Update - Thursday, May 22, 2008

Their last hope is with GW 2. With a LOT of great games coming out/in development, GW 1 alone won't stand up to it.

Still, at least they're acknowledging this and now finally realising the problems. Of course, acknowledging and fixing are different things.

- That's why it's failing. For two reasons:

1. There's loads of better dedicated single-player games. Final Fantasy makes a good example of story-driven and grind-free environment. Also single player games in general have much better modularity, as said in my previous post. Why make a multiplayer game where players will rather take AI bots than play together?

2. As far as grinding goes, it's without great benefits. There's no treasure hunting excitement in this game. Nearly everything you get goes to merchant or trader. Once you got that 15K armor you might as well stop playing. Something that was necessity for PvP environment (no grind) had to ruin the PvE side of the game. When skills have to be the same for PvE and PvP, used by monsters and players alike, there's severe restrictions what they can do in the first place! It's no wonder players are getting bored.

- I think it's that "free-to-play MMO" quality this game has what keeps players playing. Personally I don't understand it, but as long as GW is the only worthwhile competitor on f2p MMO market it will have positive sales balance.

Not at this point. But coverage and support of WoW PvP are definitely higher than for GW.

This argument actually doesn't work, on the skills side of things. People complain that skills are limited in power because of PvP balance, and then piss and moan about overpowered skills in PvE when they are introduced (a good example is Ursan Blessing). PvE players actually have no RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing idea what they actually want.

I think you'll find it's different groups complaining about each area. The majority are going to like UB and complain about limited power, whereas the ones with solid mechanics and skill are going to think UB is the fifth rider of the apocalypse.

Come on people, you should know A-net by now. After all this time of them changing things well passed it’s original state of being; these features were going to be changed eventually. Look at the Soul Reaping nerf, pets not having exploitable corpses, and so forth. It was all going to change sooner or latter. I was half expecting this and I am actually still excepting them to nerf UB. I can even anticipate them to go back on their word, and let a full hero teams per-player. It is never too surprising and usually I “roll with the punches,” now. I guess the only thing they can do now is return Mystic Regeneration back to it’s former self (if they keep this up).

Yep, you can say what you want about Blizzard, but they really know how to support its game. That unlike some other company which made a game with far better PvP, but forgot to support it properly.

Basically what we are seeing now is that Anet needs to think of ways to keep its players playing without spending much money on them. So they introduced grind. Grind is perfect. Gives people something that takes weeks, but it is very easy and cheap to make. However, people don't like farming that much. But Anet thought of that too. The result is really overpowered skills that make the farming less painful (and makes PuG groups fail less).
Now people might not like it, but it does make sense from Anet's point of view.

Oh pvp paragons....now they feature 0 support skills from paragon class since they have all been nerfed, so they are now reduced to spear builds, and thus are rendered useless, since warrior or dervish is much better than spear paragon. good job anet. Paragon class went from party buffer and support to second rate pure attacker. No wonder you can't see them on obs mode any more.

Fun to you is completely different than fun for other people. There are a LOAD of people who love being able to press a god mode button and plow through an area. This is especially true in an MMORPG where you actually get something out of killing things. For this reason, balance being based around fun is terrible for the game.

PvE balance should be based around what is GOOD for the game. A skill that did 1 million damage would be fun for tons of people but terrible for the game. The reason I believe this update is not for balance reasons is because Anet is doing things that are terrible for the game. The idea is NOT to balance the game...it is to make PvE and PvP players stop getting angry at each other, and it is failing miserably so far.

Most players do not play for long periods of time. I think the statistics show that the average player is a short term player who plays a few times a week. These types of players would have no problem with super overpowered skills.

Wouldn't this line of thinking support the idea that people don't mind super overpowered skills? That way people had a choice on whether or not to use it...(for reference I think this idea is terrible, but I hear a lot of people who have no problem with it).

Did I miss something? Haven't offensive spear paragons been one of the most popular builds in PvP since they crushed energizing finale?

- ANET's solutions just don't work. I'm sure no one wants useless skills, but mechanics for many skills are made so that they're either godly or useless. Take "Incoming!" for example. If you add any seconds, you'll soon have 6 Paragons chaining in on HA. If you don't add seconds, it becomes a waste of elite with minimal effect for PvE and random teams PvP. That's because of what the skill does. If there would be such elements like %chance, which are bread and butter component for Diablo II and many other RPG games, it wouldn't be so bad.

While this is true the grinds are more or less valueless thus it's not even fun for grinders like me. I need value in the grind like better stats on loot items. The PVE only skills are ok and fun to grind for, but, what good are they if the loot content is worthless, there's only a few valueable things left in the game after 3 chapters and an expansion.

So they could turn both crowds away if they don't do something spectacular with GW2. Increased and evolving loot content and greater high end areas for guilds and large groups to participate in. I'm not opposed to grind since none of it is really mandatory except a few parts in NF and several parts in GWEN. I'm just opposed to the boredom of nothing to really go out there and play for in PVE.

The only offline game I've played more and longer than GW is Diablo II because there's always something new it seems that I discover everytime I play it. Long as you don't cheat and get powerleveled there's years and years of entertainment in that game still. But, GW with no loot evolving has gotten plain and boring and stale. Only PVP is any fun anymore for the most part and I think that's pretty sad.

Haha what's that yer smokin? I wan sum! haha There would be such a cry and uproar if they nerfed UB they would lose half their GW2 sales from that alone. And full hero teams? hahah well how long has that dead horse been kicked now? lol Dreams are nice n all, but, thas all dreams are is just dreams.

Except that WoW grind is by several factors superior, and gives excellent rewards, with *less* time spent than in GW.

There's currently nothing in WoW that could not be maxed in 2 years. How long does it take to max HA title? How many hours of gameplay does it take to get GWAMM?

Grind is one thing, but just about every other game does it better.

And above all - why bother? It's not like they are getting subscription money. It's not like something new is coming. It's not like people will suddenly be buying expansions or something.

Why all these changes, when GW2 will be so-oh-superior-and-bestest. When Blizzard went with WoW, they left Diablo behind to this very day. Unchanged, broken and hacked as it has always been - just like the fans liked and loved it. Just look at the backlash of the last patch, which changed the xp and looting for groups.

And that's the reason people still come back to it.

But hunting for some new crowd with a end-of-life product is somewhat counter-productive, as proven by every single title that attempted that. Not only does it not attract new players, it alienates fans.

Then again, what do I know. All I have to support this are the MMOs that did the same, and then either went into long stagnation, or shutdown completely. What I am not aware of however, is a game that would actually achieve anything by doing that.

I think that they'll loose more than a half if they will never nerf it. People will not buy GW2 if they will have same thing in GW - repetitive, boring, mindless and dumbed down grind.

A little under 1000 hours of doing nothing but title grinding. The real question is what is the point of getting GWAMM? It no longer commands any respect, and its purported reward in GW2 will likely be rubbish given that the HoM is nought but a hasty advertisement.

You'd think so, but the current state of MMOs says otherwise. Not only will players buy games with mindless, boring grind, they'll pay thousands of dollars for the privilege to do the same thing over and over.

Most likely, anet will cave in and abandon their "monuments wont give statistical advantage" thing, because people would realize they were kinda wasting their time getting gwamm and would demand something "worthy" their effort.

Boom headshot. That was a really good post in my eyes.

People keep saying that. Strangely, though, the only mentions of GW2 on the packaging, the Manuscript (looking at the box & Manuscript right now), or in the game itself are the GW2 beta ad on the interior front cover of the Manuscript and, of course, the endgame cutscene. For the vast majority of players, there's no indication in-game that anything from GW1 will carry over into GW2. Not a very good advertisement if you're not going to make sure that people know about it.

You are forgetting that in other MMORPG's grind isn't repetitive. You have tons to things to do. In GW you have either pve grind:
- UW
- FoW
- DoA
- Urgoz/Deep
- ....Slavers Exile?

And that's it. Oh, and grind for the grind, so farming Norn points. I mean - there will be no REAL point of grinding. In WoW and other games you have better items, higher level. Here? Nutin. Just half of dozen of crappy grindplaces.

I mean come on - I've played Diablo 2 for over 7 years since it was created and it never, ever, EVER bore me. Because I always had something to do. Here? Make one character (why bother with additional slots? 2 pve and 2 pvp are enough, one monk, one ursan + pvp...), grind the hell out of it and go to UW/FoW to grind more. Then grind r8 lightbringer to grind more in DoA. Then grind a bit more and you get new item. Then you can grind... more in DoA/UW/FoW. See? Lack of high-end (ahahahha) content = game dies. Because for first few months, game will look fun - easy, problem-free grind that gives you a lot of cash. But the people will start to think ,,wait, why the hell am I playing this?''.

Btw, I have finally found how to illustrate what Ursan is.

Imagine you have Call of Duty 4/Hitman 4/GRAW2/Gears of War. You play on medium/hard/expert/whatever it's called. You enjoy the fact that you have to play a challenging game and after an hour of planning and kicking asses you feel... What's that? Oh, it's a feeling of accomplishment.

Then you turn the difficulty to Easy. You enjoy killing stupid AI that runs under your fire, die after 3 seconds. After an hour you look how much you achieved. Oh, wait, you finished the game. Yay. So... whatever. *uninstalls, throws the box on shelves and forgets about the game*

There can be... 4 ways GW2 will be:
1. Just like GW, having a stupid overpowered skills in PvE, with a monthly fee - nobody pays for a single-player game with cheats even $10, sry.
2. Just like GW, overpowered skills in pve, without fee - why buy it? We have GW1, no need to buy more grind if we like it. If we don't, we don't buy anyway, eh?
3. Not like GW, pve is actually challenging and fun, no fee. A dream?
4. Not like GW, pve is challenging and fun, a fee... Well, if WoW and it's expansions (or maybe games like WoW 2, Aion and other will be out) will be better, people won't buy GW2. If GW is better, then yay.

But IMO the most probable is nr. 1 or 2, like 60% on first and 40% on second option.

You forgot pvp.

Back of EotN box:
Take It With You
Your achievements earn your descendents the right to unlock exclusive Heroes, pets, weapons and more in Guild Wars 2.

If there's one thing ANet seems absolutely certain about, it's that Guild Wars 2 will not have a monthly fee. But then again, they may choose to rip players off equally effectively with overpriced expansions and micropayments.

What the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO are you talking about?

Apparently you don't GvG much.

That would probably be a very valid argument if the entire population of PvE was 1.

Okay:

1. Pvp will be bad, people will play GW 1.
2. PvP will be imbalanced, people will go to other games (not GW1 ;d)
3. PvP will be great, people will maybe play. Unless you will need a pve char to do pvp.

Yes, it is. If it wasn't repetitive, by definition it wouldn't be grind...

Strange. It's not on the back of my box. Don't have a scanner or digicam or else I'd post it. :/ Ah, well.

This thread degenerated into grind vs. notgrind and What Is The Meaning Of Life... er.. grind. Closed.