary of Official terms in the Wiki.

You could give mobs full skillbars that actually work, or put them in balanced groups and they become more of a threat. You don't need rebalance for that at all. Their overall firepower goes up, but not to an unbalanced level - they can't pack more than a PvP team could, for example, and their resilience to one-dimensional tactics increases.

Example: Jade Brotherhood. Level 20, more dangerous than most higher level mob groups.

Nah. That won't do, because big areas are more like 8vs400 than 8vs8.

Making them have more complex builds would just make each are require more precise builds to be able to beat them without single deaths.

That's the main difference between PvP and PvE.

In PvP, two enter, and each one has the same chances to survive.

In PvE, Hostile NPCs are designed to be killed without a single death on our side.

for almost any problem u can come up to a good programmer can find a solution.
so far they only bothered to make mobs scatter (and not even succefully) on aoe.
u say npcs interrupt too fast ? u can make them have interrupts times that range from 1/4 to 3/4 (more similar to human reaction times).


mithran u sem to talk a lot but u ever stop to think?
u can make pve mobs with pvp team builds....but with stats as weak as u need them to be . then if u play right u should kill every mod group without any losses on your side.
u seem to see huge problems that have very easy solutions.....which u should be able to think out yourself.

They listened to *some* people, not "us".

Regarding AI and well-built mobs: As bad and dumb as the AI can be, I think putting builds together in a bit more coherent and intelligent fashion would've been more challenging than just upping the damage and health of monsters. I used to think that the idiocy of the mobs was balanced through how hard they hit and how much health they have - but no matter how big a gun you have, if you don't know how to use it, you won't be able to do jack shit.

Putting together more strict and "better builds" in monsters would put more strain on putting together a very concise and well-balanced build for the area, although a balanced team and good gameplay should be able to triumph over them all. Both of these would be a good challenge.

Irrelevant, because: "Overwhelming majority doesn´t play much PvP." (Quote from CM)

Rumour.

I would also like to add that if Guild Wars continues to lose its unique gameplay qualities, WoW, AoC, any other big money EQ-blueprinted MMORPG will crush it, regardless if its freeplay or not.

It works as intended, but the intended effect is overpowered. In an area without enchantment removal, you can run around with just a headpiece with superior rune and PS. Any damage gets reduced to very easily manageable 40 points.

If mobs were allowed to take enchantment removal, it wouldn't be so overpowered.

Hehe. A.Net listens to us?

*cough*Ursannotnerfed*cough*moretitlegrindsafterni ghtfallwoes*cough*3heroesevenifwecanuse6*cough*

Excuse me.

I think it's less "they'll buff everything" and rather "they'll nerf nothing". Besides for Prot Spirit I see little use in creating such a divide, unless one side is much less capable of handling changes.

Anet hasn't listened to anyone by splitting the skills. Doing a split like this was always a bad idea, and is still a bad idea. If Anet did not agree with this, and actually did listen to the (wrong) people asking for this for years, than they would have done it a long time ago.

They reason they are doing it now is because they don't care about the state of Guild Wars anymore. GW is dying and they know it. All they are doing now is using us as a sandbox to test features for GW2.

I really don't see the downside here, isn't it a win/win? The pvp'ers get all the balances they want, while the pve'ers don't get skills nerfed just because somebody found a way to exploit it in pvp. Does it really mess anything up? Seriously haven't been playing for a month or two, so I'm out of the loop here. Want to know why you all say its a bad idea. Suppose I'll do a search...

Like in PvP? Even there, PS is overpowered and Izzy realized that, too.

I am answering the question of the topic now (at least for me):

So yes, they did half listen to me.

Revive the SoJ Spike (Augury of Death, Dancing Daggers, Entangling Asp, Signet of Toxic Shock, Signet of Judgment, Castigation Signet, Resurrection Signet) and give it to PvE enemies in large numbers of assassins. Design their AI to use it and to coordinate spikes.

Watch as they wipe Ursan teams with ease.

Just a random thought.

By the way, PS isn't mandatory to keep PvP balanced. There's lots of stuff you can use instead. I don't even consider it that useful in PvP - I take other stuff that works better - SB and the like.

This is what should be done. Not only does this make PvE more interesting, but also closes the gap between PvE and PvP. They've shown they can create better monster builds, The Jade Brotherhood have already been mentioned, undead mobs come to mind as well, despite a huge, glaring weakness to holy damage. The dwarves in slaver's exile are quite well made, although their dumb AI allows them to be exploited.

I call bullshit. Almost everyone I know plays PvP to some degree. Very few people play high-end PvP, but that has more to do with a very steep learning curve and painful barriers to new players.

It works fine if you dish out jumbo morale boosts during and after fights. People go through HA carrying over death penalty from fight to fight, and there are no problems with that.

As for PS, I rarely see it anymore in PvP, most people prefer to run spirit bond. It just makes more sense to run SB when everyone has 600+ health, and nothing hits for over 120 or so.

It is broken in PvE, but double damage hard mode boss eles are equally broken. You can't fix one without fixing the other.

Exactly, that's why they've sold over 6 million copies now and headed for 7 million because it doesn't work, never has and never will. lol

Remember now according to the Elitist PVPers, RA, AB, FA, TA and HA don't count as PVP. Only GvG counts as PVP so the rest is just a subform of PVE. Therefore most that purchase this game are PVE/RPGers before they have anything to do with the subform PVP game which according to the elite pvpers is not really pvp.

And in most cases that will be a GOOD thing. I wouldn't wince if the entire PVP population left that GvG's myself. It's hardly what makes or breaks Anet/NCsoft. Remove GvG and HA/HOH and I wonder what they would classify as the next meta GvG arena? TA? hahah Ok get rid of TA also. This separation has breached the walls of PVP elitism forever more and now both sides can have what they want more power in PVE and more balance in PVP (if that can ever be balanced lol I say it never can). Now balance or power for PVE comes for PVE's sake not because something is overpowered in PVP that's so wonderful to read makes me smile. I don't expect them to revert everything they nerfed in PVE, but, I do expect SOME rebuffs to old skills that were a lot more fun before they got nerfed because of PVP. Like 30+ minions. (haha I doubt this one will ever come back, but, it was one of the most fun necro abilities in the game and right there along side UB. Long live Anet and it's wonderful DEV team. This will increase your sales and bring back old players I have no doubt, now, just add some more grind features that make our characters more powerful besides UB please.

Well news flash, most "elitist PvPers" have PvE'd at one point to get skills unlocked in order to begin PvPing.

No one ever said HA or TA doesn't count as PvP. The argument in these formats is gimmick vs. balanced, or Build Wars. Even GvG tends to have gimmick vs. balanced problems, the only difference is it gets addressed by Izzy faster than the other two formats.

Why not change the name from Guild Wars to WoW-Lite then?

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2006/00017900.htm

This was known before Nightfalls came out and it still took them till last month to make the needed changes according to that result.

(Part of (at least)) the argument bases itself off of two things: The environment and the party size. While I can't comment too much on the play environment, I can at least point out the fact that the smaller the party becomes, the less room there is for "skill" to appear. Notice (not directed towards you, C2K, just the post in general) how much of a rock-paper-scissors the matches are in duels? Well, the lower the party size, the more it becomes R-P-S.

People not taking AB's seriously is a different matter altogether, and would be best we just not touch on that...

Hahaha ya okay... Now we just gotta use meteor shower, SF, and SS. Doppleganger is still a complete noob just like all the other mobs. Mobs constantly suicide with spoil victor and ss and they never think to attack the monk because he's out of "aggro range". If mobs were really smart, they'd just come an attack you as soon as you are on their radar and they wouldn't just gank the wammo tanking. PvE is way too easy.

The thing is, Anet can never make everyone happy. It just seemed like they decided to listen to all the whiners complaining about their farming build getting nerfed this time.

Finally, this is going to be good.

I hope alot of skills are finally going to be use-able again after this.

It really sucked to see more and more skills go down the drain because they were overpowered in a totally different game that happens to share the same name.

PvP and PvE are worlds apart, and using the same skills in both of these worlds to their fullest potential is actually quite impossible. I'm glad they did this, maybe this will make people use some skills that were plain crap in the past.

Jade Brotherhood have the most complimentary skill bars in the game. Hard-hitting axe warriors that time a spike with Ancestor's Rage and Dragon's Stomp at the same time.

I love it

Worthwhile opponents are few and far between in GW.

Ever since ursan, there is no PvE balance tbh...

lol ill bet there is less then 1.5 million actual players. how many copies sold doesnt reflect the actual number of people playing the game. taking in account the amount of us that have 2 or more accounts from back before characters slots were availible. add in the accounts no longer active or been banned and its probably less then 1 million people playing GW

5 millions, not 6, that's first thing. And it's sold COPIES. WoW has few millions active accounts. And usually one account = 1 person, because it's $15 per month.

Plus, if everyone had 4 copies of the game (that is, all games + add-on), it's 5/4 = 1 million 250 thousands of players. But a lot of people have 2 sets of games (that's pretty logical - for example, I have 2 copies of diablo II + LoD on my PC, so I can have one account as a mule, and second playing the game normally), a lot of people have 3 accounts. So it's at most 750k players. BUT. It's ALL players, even banned accounts, suspended, not active, empty. This would be like 300k players. And let's not forget active, not banned bots, chinese gold farmers/sellers. That'll be like 275-280k. Not that successful, because even old Diablo II has at least 100k people per month (well, accounts, but still - game is 8 years old) on Europe alone, probably more on Asia/USA.

So it's not that big success. Hell, even all private WoW servers have more players than GW ;d

There are probably far more people with only 1-2 chapters then people with 2 accounts tho. Just because on the forums there are many people with more then 1 account doesn't mean that is true for everyone. For the rest your numbers are made up without any base. Like if you really think there have been 300k banned accounts, you are really wrong.
And even if people don't play the game at the moment, thanks to GW's business model they still count as players. Simply because they can return at any moment they want. For that same reason, GW shouldn't be compared to WoW, but to any game without fee out there. If you do that, 6 million is a huge success.

First, although I wasn't one of those who wanted this change, yes ANET listened. They listened to a long standing complaint within the community to change it.

In response to your question SerenitySilverstar, and this is only my opinion on the matter, my biggest concern is that these changes, if not carefully administered, could degenerate PvE play by making it far too easy to be enjoyable. I (as well as other's I'm sure), like a little challenge in my games. So, I'm looking at this very skeptically, and hoping that these changes will not mean the equivalent of setting the difficulty level to "button-masher".

My secondary concern is the implimentation of PvP and PvE descriptions based on outpost designation as either PvP or PvE. Specifically, what type of area will the Guild Hall be designated? It will be very irritating to have to leave the GH to put a PvE bar together (at least until we become familiar with the changes and have all the skills memorized again). But this is more of a frustration factor than "bad for the game".

Sorry bud, but, how many people still play doesn't matter to Anet/NCsoft since they have NO MONTHLY FEES. Their bottom line is from SALES and SALES only, both for revenue and NET PROFITS. This isn't WOW btw and besides the less players that are actually playing is less load on their servers as well. This game works just like a Diablo 2, sales continue and that's the bottom line. They also gain extra sales on extra character slots, pvp paks and the mini expansion they put out last fall/winter, not to mention everything else in their gaming store as well as "SOME" extra copies of the actual game to same customers. So, population isn't an issue after the sale. All they want a large population for is for the sales themselves and as I said they are making their way towards 6 million copies sold.

[quote]But a lot of people have 2 sets of games[/quote ]

I always see that word "a lot" lol, prove it. Let's see some substantial DOCUMENTED figures to prove that A LOT of people have 2 sets or 3 sets or however many sets of GW copies. lol I find it funny that people will use words like "A LOT and EVERYONE" when they are just trying to put their own agenda foward. Of course without any documented evidence it is just hearsay and speculation because they have two copies "EVERYONE or A LOT" must also have two copies or more of the game. lol Well, I don't have two copies and never intend on getting two copies sooooooo I guess now I can say A LOT and EVERYONE doesn't have two copies of the game. lol

I don't like the change as I want a seemless game balanced in both PvE and PvP. I want PvE characters to be just as good in PvP as PvP only characters, if not better.

A lot of people are looking for Diablo 2 - grind 90+ levels, collect uber gear, and destroy face. Sure, there's a certain kind of fun to be had in that also - being able to teleport 3 times per second without anything being able to really hurt you, and one-shotting anything except an Act Boss in Hell mode. The problem is, that kind of fun isn't sustainable for long periods, and doesn't promote game depth at all. Maybe game depth doesn't matter to you, but compare Chess and Tic-Tac-Toe. I think it's sad that a lot of people would rather play the latter.

What makes this more curious is that the market is crowded - there are too many games with this kind of shallow fun already - throw a different skin over it, tweak a few class mechanics, and sell it to the masses as the next "in" thing. I'd like to think that there are only so many ways you can sell a completely mindless activity, but the average consumer keeps proving me wrong.

To the people upthread talking about "equal footing" with monsters, your arguments are plainly ridiculous. Monsters get numerical advantages because they're dumb as bricks. I thought that was pretty obvious, but I guess some people missed it. I'd like to think that most players are smarter than the AI; although, the relative success of H/H as compared to PuG teams puts a few holes in that theory.

On the issue of improving monster AI and skillbars, I think it's an untenable solution. A lot of people simply wouldn't be able to complete the game, and as much as we hate the lowest common denominator, they pay the bills. There's also the issue that many areas would take forever, and taking deaths would be all but guaranteed. Take a lesson from Homeworld 2; one reason many people hated the game was because it was too hard - it was actually enough of an issue that the developers released a patch to lower the difficulty. I played the unaltered version and though it was just fine - this isn't to say something about my skill level, because I frankly suck at the game; my point is how little tolerance people have for challenge.

I still think that if we're going to throw balance to the winds, we might as well uncap the number of elite skills we can use. We'll see if people are still using Ursan then, or whether anyone even cares if other skills get nerfed.

A lot of people keep saying that anet is going to buff skills in pve. Where is the proof of that? Right now pve is too easy. I really think that anet is going to nerf quite a few skills in pve to make it more of a challenge and also to eliminate quite a bit of farming. I think the only reason some of the farming builds still remain is that some of their skills were used in pvp and anet didn't want to nerf them there (i.e. prot spirit). But now that they are seperated, it would be easy to eliminate those types of builds from pve.

For the pve side of things, this may be the worst thing anet could have done (if you like easy pve). Me, I would rather see pve become more of a challenge by eliminating some things like pve only skills, mob only skills, consumables, etc.

Mac

hah, qft.

I actually do feel that a-net listened to me in some cases, though they weren't able to do anything about it (at least in a timely manner). Savio nailed it when mentioning how many directions a-net seems to go in, really lacking consistent design visions yet trying to appease/pander to everyone.

Good feedback never got properly filtered from poor feedback through the community relations funnel, and good ideas got mangled on their way through the management chain (a-net's main failures, because they do have great talent working at the development level).

Lol.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...98#post3127098

Hmm - well I think splitting is a bad idea.

One of the things I really enjoy is the flexibility and change in the game. Skill updates are a great opportunity to shuffle the deck and see what new combo's were out there. Sure the changes are mostly based on PvP needs, but rather than sit and whine about how one's favourite skill bar is ruined it is a time to roll with the punches and get the thinking cap on.

My worry now is that skill updates will become a thing of the past with PVE. Lets face it - PVE is already WAY too overpowered. The last thing it needs is boosts to skills that don't need it. If they want to do something good they should leave the trinity skills (W, Mo, E) alone and focus most of the changes on the rarely played classes (Me, P, Rt).