Why does ANet have to cater to the "inexperienced?"

Ursan and all the Buffs in the world cannot fix stupid, yes it is accesible to more people but not everyone. A noob is a noob with or without ursan. The only difference is the Ursan noob might get into a group.

If the shoe fits,

you seem to go on and on and you keep saying i am mostly WOW ect.not casual as some guys here have wow also

the second post made it clear lol


But ill add a few things if I may,

There is something that draws you to here , could it really be that you just like to agigite some people.or you really like Guild wars in a way that you like some sort of belonging.

May I ask were you experianced when you first started any game, of you were not!

Anet has done a great job and it caters ..for all,

I will not speak of numbers as you know statistics suit whoever posts them
but, guys get motovated by greed wether it may be ectos or whatever, Iam all for allowing newer people to obtain certain items..

This is not as any sort of comeback on you but your first post made me think whats the hidden agenda..to get people to respond to you(feeling wanted)

anyways nothing constructive in my posts only trthats you keep quting Wow but this is Guild Wars....not WOW

Well for one level advancement in WoW takes a lot longer. If a person only has a certain amount of time in a day to play it’s going to be a lot easier for them to advance in GW then WoW to see endgame content. GW max level can be reached in a few days or even a day if a player is really working on it. WoW was never meant to be that way. Of course they have so many active accounts because the players keep paying to retain the achievements they’ve earned. For all you know they’re paying but not always playing. The fact that you’ve stated a lot of players have never even reached end game content is kind of sad. It takes that long to get there?

Blizzard also caters to the dumbing down process. If you can’t beat something, go and kill enough lower monsters to raise your level to kill the boss or high levels monsters that were giving you trouble. Keep paying Blizzard long enough and play long enough and you’ll be powerful enough to kill everything. You see these super powered players on You Tube.

The bolded part of your statement is what GW is trying to avoid imo. Blizzard doesn’t need to open it up because it takes so long to get there for the non hardcore player. Paying the fees keeps them playing but it takes them forever to reach endgame content due to time constraints. It’s kind of like holding your character ransom. If you don’t pay, they’ll “kill” the toon.

I'm sorry if my comment offended you Bryant, it certainly wasn't my intent.

I merely meant to point out that Blizzards definition of "subscription account" here http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/070724.html isn't consistant from market to market. Asian accounts are limited to one character but all accounts linked share the same billing time. I have 8 Characters on GW so if I were in China I'd represent 8 accounts.

Still that's not the point of this thread is it. I think holymasamune sums it up nicely:

At least GW used to operate on the principle of skill>time, and to some fashion, it still does. WoW & other traditional MMOs never have. Sure, an area in a traditional MMO is difficult... if you didn't spend the time leveling, and farming enemies, killing bosses, to get the better armor. But those types of things give you a passive advantage. GW was designed to have a proactive advantage - i.e. you had to use brains more than hours.

So maybe aNet has switched their principle a little bit, but at least it never set out to cater to folk who can't tell the difference between grind and skill. IMO, GW allows for a far greater depth of skill than traditional MMOs, even in its current shabby state.

WoW has a monthly fee, thats where they get their money from. GW doesnt, so they need to attract new players etc to get it. I think that would probably explain a bit of it

Well im positive this has been stated atleast a billion times in the previous posts, ill sum it up for those who have a seizure at 5+ lines of text:

WoW has a monthly fee.
GW does not.




A uber pr0 1337 WoW player is paying his 15$ a month just like a complete noob is.

A uber pr0 1337 GW player payed his moneyz a long time ago, and is no longer contributing to the company (of course there are exceptions - double accounts, in-game-store stuff, but these are, as said, exceptions), a noob has payed his money recently. Saying they're making it appealing to "noobs" is only 50% correct: they're making it appealing to future noobs, its incentive to buy the game (they can feel pr0 right off the bat) and even better - get they're friend to buy it.

I think the big thing is that WoW gets it's money from retention and GW gets its money from bringing new players.
WoW wants to make things more fun, challenging, and exciting to keep players playing and more importantly paying.
GW makes money on new players buying their product and hopefully expansions upon that product. It's a lot easier to bring someone in to play an easier game. After you buy the game and a few of the expansions and whatnot GW has already made it's money, and I hate to say this so why worry too greatly about keeping the game fun, challenging, and exciting. Yes it is still semi-important for them to do so in order to cater to the experienced gamers, but the majority of the gaming community likes games that are easier to learn and pick up.

Solution - Add fees to the game and keep it good instead of making it worse just to please the masses.

They dont need to charge $15 a month, they could maybe just charge $5 and keep the game good, rather then continuously ruin it because it is free to play.

And by catering to new players, they piss of a lot of players, even hardcore fans that have been playing the game for years. Great strategy.

Noobs tend to have already paid for the game they are so badly playing.

I'll tell you why (in my opinion) Arena Net have made Guild Wars easier with stuff like Ursan Blessing, skill buffs, etc. It's pretty simple and logical if you think about it... Guild Wars 2.

More people will buy Guild Wars 2 if they find it easier to fill their Hall of Monuments, etc, in Guild Wars. The easier stuff is to work towards in Guild Wars, the more incentive people will have to do it, and the more incentive they have to do that means they will have more incentive to buy Guild Wars 2 to reap the rewards from doing it.

If that makes any sense to anyone...

Yeah, I think GW kinda dug themselves into a hole on this one. To make money they need new players, to get new players they have to make game worse (for the most part), in the process of getting new players they lose old ones. Unfortunately because of the way they chose to make money this process has to continue for them to keep making money, potentially leading to a big breakdown of the game. I hope that GW finds someway to solve this problem.

Very simple actually, because the model works for them. Why alter success?

What I can tell from Elitist Propaganda is that if you weren't with GW from the day it started, you don't deserve to hold the jock of veteran players.

Not everything in this game, or the world, is about you.

If people want to play casual, let them. Anet seems to be doing a pretty good job of catering to newer players, and the veteran players. The only one cramping your play style is you. Learn to adapt to change or don't.

Making hard mode = easy mode with Ursan Blessing isnt catering to casual players.

Hard mode was meant to be elite, it wasnt meant to be easy. NM is already easy enough for new and casual players, the game caters well enough for these players.

Elite areas and Hard Mode are meant to be what their name suggests. They arent meant to be for players that just started playing an hour ago.

Why UB?
I think ANet decided that everyone should have the opportunity to experience the more difficult and elite areas of the game, maybe because people complained maybe for some other reason. I don't think ANet wanted to completely abandon(as some would say) their skill over time motto, but the comunity rejected it, the only way to get into a DoA group was to have a specific build for one of 3 professions. If you weren't the right profession with the right build you would have a very hard time getting in, this was never the intention and may be at least part of the reason for UB.

Why is WoW able to retain despite not "dumbing down"?
Well I know very little about WoW, but I've rarely heard anyone say skill>time when talking about it, this is not necessarily bad, I think it is what many expect from the classical MMO. What it does mean is that there is no expectation for everyone to be able to take part.
My hypothesis would be that upon reaching lvl 70 and realising you cannot complete end game content, instead of quiting many block out this fact because they do not wish to acknowledge that they wasted their money reaching max level to then have nothing to do, so they find other things to entertain themselves and are happy. This may only apply to a small number of people but it could account for some of the observed statistics.
A second factor is that people are still on their way to max level, expecting to be able to complete end game content when they arrive. They are yet to realise that they will have wasted their time.
It is also quite possible that WoW with its monthly fee provides enough "non-elite" content to keep players happy whatever their level even if they can't complete everything.

I think some of why they made things 'easier' is not for the inexperienced, but for the causal gamer....

take CG1 (thats causal gamer 1) who only plays on weekends...he can get thru most of the missions and stuff with no problems in the amount of time he plays, can do vanquishing and even some elite areas.

now CG2 can only play for an hour or so MAX each time he CAN get on---that counts out most of the harder areas and vanquishing etc...so those are basically out of his reach--now add in ursan and consumables--now he has a chance to play those areas and such.

so I dont think its just the inexperienced that are getting the benefit of this catering...but also the casual gamer!

That's an over exaggeration, considering the hoops players have to go through to get certain skills and to certain areas, even if it's only a few days work.

Let me ask you, and others this - if you want to retain good players, get them to your "standards" so you're happy to play with them, have them support the game as much as you do/did, how do you expect them to stick around with such an anti-newbie sentiment endemic in elitist veterans?

New players have to learn the basics. Experienced players don't need to learn as much as inexperienced ones...

That's why they "cater" to the inexperienced... last I checked, most, if not all games give instruction booklets for a reason.

Are you just failing to read, or taking my point out of context entirely?

How can you play elite areas or hard mode as soon as you have picked up the game? You cant. You need to play through the game first, get better at it, and once you have aquired the skills, you can play those areas.

It is what I did, and what everyone else before Ursan did. Why should new players be treated any differently then we have?

I couldnt care how long someone has been playing for, if they have the skills, they can play. And obtaining the neccessary skills is probably far less grind then it is to get R10 Ursan just so you can play noobway in HM and Elite areas.

This is the argument a lot of players think about when they talk about Ursan, SY, and other PvE skills. If you are a "casual" player, then the regular game should be just fine for you. Otherwise, you ARE NOT A CASUAL PLAYER. HM, elite areas, etc. were made for those who wanted a challenge in the PvE side, without having to go hardcore PvP.

The main reason they gave us these skills, especially Ursan, was the HoM. It was designed to keep interest in a game that is pretty much done. They gave max titles and trophies for everyone to work on until the beta of GW2 leaks out. For every person who can grind out a r6 KoaBD in a month or two, there will be plenty of casual players who will take a long time doing so. They will also be able to bring in new casual players to the game, get them hooked, and have a higher chance of retaining people in the franchise for GW2. That's a lot easier than having to gain a whole new group of players.

I think another reason for the dumbing down is testing. Yes, "people are still playing the game." Face it, though. Advancement of the game ended with EotN. You could argue it ended with Nightfall. It is now a static environment for them to test new features for GW2. Skill separation was mentioned by Jeff Strain almost a year ago for GW2. PvE skills were a way to try this out, and now they are giving us the actual skill separation.

They were forced to do this because of the pay-once format they adopted. In that environment, your options of content and format are limited. It gives you the advantage of gaining casual players who can leave the game for up to months at a time, as well as giving an incentive for people to pick up the game; but it carries the disadvantage of how you can go about getting that income to add content to the game, as well as the kind of content you can add.

I'd still take the PvP side over anything out there, from the anarchy and randomness of AB/RA, to the high-level challenge of GvG, to the near-constant balancing of the game to keep a skill>time played ethic alive. PvE isn't like that. It's set up to attract new players to the game and give them everything they need to have fun in the game. For those who want more... you can always PvP.