The Madness That Is Ether Renewal

That doesn't prove anything.

1. The Phantom Menace is a bad movie
2. Some people choose to ignore it
3. The Phantom Menace is still a bad movie

Since Lucas likes to revise his movies to the chagrin of his fans this comparison is particularly apt. I am contribution to this discussion by pointing out that some people have lost their perspective. The humankind won't be doomed despite the facts that Ether Renewal is overpowered or The Phantom Menace keeps sucking.

To Symeon: Please notice that I do not invoke the banned four letter acronym in this post. Also, my counter-example of DreamWind's 'proof' is equally contributing to the discussion by showing the invalidity of the proposition.

I completely agree

However, I must point out that the changes are just expansions, not replacements. You can still play Prophecies with Prophecies-only skills and get the same experience that you could three years ago. You do have choice. Or maybe the primary problem is with the community, not with the game?

Yes, because playing games without looking at the screen is much, much more fun and it's YOUR CHOICE to make it fun. People should start doing that instead of asking for more challenging content, right?

Spin it however you want, but you're still more or less saying "don't like it, don't use it" here.

And since it got edited out. Here it is again.-

1. "The Phantom Menace is a bad movie" is an opinion. George Lucas didn't try to turn Star Wars into an Enchanted-wannabe. The quality/whatever of The Phantom Menace might be lacking for some people. That's an "opinion". It's still Star Wars.

2. Since it's an opinion, of course some people would choose to ignore it.

3. Star Wars is still Star Wars after The Phantom Menace, not an Enchanted-wannabe or Die Hard-clone.

GW has changed from what it's used to be. This is NOT an opinion.

You are not addressing the issue. Can you, or can you not, create a Prophecies character and play it through the campaign facing the essentially same challenges that you did three years ago when the game first came out? Granted, there are some skill balance issues that may have upped the challenge a bit, especially the buffs to WoH and ER made the desert missions that much harder when they were the relatively hardest part of Prophecies to begin with. But the same experience is still available, it hasn't gone anywhere.

As I said, you might not have a problem with the game per se but with its current playerbase, and ANet's inclination to serve the wrong (from your point of view) part of it.

The game has changed, now that's the fact,there are 3 campagins and 1 expansion but still there is no vaild argument that any of these changes caused mandatory switch in peoples way of playing the game and that's also the fact!

a logical asumption since game is the same for everyone yet many different opinions on current state of game.

Because playing stupidly like how you did when you first bought the game is a smart thing to do, amiright?

Player A: Hey, why don't you go get heroes from GWEN and Nightfall and also max armor too while you're there? It helps a lot playing through Prophecies you know.

Player B: Sorry. I'm a retard and I don't know why but I don't want to make things in my life easier. Don't you know I play with only 2 fingers, one from each hand? You should try it, it's fun. I've been doing that since I was 8.

Do you know how me and my guildmates vanquished Marga Coast? We all used henchman builds as given on wiki, no other skills than what the respective henchmen have (and most of them don't have a full bar), no secondary profession skills, absolutely no PvE skills or consumables. And it was more fun than 90% of other VQs. Are you calling us retards for making it a nice challenge instead of just lolpwnage ursan rampaging it? Or even using a relatively optimized real build?

You do have a choice. Take responsibility of your own actions, don't try to blame somebody else for them.

"Don't like it, don't use it" being valid or not has little bearing on this arguement.

Abusively overpowered skills or mechanics affect everyone, whether they use them or not. It's harder to get into PuGs without them, titles/prestige armor become swiftly devalued, other people will be progressing faster than you, and you will essentially be reduced to newbie status because of this.

This is not a movie, and such a comparison is silly. We share a community, and what affects one party directly will almost always affect everyone else indirectly as well.

; 1 : i was putting an overal example

; 2 : does this mean all they did was think about Guildwars ?
Did they came up with their own places of positioning ; movement ; quarterstepping ? I'm just saying that in my opinion one can never gather so much information without spending days thinking of it which is just wrong .
Little things help ; like seeing a guy play a certain build .. it gives ideas to adjust that build or take certain parts of it.

; 3 : It wasn't ment as a discussion ; i know your right i was just giving an other point of vieuw and my opinion .
I'm not going to discuss with you ; i'm a to big dR fanboii for that =)

Of course not. At least you're not closing your eyes while playing.

You should try it though. It's a "nice challenge" instead of what you do OR "lolpwnage ursan rampaging it" OR "relatively optimized real build".

I won't call you names, even then.

Leave the PVE skills alone, you play the game the way you enjoy playing it, and the rest of us will enjoy playing it the way we like playing it. Stop trying to ruin the game for everyone else. Some of us like Ether Renewal, Ursan etc. Who in the hell gives you the right to try and take that away from us? We bought the game too. PVP has ruined GW from day one and I am grateful that Anet has given us something that has not been nerfed all to hell.

Do you honestly think that people should crawl through areas using terrible builds to create their own challenge, while other people stomp over those areas in a tenth of the time with Ursan and get the same rewards?

The game should provide the challenge, not the players' choice of skills/builds. The game should also provide greater rewards for greater challenges.

Some people don't like Ether Renewal or Ursan. Who in the hell gives you the right to demand overpowered skills be left untouched?

It's people like you who caused the divide between PvE and PvP players.

Entertaining the thought for a second that somebody who is decent at the game would actually, willingly, join a PUG then yes, that might be a problem. However, the problem is primarily with PUG mentality. Without those abominations PUGs would just use something else to decide who is going to get playtime. Of the two undesirables, ANet apparently decided that rank discrimination is less bad than profession discrimination. Rudely speaking, UB is the shortbus version of GW for scrubs, and that is something that people with larger experience should IMHO accept.

I thought that pretty much the only title that has some prestige left is Champion. People will always find ways to abuse the game and people who get titles/armor for admiration by general audience will certainly be disappointed. It is good enough for me when I reach Legendary Survivor with my character who has been playing the campaigns through in a normal way. That accomplishment is in no way diminished in my own eyes by others who mindlessly farm the dwarven boxing tournament after getting run there.

This one I find hard to understand in the context of GW. Unlike WoW and similar games where you must stay in the treadmill to keep on level with your buddies or quickly become a liability if you drop more than a couple of levels back in progress, in GW - once you are past the tutorial part of getting to lv20 - then whatever progress there is is strictly optional. The abusers may become richer than you, but that is not the objective of the game. They may get more titles, but as said above, PvE titles are only for personal satisfaction. Do they have more fun? That is not easy to tell.

I understand very well that people would want to see a game that is equally desirable to hardcore and casual gamers alike, and would have room for the most skilled and the worst players as well. ANet tried something along these lines, and it wasn't a complete success if not a total failure either. I am afraid that such a perfect game cannot even exist. The root problem is with the people, not with any game mechanics.

Oh no, they don't get the same rewards. What they get is some virtual trinkets of little consequence. We got the reward of satisfaction from a difficult challenge successfully completed

The game is what you make out of it.

Fair point, but were the game well designed I don't believe that would be the case.

Except it's not the short bus at all. It's the most powerful and efficient way to grind titles.


Lemming has Champ 5, there is no prestige even in that title track.

Then I'd say you are definately in a minority. Most 'hardcore' MMO players do so in order to show off, they play for the prestige and recognition, and don't really care about the methods used to obtain it.

To keep a happy and active player base you need rewards and visual recognition that is meaningful. Goals to aim for, both short term and long term. When something like Ursan devalues rewards in the game so drasticly it has a major negative impact, even when it doesn't effect a player such as yourself.

Here's a real life story.....

Last night I was in Sifhalla looking for a group to do HM Frostmaws. After a little time I ended up in a PUG. As far as I can see there were 3 or 4 Ursans, a monk, Sabs style N/Rt and me as a fire ele...and yes, I took Ursan as well

We had a really fun time. We pulled carefully, and worked out the simple tactic where the Ursans held the aggro, and I could nuke from behind. We still found it a challenge and even wiped once. It took us about 90 mins to finish. Personally, I went Ursan twice, mainly to save my skin

At the end, in Team chat, everyone remarked that they had enjoyed the experience. Now I know that it may not be representative of everyones experience, but in my opinion, even when using some of the "imba" PvE skills, the game can still offer an enjoyable level of challenge for players.

My little brother has a hard time running around normal mode Old Ascalon with an overpowered build too. Does it mean the build isn't actually overpowered?

It isn't contributing anything. Your counter-example is completely different than mine, doesn't work, and doesn't invalidate what I said. You should be able to see that.

The rest of your post is basically saying that this issue is not important because we have lost perspective and we have the choice to play the game. For people posting on a Guild Wars forum it should be an important issue. No its not the end of the world, but it is something that deserves discussion on a Guild Wars forum.

Your second point you are simply going back to don't like it don't use it. You could say there is no problem and make your case (however impossible), or you could say there is a problem and suggest changes.

Saying to keep things in perspective and we have the choice to leave the problem still adds nothing.

No, you can't. Skills have changed. Not to mention you can't play PvP facing the same challenges (which is half of balance remember). Also this:

Excellent.

I got a good laugh. What an epic troll.

The problem is things like Ursan PROMOTE the pug mentality of today whether you use it or not. Guild Wars today is based on a grind mentality with overpowered skills to gain as many items as possible as fast as possible. It reminds me of WoW in so many ways. In your words...UB has turned a large portion of the game into the shortbus.

People with larger experience realize that the game was not originally this way and should not be this way today.

I think titles are one of the worst things to happen to Guild Wars, but that is another discussion for another time. JRs point still stands...overpowered builds devalue everything.

What IS the objective of the game??? The objective of the game in Prophecies was clearly defined. What is it now? I believe I know but I want your thoughts.

Yes it can, and it does. Numerous games that are desirable to both hardcore and casual gamers exist. And both types of player are able to play the game without hating each other. Anet has FAILED at this. I think Guild Wars had the potential to do it, but not anymore. Splitting PvE and PvP didn't help in the slightest.

Which goes back to the root of the discussion in the first place, which was that with the addition of overpowered PvE skills, the seperate skill balancing, etc. that the original objective of the game has done a complete 180 from what it was upon the games release and the selling point Arena Net used to market the game with, which everyone seems to have wasted basically the last 25 pages trying to come up with bullshit theories to refute this point when its so blatantly clear that Ray Charles could see it...

As you can see - if it wasn't for Ursan - PvE titles would have a meaning, prestige armours would have some value and people would strive to PUG.

But what makes you believe that there is more money to be made by trashing Ursan?
By removing Ursan the crutch that was added to bypass the moronic PvE development gets removed.
Veterans rejoice - because we had 3 years to get good enough to not need the crutch.
New players on the other hand - can now spend 3 years getting to the point where we are, because GW2 will be out already it doesn't make sense to invest that much time into something that is dying - thus completely removing the desire to own additional content.

This:
This means that we can NOT say Ursan IS a problem. The players themselves do not have the power to state that something is a problem that would demand fixing. (Plus the issue here is that this isn't a "bug" issue - it's a ""balance" in PvE" issue!)
So to apply the DLDU argument on an issue - we first need a problem. (So that it can be ignored under DLDU).
This make anyone saying "ignore the problem" wrong.
This also makes anyone saying "don't ignore the problem" wrong.

BECAUSE THERE IS NO PROBLEM.

BUT - we can discuss this theoretically.
And considering that this is a discussion about PvE - we'd need to take the specifics of the PvE world into account:
1. the player has their own instance that they can shape to their own liking.
Whatever goes on in that instance has NO influence on other instances.
2. all achievements in PvE are strictly personal.
The players themselves decided that this is the case.

So IF a problem existed - why couldn't the players that have the desire to do so just solve the problem themselves FOR themselves?

If something is unbalanced in PvE - that means that there MUST be a state of balance.
Define that state! A collection of simple rules that will enable EVERYONE to understand what changes would be needed for a skill that is currently "unbalanced" to become "balanced".

Otherwise - could we please refrain from using the term "balance in PvE".
Since then the term "balance in PvE" is just a pretty way of saying "I was dreaming of this pink elephant tonight and the elephant told me".

so it's again proof that flaw is not in game design but in peoples mentality, i said it again i see no reason why i should be affected that some players completed title,quest,challange,mission in faster or easier way.

So if someone owns prophecies only should stop playing or having fun because of this ? Or someone should tell him : "give up going through campagin because people own these missions and challanges with uberskills you don't posses, so in this way your fun is ruined now, or go and buy Factions,Nightfall and EOTN so your game will be ruined by overpowered skill you will have at your disposal." Nonsense !!

And it's not the game design that decide if rewards are adequate to the challange that's what people do and very often there are very different opinions about it as well.

Ursan isn't even the issue. Bad development is, and reverting one part of it won't make a difference because the trend is long-set, and I will bet anything ANet will do something to annoy the established playerbase again.

To quote Kestrel from WoC, 'Stop finding new ways to piss us off. Seriously!'



I can't believe I even quoted that.

Scary, I was listening to that WoC and that line came up at almost the same time I was reading this...

/hides

In a strict and purely technical sense perfect balance would result in all skills being equally desired, equally common and equally powerful. It's impossible to reach that point, so there are grey areas. PvE is more forgiving in nature than PvP therefore the grey areas are larger.

For example, mesmers not being popular/effective in PvE indicates a class imbalance. This could probably be remedied by spawning more complex/balanced style mobs (mirroring PvP builds, for example), where the kind of shutdown a Mesmer offers would be more valuable.

Such a fix would improve the game, and is just an example why balance is important globally.

I listened to most of them over again with nothing else to do, and I couldn't help but imagine the core-skill rant over PvE skills now. Or even a lot of the other complaints. PvE skills = WTF.

I don't know who is doing this. They don't play the game, I'll tell you that much. 'Leave the devs alone, they're doing what's good for the game', that's bullshit, because this is not good for the game. We play for three years in a somewhat balanced setup with skills and game design, and they say 'nonono, we're going to give you skills that are ten times stronger so that you can have infinite success even if you're bad.' I love the guys who are bad and new to the game, but you are not supposed to have success until you develop as a player. That's what challenge and difficulty are for. I don't think you change a game for the newcomers, that's ridiculous. If you're hurting that bad for new people, market better, and fix the game.

PvE design is not being done by anybody with a clue. This is evident from the constant 'fixes' that don't do anything, and the development that spawns one problem after another. I know a lot of players who are considered veterans, most of them who don't play much but occasionally look back in, and most of them were horribly shocked, or laughing hysterically at how retarded these things are. There's a reason a lot of the old players quit, and PvE design has a lot to do with it. Jerrypants never bought Nightfall because 'he didn't want another boring single-player game'. This is coming from a guild leader in an extremely skilled PvE guild. He saw pretty clearly that Guild Wars didn't need teams, or even reward them; most of the game was coming down to repetitive crap.

Ultimately, this comes down to the fact ArenaNet has no clue as to what they're doing. Who was in the room when this suggestion was thrown out and thought this was a good idea? Who was in this room that allowed this to happen? Do you listen when people speak, at all?

And how are we supposed to have faith in a company that does this kind of thing, over and over, in every aspect of their game?

Now that are some points i understand and even i can relate to them to a degree. Still i think even if you are right about that PvE Gw has gone in very bad direction i don't really see that there was whole world of choices for devs
to make "everyday challanging pve in content limited no monthly fee mmorpg".
They made a series of bad choices, that could be but something tells me that it wasn't vary many good choices to be made.

You know what, this is the single most persuasive argument that I have seen in this thread so far. I don't see things that way myself but I believe it when you say that many do, and agree with you that it is important. In fact several opinions start to make sense from that point of view. I think that we are at the crux of the issue here, and I'll try to describe it with another analogy, so bear with me

Company A created a climbing resort on a mountain. It had several alternative routes to the peak with varying levels of difficulty to accommodate climbers of different amounts of expertise, including a beginner path for tourists. The idea was that the steeper path you took, the faster you reached the peak. Tourists never had what it takes to even get halfway up so company A installed a funicular.

One group of climbers which we could call 'goal oriented' were annoyed because for them the whole point of climbing is to reach the peak and the funicular made that achievement null and void. And they were right, from their point of view.

Another group of climbers which we could call 'process oriented' were indifferent because for them the whole point of climbing is climbing itself, and they pointed out that people can choose not to use the funicular. And they were also right, from their point of view.

The two groups started to argue with each other and it didn't go well because it so happened to be that both of them were right for their respective standings.

Meanwhile, tourists went: "A funicular? Coooooool ..."

Let me ask, according to your analogy, the tourists want to get up to the peak, why?

What's there for them?

The climbers (of any kind) want to get to the peak of the mountain because of the challenge of the task, not because they want to see the view. No need to imagine things. Why do you think people want to get to the peak of the Everest Mountain? If you can simply take this "funicular" up to the peak without any effort, do you think ANYONE would care about the peak of Everest Mountain to begin with?

I doubt it.

Yes, the players can and should. And the devs can and should listen. Somebody earlier gave a perfect Blizzard example. High level players were complaining about Brood War when it first came out, and Blizzard fixed all their complaints. Now we have the epic it is today. Anet has not followed this at all.

Do you have evidence of this statement?

Because the players cannot solve the problem for themselves. It has to be solved by the devs with input from the players.

If we are talking from a PvE standpoint, I would say the ideal situation would be all skills being equally desirable based on players ability to use the skills (with elites being a little more desirable) and all classes being equally desirable in groups. Also the flow of the game would be easier to harder...IE: first level easier second level harder etc etc.

Instead we have a mish mash of elites being bad, normal skills being broken overpowered, some classes never desired, others overdesired, the game being easy all the way through, and no balance in difficulty whatsoever with the hard areas simply enemies dealing huge numbers with little AI to speak of. The elite missions meant for elite players are now farmable (with Ursan), the quests are repetitive, and the game is now a single player title/item grind meant for fill your Hall of Monuments for Guild Wars 2, instead of being an epic multi player skill over time competitive challenge game that it was always meant to be and marketed as.

This shift in focus is a HUGE problem for people who bought the game as advertised and expected the game to deliver as advertised. How the hell do you expect those players to buy Guild Wars 2 with the tragedy of changes made by Anet to Guild Wars 1? This thread on EP and PvE balance is just a small part of that shift in focus that has expanded into a larger discussion that is this thread.

I am shocked by anybody who thinks there is no problem, particularly when it comes to balance, which is something PvP players have been dealing with for 3 years and PvE players are now a part of.

And as usual, Avarre's last post was of epic proportions.

If there was no problem, this wouldn't be thread of 30+ pages.

But how to achive such balance ? Devs were forced to made some changes the very nature of the game : they had to made pve game fun, challanging and rewarding for as large as possible group of players, keeping them playing for years knowing that content they offer for players will be limited. Not an easy task imo. For example: heroes - i really think that it has sth to do with realizing that players will be then scattered through 3 campagins really playing with henchies as the only option, so maybe heroes kills some of the team play and ease the game but also bring some fun in finding and tweaking builds for them and for a team.
I don't quite understand, Blizzard balanced Brood War campagain ? or we are talking about Starcraft pvp which is not an issue as discussion is about pve balance.

In your example the two different groups of people have different motivation and gain different rewards from reaching the summit. In the Guild Wars scenario it is two different groups of people with the same motivation going for the same rewards, just taking different paths.

I suggest you try playing some other games with better class balance. Something like WoW, or maybe Lineage2 (to some extent).

How it works in WoW? There're 9 classes in WoW. Each class can fulfill at least 1 role in a team (like Guild Wars, you need tank, healer, and nuker in a team). A priest, for example, can either heal or nuke. Nuking (DPS, as it's called in WoW) ability of the priest can be lacking when compared with pure nuking classes like Warlock or Mage, but as a priest you're still needed for teams at least as a healer.

Druid, paladin, and shaman can also be a healer. And unlike non-monk healing classes in GW, these non-priest healing classes in WoW can be a healer as good as, if not better than, a priest.

Same goes for tanking and nuking classes.

Granted, it's still far from perfect even in WoW. But it's still a lot better than the "monk or warrior or elementalist or busted" mentality that is in GW (before Ursan of course).

As for StarCraft. The fixes were both for singleplayer mode and multiplayer mode. The imbalancedness in unit ability would ruin the game; if you're playing the race with an overpowered unit, you'd win easily. If you're playing something else against such race, you'd have no chance to win. Please tell me you think such thing is "ok".

QFT

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

abedeus, you might not be old enough to have heard the play on the sound.

Denial....De-nial....de-nile....the Nile.

Yeah, there were like 2 movies called Denial. But there is no river called Denial.

Look up Denial at wiki.

Yeah. But some people live in ignorance instead of denial.

i dont wan't to go into Gw vs WoW but there are people(me inculded) that consider wow classes/skilles[even if balanced(though if you have 9 classes to play 3 roles of tank ,nuker,healer is far from balance imo)] system inferior to gw system. So one might think why not to merge what is the best in these games and made a perfect game, maybe devs are retards and have no clue what they are doing or maybe such things are often impossible to achive.

I am not talking about a perfect game.
I am talking about GW.
A.Net has the supreme right to do whatever the hell they want to do.
And that is why that the players "can" NOT!

Did A.net state that Ursan IS a problem?
If they didn't - we can NOT say it is a problem.
(Plus - if it were - it would had probably gotten fixed. It's just too high profile to NOT get!)

In PvP.
Like I said - in PvE sometimes different rules apply (IF the "problem" isn't a bug!).
The players are able to shape the game to their liking.
The game isn't balanced on overpowered skills (=so that one could only complete a certain area when using a certain skill!).
When it comes to a PvE only skill that ONLY players can bring - then the players have the ability to balance themselves.

Balance was sacrificed for an easier game design.
And it's because of that - that "unbalanced" doesn't mean anything!

And that's the core of the issue.
Maybe the crowd you are speaking for (the "we" in your post) - isn't big enough to matter? Or - as seen previously - the "we" will continue to support them even if they pull off such crap?

Forgive Ursan then.
PvE isn't about balance. It never was.
So why remove the skills that are IN FAVOUR of the player?
Especially since PvE ISN'T competitive!
And A.Net's answer was to give us Ursan.
We need to accept the fact that they will NEVER create a balanced PvE game.
And then we need to ask ourselves - what is better for the biggest crowd possible:
1. destroying Ursan-like skills which will trash the game for a HUGE number of players who aren't as hardcore as we are (and let's get this straight - the game WILL be trashed, because it will still be as unbalanced as it ALWAYS was, the only thing changed will be the removal of the crutch!)
2. or the fact that the better players balance themselves (if they want to!)

Personally, I can choose NOT to use Ursan (because I don't shapeshift into a bear and I don't like it! (And I kid you not!)) - and let the poor suckers who aren't good enough at this game to have their fun! I don't need to play with them - so it doesn't matter how badly they suck!

I struggle to argue the intricacies of game design with someone who clearly knows nothing of the topic.

Anet has targetted updates at balancing aspects of PvE in the past, which pretty much makes your entire point redundant.

Quite honestly, I was expecting a bit more effort from you. Let's talk about something in the game, like a title.

You are clearly a goal oriented player. For you the title is the reward, and game breaking skills spoil the reward regardless of whether you use them or not because others use those skills and thus devalue the reward.

I am a process oriented player. For me the reward is the process of getting the title, not the title itself. Game breaking skills don't spoil my reward because I can choose not to use those skills. Whether other players get the same title and by which means doesn't have any relevance to my reward.

See how all the previous arguments in this thread make sense if you take into account this fundamental difference? We are all right from our respective points of view. If we can agree that we are expecting different things from the same game, and that both expectations are equally valid because they are rooted in personality, then we are one step closer to a solution, which should be found by asking "what can be done to make both types of gamers happy?" These expectations don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Okay, give me a skill that makes me invincible for 3600 seconds (1 hour), recharge 1 second, 1 energy cost and make it a Skill with 0 cast time. And make it give me 50 energy every time something tries to hit me or cast a spell or do anything, even move. And I want instant-recharge of all skills every time I look at the screen. And 200 ecto stacks from each mob.

They already have this!

It's called [Glyph of Swiftness][Shadow Form][Deadly Paradox] while under every consumable effect in the game and Chimera of Intensity.

Monsters are so scared, they shit ectos.