The Madness That Is Ether Renewal

I love you.

If you were a chick, I'd ask you to marry me.

I freaking loooove XKCD. #37 was just so good.

That is exactly what pisses people off. Guild Wars attracted a lot of people with the unique "skill>time" and "no grind" and "competitive" claims. And for a while the game followed those. Now all of those have went down the craphole, and we are left GW being the testing ground for the next wannabe WoW that will be GW2.

The uniqueness of the franchise is what should have ensured the survival of the franchise. Now it just feels like a sellout.

In PvE I don't see "balance" that easy to define - obviously a large part of yours has to do with build variety. For many that is true, yet this allows for some builds to be more powerful than others, you just need variety. For others "balance" means that your "skill" affects what areas you clear. Here we end up with two camps. The first (and most vocal on the forums) feels that less skilled players shouldn't be able to play and beat later areas. That those areas should be reserved for highly skilled organized teams and the rest can just learn to play. Other feel that said balance means that anyone can play there and have a chance at beating them and it is your choice how you do it. For many others it means that there are no builds that are more powerful than others - this is basically the PvP stance (obviously random skill bars shouldn't be included and are allowed to fail).

So, who's balance do we follow? Any one of them you pick will tick the rest off as the are obviously correct and all the others are mindless drones who can't see anything. To some extent this is true - none are exactly incorrect and most can not see past their own noses. That is true for the vast majority of the people posting.

For myself I prefer the "all can play" balance and that includes many of the PvE only skills. However since I am a H/H player only Ursan doesn't affect me and I get screwed by the "not all can do it" crowd (several places I am not allowed into without other humans no matter my skill level with them).

Lastly, we have what is probably Anet's balance - what gets us the most sales. Since we purchase games to play that "balance" is going to be tipped towards the "all can play" group. They also don't want to totally alienate the upper end of players if for nothing else than to give the bottom end ones something to shoot for. So we get what we have today, I don't really see it changing. Nor do I see any game really being successful doing differently. Every MMO I have ever played is plagued by these "discussions" for the very same reasons.

There is another way to "balance" PvE - is the build stale? One can have a 100% perfect balanced system by any put out and it become stale as nothing ever changes. So, again - which balance is "correct"?

I'd love to see ANet do a "Return to Zero" weekend or something, where they revert all skills and stat behaviour to their initial release candidate states.
Intermingling nature ritual spirits, infinite minions, soul reaping behaviour, adrenaline generation, damage reduction behaviour, all that stuff back in the game along with the removal of the PvE skills.
It'd be interesting to see if individual things that have been nerfed due to being imbalanced would be offset by other things that have been nerfed.

Of course, it'll never happen.

Do that, lock the ladder, strip ATs of QPs, double or triple Balth faction, reward points and HoH chest drops, and you've got yourself a very, very fun weekend.

PvE would be nuts; PvP would be ridiculously entertaining.

Yes - the AI sucks.
But that's not a balance question.
That's like saying that PvP skills should not be balanced because of the people that do not know how to use them or use them poorly. Or that we could balance the game by punishing the better player - something like ... all players from Top 100 guilds have a 10% reduced movement speed, 10% longer casting speed, 10% chance of missing with attacks, ...
It kinda would be the easy way to balance, wouldn't it be?
Or should that be the PvE way?

They took some shortcuts - and balance was trashed because of it.
And it's obvious that THAT'S a sacrifice they are willing to take.
So keep that in mind.
Because that means that coming here and saying that ER should be changed for balanced reasons is like saying that Power Spike should be changed because you dislike that it's icon is pink.
So now tell me - what are the odds that you will find a person in A.Net's team that dislikes pink so much that they will listen to that argument?
And keeping in mind what kind of a game we are playing - what are the odds that they will care that something isn't balanced in PvE?
ESPECIALLY when the argument of "if you don't like it, don't use it" works.
And I don't mean theoretically.
I mean IN PRACTICE!
They don't care about balance, the players have a chance of balancing themselves (which is the point of "don't like it - don't use it!") - so ... what makes you think they'll do anything about it?

You know - I am not the party-pooper that is saying to not balance something.
I am the party-pooper that is saying to look at WHO IS DOING the balancing.

There is no reason for the above listed skills. Player Versus Environment means Player Versus Environment. It does not follow that every monster you fight should play by the same rules as yourself.

You have the ultimate advantage, which is a brain. Arenanet can't code that. Complaining that there are foes of a higher level than 20, that do tons of damage, that can't be knocked down, etc, etc, just makes you look stupid.

Anet will just have to make a "superhard mode" LOL

And pve only skills can't be used in it. =)

I'm not surprised I'm not the only one who's entertained that ridiculous idea.

and in the superhard mode there's random bosses that spawn and they can use all the professions and they're all level 100. All other enemies are level 50. Basically it will be pretty much impossible.

People have potential to improve, the AI doesn't.

Yeah - it's as if the AI would need some sort of outside help with their builds and their behaviour.

Uh-huh, even if you give mobs perfect skillbars and different behaviour patterns they won't be as good as normal, intelligent human players.
There's no way that AI will be as good as I.
Try harder.

That's what they thought until everyone realized heroes are better than the average human player.

BUT the point of PvE still is for the player to win.
So it's all good.

That's why I said "intelligent".
Unfortunately, normal GW player isn't intelligent

No if you can win hard mode and elite areas with 1 skill. Where did the challenge go?

Depends on the task. There are some aspects of gameplay where computer controlled characters are already vastly superior to any human. Then there are other tasks where achieving transhuman performance levels is not economically feasible for the given setting and resources (if you think that AI is somehow fundamentally unable to perform better than human players in mental tasks then try some advanced chess program - the issue here is that a server must run a vast number of AIs at any time and thus the available resources for a single AI are pretty limited). Then there is yet another issue that if the AI is too smart the game stops being fun for the vast majority of the player base, and considering that heroes perform better than the average PUP I'd say that the level is quite right

On topic, the buffed Ether Renewal is the Elemental Attunement for non-elemental skill lines and I'm cool with that. It requires somewhat gimmicky builds, doesn't break the game any more than what it is already, and it will not lead to a situation where only ER eles will be accepted to PUGs. It can be abused, but so can half of the skills anyway.

/signed

Except since the game is already broken b/c of Ursan, it kind of maintains the same level of brokenness.

GW2 please. With a new development team.

Hold your horses.
We'd have a state of balanced PvE then.
And Ursan COULDN'T exist in that world.

Coming from a certified noob here, I'm not sure how I would get through PvE without my Great Dwarf Weapon, Save Yourselves, Pain Inverter, and Seed of Life. I don't really use Ursan since I'm not high enough rank to use it, but damnit if I was I'd make good use of it. When I decide to PvE, I have a goal in mind. Everything in between character creation and being PvP-ready is a huge obstacle, and everything that makes that obstacle easier to clear is A-Okay with me >_>

On that note, I sympathize with people who want to be challenged, and I think there's probably hope at the end of the tunnel. If I were you, I'd lobby for Hard Mode to incorporate some kind of PvE skill change. In PvP areas, you are affected by some effect called "PVP", I'm not joking. The presence of this effect changes your skills to their PvP versions where applicable. Isn't it possible to take the existing "This is Hard Mode!" effect, and make it replace your existing PvE skills (and PvE versions of normal skills which are out of balance) to eat heavy nerfs? Make Hard Mode harder by way of isolated skill nerfs exclusive to this gametype. Those who want to get through PvE burden-free, people like me, don't have to play Hard Mode and be challenged against our will, and people who want to be challenged can be accommodated. Anyway, that's just an idea.