Did ANet predict the affect ursan have gotten?

Hi.
I would like to know if you guys think that ANet knew just how abused UB would become, when they implemented it. I've never questioned ANets judgement, and i've always thought that they implemented it, to lure new players.
But with the latest update that makes overpowered skills even more owerpowered, i've began to question whether ANet knows what theyre doing?

Edit: i know the gramma and punctuary is terrible, but please dont let it affect you.

noone knows and doesn't really matter if they expected it or not. What matters is that they didn't nerf it when it was obvious that it is "abused"

I don't see how they could implement something like UB and not expect it to be the most popular build.

At first I thought that UB was just an oversight. But with the complete lack of nerfs in the previous updates after the PvE/P split, I'm really started to wonder what's going on at ANet HQ.

My "somewhat hopeful" conspiracy theory is that they're working entirely on GW2 so that they've had hand over GW1 to the hands of a different ANet department, and that's why it seems like everything is so out of touch. I mean it doesn't excuse how downhill things have gone, but at least it provides some hope for an awesome GW2.

That's what i was thinking too, until the buffs to ER and SF.
This just seemed pointless and stupid to me. Even if they tested it for GW2, what could they possibly use this madness for? - Not to implement those skills into GW2 is the only thing i can see this has made clear. That really is something though!

I think they knew, but based on the lack of a nerf they just don't care.
My two cents.

Anet already had some PVE skills into the game before UB (tntf, sy etc) .
Personally, I think they knew how it would turn out but didn't expect people to ONLY go for UB.
I assume they personally wanted people to be able to complete everything in PVE without class discrimination.

My guess: they wanted it to be a possible build for elite missions (so not THE build for elite missions)

Now about the latest update: it was something that should have been there from release.
You could say that the nerfs were/are part of GW and I have to agree with that, nothing is more fun then bugging the people in your guild/on your friendlist with pointing out the nerfs on their favorite proffesion or QQ together with a couple of friends on how fun that skill was before the nerf.

But then again that ISN'T the point of nerfing a skill, the point of nerfing a skill is to make GW balanced.
Sadly GW contains 2 sides: PVE and PVP, wich both have there own playstyle and therefor skills who are considered balanced in PVE aren't always that balanced in PVP.

Now they first tried to balance them by using there brains.
(with other words trying to actually balance both sides with the same skills at the same time)
But that didn't work out too great.
Then they added PVE skills, but that didn't work out that great either.
(well depending on how you see it, it could be a great success. But IMO anet wanted people to use normal + pve skills and achieve a balance in PVE but it ended up with being PVE skills only (yes.. only 3 pve skills a bar, but most people tend to make there build around the PVE skills))

Now they splitted PVE and PVP.
Well I don't have a clue how this will turn out.
The only thing we can do is /crossfingers or /praytokormir and hope anet finally manage to do the impossible, balance GW.
Those newly buffed skills in PVE might look overpowered from a PVP-view.
But when you're fighting tons of mobs, with atributes higher then yours, monster only skills, no lagg (they have NO laggg grrrr), and heros/hench who are having there daily dumbness spike ... then they don't look that overpowered anymore.

I personally hope that anet manages to balance both PVE and PVP.
I also hope that anet will remove PVE skills for elite missions HM (why only for elite missions HM ? Because getting groups (more then 2 rl people) for vanquishing and HM missions is near the impossible, wich means you have to use heros and henchman alot and we all know how "bright" those are...)

edit: /praytokormir

They knew what they were doing when they implimented it.

They understood that, and decided to give up on PvE. That one skill stands as proof. Not to mention all the other imba PvE skills.

I dont think they really care---with all the gw2 hype they just gave gw something that would move it along quickly disregarding how it effected the game play (on the pve side).....

Ursan is the reason to buy EOTN.

Want to get into an elite area? Gotta have Ursan. Which means you have to get EOTN.

ANet isn't changing it because it means more money for them.

OMG, yet another thread about why Ursan is so bad. When will people learn to just live and let live.

Sure I understand that in areas like DOA for instance Ursan has become the norm and for some that is annoying, but I have to ask myself why are they so annoyed. You all still have the chance to do things without using ursan, no one is forcing you to use it. If there are so many people annoyed that they cant get a group in DOA without having Ursan why dont they get together and do it themselves the pre ursan way.

Personally I have used Ursan to do things AND I have done the same things without Ursan. I do this because I recognise the fact I have a CHOICE. The same as everyone else, use it or dont use it, no one is twisting your arm.
If I was a non drinker and saw someone else drinking I wouldnt start a petition to ban alchohol, that would by most be considered stupid and shortsighted, isn't this whole Ursan thing the same?

I can understand why some dont like it and I sympathise to a degree, lets face it after a short while using Ursan it gets boring as hell, but unlike nerfs this skill is not forced upon you it is there for you to make a personal choice about.

Seeing how the Ursan gripes have increased over recent months since its release there are imo possibly one of two things happening. First either more people who always hated the skill are finding their voice. Second, many people have used Ursan, achieved what they want from it and are now bored of it, so why not get it nerfed and stop everyone else having the same opportunities.
Personally I think it is a combination of both, though no one would ever admit to the second. Though there have been many examples of similar things happening in the past.

All in all, yes Ursan is an imba skill, yes it can be and has been abused. But no, it wont kill anyone if someone else is using it. The important thing is we are not forced to use it so why try to stop people who like it using it? Where honestly is the benefit from doing that.

* These are my thoughts, agree or disagree, its your CHOICE.

Flaming welcome, name calling accepted, rudeness laughed at. My life isnt going to change because of it.

Exactly. This was also the selling point for Nightfall with its horribly imba skills that took months to tone down, even though Anet KNEW the problems they took forever to correct it.

Weeell.....now everybody always mention the "they are concentrated on gw2" excuse, but that's just pure BS; not being able to split their work shows how unprofessional they got, and all the hype that the "officially" recognized excuse will just make people go on "berserk" mode and buy GW2, since it MUST be really good if it took the dev team about 3 years of pure concentration on it.

The thing is: why should they really care about old, dear, customers if they can totally build up from the start the player base for gw2?

Edit: oh and the EOTN thing is totally true (2 posts before)

Okay you totally misunderstood my threat. I suggest you read the OP before posting next time. kbai?
This thread is about whether ANet predicted that ursan would have the impact that it has.
This is also why youre the only one complaining about QQ. Because this is obviously not a QQ thread.

Edit: oh, and even if this was a QQ thread, QQ'ing about QQ = fail.

Okay here i go. And i dont intend to change your life? lol. Just change your view on this threat. Because you misunderstood it real bad.
When did i ever tell anyone not to use ursan? I guess you saw the word "ursan" and thought that this was a QQ threat without even reading it. and guess what, you were wrong. Face it. You were very very wrong.
Nuff said.

Ursan was Anets last gift to the noobs

I'm sure Anet isn't as dumb as we think and knew that the blessings would have been abused.

This isn't an Ursan QQ thread, and that is also avoiding the problem. Please keep this "I spy Ursan in the thread name IT MUST BE URSAN QQ!!!!!!" crap out.

That is the good thing about Ursan. It has transcended profession discrmination, but it has continued title/rank discrimination. However, that is nothing new; rank discrimination has been in guild wars since release. Furthermore, Ursan has made the game more accessable, and arguably easier. At the same time, Ursan has gone against the original premise of the game ("skill>time"), even though that premise was mainly directed at PvP.s

Personally, I feel that the benefits of skills such as Ursan don't outweigh the cons.

PvE skills are a good idea, but were poorly implemented into the game by linking them to title tracks instead of linking them to existing or a new pve-only attribute. That way, it would elminate the "need" to grind for better skills.

I'm starting to think it will be impossible to balance PvE and PvP. Generally, the two crowds want things which seem contradicting to each other, so balancing them with the same premise doesn't seem to have worked. However, I think PvE only skills were created to allow pvers to have powerful skills which will not be affected by pvp balance.

Finally, the problem lies within the majority of the community that believes that a player needs a high rank to join a good group. Improvement only comes if you spend a lot of time doing something, but change what you're doing to a higher difficulty.

I agree. They'd be better off with me balancing the skills.

No seriously, they'd be better off with anyone at all actually balancing PvE back to how it was two years ago.

Some power creep is understandable, but the power we have now is just ridiculous, even when we take UB out of the equation.



And yes, I'm also secretly hoping that they're cooking up a back-to-basics larger-than-life Guild Wars 2. Either that or I'll keep the social life I've been having since me and my guild stopped playing.

I'll be happy either way. Whether it's falling in love with Guild Wars all over again, or closing this chapter of my gaming life for good.

I think they leave Ursan alone to encourage PUGs (they've been deliberately sabotaging henchmen for years in an attempt to do the same thing, and they won't let us use a full party of heroes either). Which it does, since a lone Ursan isn't that great...

Pretty sure they knew what they were doing when they made Ursan. And when they buffed SF. My theory is that they're making things easier to do so people can build up their HoM's for GW2.

My sense is that they did not see this coming. Almost nobody did.

A couple weeks after EOTN came out, I started a thread saying "whoa, this Ursan thing is going to go way overboard someday". My post was met with a chorus of folks saying I was overreacting, etc. Many of those people are posting that Ursan has broken the game.

Call me a prophet. lol....

Pretty sure they did know. I mean, Ursan is the main reason to buy GWEN right now, isn't it? Maybe they'll wait till they can't milk more $$$ out of GWEN and then they'll nerf it.

That sounds very reasonable!

Probably half right, I doubt they'd nerf it though. Not after all this.

(I have no opinion on the goodness or evil of Ursan. It's just another option to me)

I think Ursan was put in as the "easy button" for PvE. I think they knew it was overpowered. That's why it became an elite. Heck, Pain Inverter and several other PvE-only skills are stupid powerful, but Ursan gets the elite tag.

^ Truth. Its why Ursan never got nerfed. To be honest, I also do not think they anticipated full UB groups and tested it thoroughly, or considered what it would do to actual varied group play in various areas. Its simply now a great selling point for EotN, so they wont touch it.

They were hoping that since you didn't actually turn into a bear, folks wouldn't use it.

In seriousness, I also think Anet knew what they were doing, when they put that skill in. They needed to open up some of the more difficult PvE areas to the folks with bad bars without seemingly force feeding a build on them. Ursan did that, while making those folks think they thought of it themselves. So now, a lot more players that thought the game was too difficult are back again and grabbing additional campaigns, char slots, kept interested in GW2, etc...

It is to open Elite areas to casual players with HoM they want your average joe gamer to be able to beat DoA/UW/FoW, plus SF allows people to farm massive amonts of money for elite armor/titles for HoM, They just want the "casual" player to be able to get something in HoM. Plus why does it matter to you if someone has money/easy elite armea clears? You cant go there with your exped grp and make tons of money? Its simple MMO style, new areas only really exped ppl can do it becomes more and more open as cookie cutter builds arise and them Ursan.

I used to think that Ursan was just an oversight or something. I didn't think that Anet could make a skill to beat so many areas when their design has so many skill combinations. But the lack of nerfs to ursan over the past months makes me believe otherwise.

We have three options.

1) ANet had no idea what they were doing, and attempted to surpass D/Mos for most ridiculous design imbalance.
2) ANet knew exactly what they were doing, and are willing to muddle their own game design to get more games sold before GW2.
3) ANet are some of the greatest trolls of online gaming.

None of them are particularly good.

Yes, I think so. They had been moving towards this for a while and they made it an elite for a reason (as mentioned above the other PvE skills are just as imba - Pain Inverter is probably the strongest damager in the game).

They have been trying to move the game such that the top end players are not much more than the low end (loot scale, easier access to areas, nerfing normal mode, etc), I notice that the main complaint is that it makes it where anyone can play the end game/elite missions. Well, if that was their goal (and I am nearly sure that is) then it is Working As Intended. Any such complaints that "now any one can do it" is just telling them they did what they wanted.

Now, if that is a good idea or not - dunno. They have their server logs and sales charts to see. Since they have been strongly moving towards and given the vitriol flung at them from the hard core players I suspect that it isn't driving "everyone" away. In fact, from my own experience in game I see more players in later areas than ever before (and yes, most are Ursan groups). Were I casual PUG'er then this would be great - especially if I had a lesser liked class. Were I a hard core gamer that felt I needed my own special play ground, items, and show off an especially large bank account then I would be ticked. However, since I am the most hated class of all - a pure H/H player that tries to avoid the player base outside of boards - I don't care much at all either way.

The only thing from the devs I could find was a post on Wiki, and that was a month ago:

So there are "don't like it don't use it" guys at ANet too?

No, I don't think they foresaw this. Yes, they knew it was the strongest blessing, because it's the very icon of the norn. But they didn't see how far they went.

The day Ursan entered the game is the same day things like Seed of Life and TNTF got hit for PvE balance. It wasn't until sometime after GWEN's release that Anet decided PvE didn't need any balance at all.

The plethora of bugs in GWEN skills is enough to show that things were not thoroughly playtested. Heck Ursan used to be doing ranged damage. I don't think they ever got a team of 6 bears together to do things. Some of the quest design, like the charr homelands, makes you wonder if they even tested multiplayer at all.

It works and does exactly what it was meant to do.

Simple as that.

Those in Anet who think it's fine are the marketing and sales boys.

Those in Anet who think it's too overpowered are probably anyone not in those two depts. =P

I think ANet did have an idea about how UB would be used when they released it....

1 - everyone was saying that you could only defeat Mallyx by using a glitch, and that the devs must have designed him when using their dev in-game bonuses.
2 - mesmers were finding it impossible to get into PUGs, not only in elite areas.

So they introduce a skill that anyone can use, and it works against mallyx....it also requires owning and grinding through EotN.

I used to think of it as a take-it-or-leave-it skill. I never used it as I was perfectly happy using my nuker or earth build in EotN, depending on the baddies I would find there. I got Legendary Master of the North and maxed rep titles, all of my EotN heroes upgraded with deldrimor armour (all of them obtained by myself in Duncans...many of them in HM)...and then a couple of weeks later there was a change in the general players attitude, and it became virtually impossible to get into a Duncans group if you didn't run UB. Shame really...I hate using UB, and I've seen more UB groups fail in Duncans than balanced non-UB groups (and some of them included mesmers and rits).

ursan go added cause all the noobs wanted to do fow/uw/doa

ON TOPIC: No, I don't think they knew about it, otherwise they would've made a bigger fuss about it in game.

There are three norn blessings, and ursan is possibly the easiest to get. I don't think anyone at Anet even looked twice at those skills. They used them a bit and thought they were powerful, but then given the strength of the monsters in EOTN it was "ok". They never tried somewhere like FoW with a team of Ursans and saw how easy it is, I think a lot of testing is done with only a few humans so many areas can be tested quickly. Therefore Anet wouldn't have tested a whole team.

If they had known when they put Ursan into the game that it was going to be THE build for elite missions and overpower any other skill in the game then the quest wouldn't be so easy and it would be stood out from the other blessings. Perhaps gained at the end of a hard norn dungeon or something. If they had known it's potential it would have been singled out more in game.


ON URSAN: I seriously hope Anet get their act together and make it only usable in norn zones.
IMO, not that it will ever happen, I think those three skills need a change (because they've got to be changed together). Their elite status should be removed and they should be changed to just add their effects and not the skills. So ursan would become a skill saying "for 30 seconds you gain XX health and have +XX armor"

ON THE STATE OF THE GAME: GW needs to look back to it's roots of Skill > Time. Titles that boost the power of skills (although incredibly convenient) go against their original plan and mean that someone who has more time can perform better than others. Thus allowing them to gain better loot, faster and given them a distinct advantage.

PvE skills are needed and good fun, but they should be fixed to their maximum values and the rep titles effects maxed out too. This would mean that all players have a level playing field apart from the collection and capping of skills.In the original game the whole point of pve was simply to unlock and collect skills and mods for use in pvp. By making this a more central focus I think the game would be turned back along the right tracks.

The ranks at which armor and weapons and consumables become available should then be raised much higher up for example: consumables at rank 5, weapons at rank 7 and armor at rank 10. This would mean that those who want the mechanic-less vanity armor can have it but they've got to work, which adds that grind the game needs to whole it's hard core, long-term players.

This game isn't too far from going back to skill>time but it will need major changes by anet and they'll have to ignore the whining and QQing afterwards.

-----------------
And incase you want to know, making the above changes wouldn't benefit me at all. I'm not max rank on any of those titles, nor have I got all the elite skills capped but it would sort out the game and to me the concept of long-term perfection is more important that the short-term happiness of community.

I think that A-net knew what they were doing when they created the various blessings.
They made a set of skills that could give every player with access to the those skills a build that would be on par with the 'best' builds available for PUG use. This to make areas equally accessible for every profession, opposite to what they were.

I think the same applies for consumables.
They make areas more accessible to not-that-good-players, as intended by A-net.

I'm not sure they have predicted the combination of UB and consumables.
UB without consumables is not as easy to play as with consumables.
Those make a huge difference, even in an UB team.
I've seen UB teams struggle and die and the moment the consumables were up the team breezed through the area.

I think the most powerful of the both are the consumables but many players lack the skill to gain full benefit from them and rely on UB + cons because everyone uses that.

And there's another part to this. I think ANet hope that it will increase sales of GW2. Someone made a good post about this in another thread, but I'd rather not have to go and find it.

It all has to do with the Hall of Monuments. By making the PvE game easier, ANet has made it easier for players to fill up their HoM. If people fill up their HoM and know they will be rewarded for all their "hard work" in GW2, they're more likely to buy it.

Easier to fill up HoM = more GW2 purchasers.