The problem of PvE skills.

PvE skills were created to lessen the impact of PvP skill changes to the PvE game. These skills, however were poorly implemented; by linking PvE skills to title tracks, ANet has created a "time>skill" statement. Put simply, grinding titles for PvE skill benefits is bad for the game. Furthermore, the three Norn blessings are possibily the worst addition to the game, as they completely contradict the original premise of Guild Wars. These blessings essentially give you a second skillbar; you can bring any one blessing along with seven other skills; the blessings also have skills themselves, further adding onto the limit of eight skills on a skillbar.
Furthermore, the Norn blessings in particular have created title discrimination in PvE. Title discrimination has been in the game since 2005 (Hero title, but it wasn't really a title back then). This, however adresses the issue in PvE, not PvP.

Titles were added into the game to give people an optional incentive to keep playing PvE. When titles were first introduced, they did not have any inherent benefits as motivation to work on them, and yet plenty did work on them. Titles have went from completely optional to semi-required; GWFactions added quests that require anybody to gain 10,000 faction to advance through the game, and GWNightfall added a couple of sunspear rank requirement quests. Gaining 10,000 faction or rank 7 sunspear is not difficult, but it really is the principle of the matter. These requirements contradict the initial meaningless purpose of titles.

I propose that a new PvE only attribute is created for all PvE characters that functions just like any other attribute in the game. The PvE attribute would not have any inherent benefits; it would just scale the PvE only skills according to the investment (0-12; no runes or anything) as opposed to scaling PvE only skills through a title.
Is this a practical solution? I don't know, but I believe it is a good solution to partially fixing the problem of PvE skills.

However, doing this will remove incentive to some titles (Kurzick/Luxon, Sunspear). A solution to this issue would be to create an inherent benefit to working on these titles. For example, increase the capacity of Kurzick/Luxon faction by 1000 points per one rank achieved. For the Sunspear title, some sort of inherent benefit could be added, similar to the Lightbringer or any of EOTN reputation titles (I can't think of anything at the moment). This would reduce the "grind" and promote a more "skill>time" statement, without removing the incentive to work on optional titles.

Finally, I propose that the three norn blessings are removed from the game. Make them exclusive to their respective quests (Ursan/Volfen/Raven Aura). These skills are bad for the game because they do not promote strategy with skillbar creation; furthermore, these skills completely contradict the premise of guild wars. These skills also promote title discrimination. However, the benefits of these skills are that they transcend profession discrimination, and make the game more accessable. Moreover, these blessings are easily abused by simply equipping a weapon set such as .

These changes would restore some integrity back to the game, and would push it back towards the direction of "skill>time".

/Signed on all counts.

Titles were good when they were just vanity items, but in Nightfall and definitely EoTN they became way too important to gameplay in almost every respect. Titles and their associated ingame pluses completely ruined the idea that skill is better instead of time.

I like your idea of having a PvE attribute instead of grinding out titles. Seems like a good solution to reign in titles and make them back into vanity items.

/signed
I'm sick of grinding.. u cannot get a UW team without at least r9 Ursan..

Blablabla, the fact still remains you dont need titled skill tracks which unlock certain skills in order to complete PVE, and PVE titles still don't SKILL>over time. NEXT.............

/Signed.

Grinding. Is. Bad. Especially when you get benefits to your character's abilities.

/signed
but it helps Anet make money so it wont happen

don't see how the new PvE attribute would work for a good build. One purpose of PvE-only skills is for the skills to work well without the need of attribute points, which, in turn, helps people make more spread out builds, less attribute points needed, more to be put in other attributes.

I do, however, /sign for the removal of the Blessings. I will also /sign for making the PvE-only skills weaker, along with adding non-gaming benefits to the titles that have PvE skills, such as your suggestion for 1k addition to the bar for each rank for Luxon/Kurzick title.

And I will say, lots of grinding=bad bad bad. Some grinding=not terrible, but not good. No Grinding=great

Oh, gods, not again. Seriously, if you don't like the 'grind' - and absolutely none of it is necessary to progress through the game, do endgame content, or unlock all content, even in Factions (or do you consider taking bounties and killing stuff you encounter while doing quests, quests themselves, and perhaps a little Alliance Battle, in the case of Factions, to be grind?) - consider your $100-$200 money well spent (surely you've gotten far more than your money's worth by now?) and move on to another game.

After all, would you keep playing any other CRPG (Final Fantasy, for instance, to use the most obvious and well-well known example) after it's started to bore and frustrate you, especially if you've completed it multiple times already?

Although I see some MINOR problems with PvE skills, I don't think they need such a major revamping. Besides, if you look closely at the picture you posted, you see some interesting things. Skill>Time....

Skill as in the Warrior with Swordsmanship skill along with Strength, Water, Air, and Fire skills? And using a bow? Yep, lots of skill in that build, and use of it. Makes for a nice box cover art picture, but a bad demonstration of skill.

A separate attribute would still require grinding, unless you gave free points to it. If you gave free points to it, wouldn't that allow a level 1 character to have unbalanced skill options from the Luxon/Kurzick skills? And if it is a true attribute, how do you allow effective use of someone wanting to use Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support, Cry of Pain, and Ether Nightmare on a Mesmer, and still effectively use Migraine, Power Drain, and Power Return?

/unsigned as it isn't needed, and would create new headaches

/yawn

Not again. They already know about this. There's no need for more.

/signed
Grinding is for dummies.
Blablabla, the fact still remains that grinding in order to get your skill better is against skill > time policy.

Considering I can complete the game with no skills on my bar, my statement is still true, then again it becomes AI>time something Anet dropped the ball on to cater to the PVE'ers, when that ceases to exist you can come back and moan. Oh and it's not breaking any policy that I see, it's your choice to level a title track to use that skill if you want, and putting different skills on your bar that aren't title based still promotes skill over time, nice try. Pretty sure that picture is prophicies based too.

Erm..? QQ moar pl0x
Honestly, how many times do people have to hear this?!

YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE THEM!


/unsigned

You didn't have to use exploits, duping or the Sunspear skills that were nerfed aswell. Guess what? They got fixed / changed.

But other players less skilled than you can, and in doing so forgo to the time and effort put into acquiring actual skill. This puts players who don't use these skills as a disadvantage as well. You don't have to, but your handicapping yourself.

To those saying just don't use the skills, read the OP.

This is blatant bait and switch. I for one would like a refund for my purchase price seeing as this is FRAUD.

I paid for a game that required skill, not grind.

Comparing PvE skills to exploits and duping? You can do better. They'll fix the Norn Blessings the moment they release a new campaign/expansion forcing everyone to purchase that one for the new elite skills.

Time and effort to gain skill, or time and effort to grind titles. Either way, they've put time in.

Well, by the same logic of "Don't like it don't use it", exploits and duping don't affect me, because I don't PuG or trade.

Oh, and read the rest of the post. Don't forget that the skills: There's Nothing To Fear and Seed of Life, PvE-only skills buffed by the Sunspear title got nerfed.

Let's take a look at what A-net stated: "... skill, not hours played .... it will always be your skill that earns you victory or defeat".

First let's take a look at the first part, the skill, not hours played part.
Skill is something you get by playing. So the more you play the more you learn the game and the more your skill increases.
If you enter RA for the first time you probably have a hard time to get a winning streak. Except when you have a good team or inbalanced build.
Same for high level PvP/PvE, if you have not played an fair amount of time you can't compete in high end content, like setting fast times in the various Elite Areas in PvE or holding halls regular or play on the top of ladder for a long period.
So far for that part. Time played has always mattered.

Second, the 'skill earns' part.
It's still true.
Skilled players still make a difference even when not using PvE skills.
Take the UW event DVDF organised a while ago.
[agro] won that one easily in a time that none of the other teams got near.
That's what skilled players can do.
But now take a look at a guild like [agro]. Not to be offensive to them but several of my guildies have been with them and found them too demanding.
Again people need to invest a lot of time in the game to compete at their level.

With the PvE skills, specially the blessings, the time you need to invest has somewhat shifted from time in the area to time grinding for a certain title.
Nowadays it's possible for every player who wants to invest some time in getting a certain title to finish every elite area.
Something that in the past could only be done with resticted group builds or with guild teams and investing time in that area of the game.

I think that from the time perspective new players gained a lot from the blessings.
Instead of learning to play balanced, which takes a lot of time, they just need to invest to get one skill, Ursan Blessing and get a high Norn rank.

Now you have to consider something.
Before Kaiz posted their build only the best teams were able to finish DoA.
Their build made DoA accessible to PUGS.
And no doubt they invested a lot of time in making the team build.
The same can be said about other team builds, like the Steel Wall build for Deep.
It was not made in a single day, an enormous amount of time was invested in developing and 'perfecting' the build.
And more competent players played other builds or other ways to make the builds even more effective. But that also requires investment of time.

The only valid reason to remove the various PvE skills would be to make the Elite areas truely Elite again.
Where only the skilled people can succeed.
Not by grinding some title but by spending hours and hours in those areas.
It would lead to completely empty outposts again, just as before Ursan Blessing hit the big crowd.

I don't like the PvE skills and think they are required too much in certain areas.
But there has NEVER been a true skill > time argument, anyone playing on a competitive level in any game knows you need to invest time to develop skill.
And the less gifted you are on skill, the more time you need to invest to develop it.

If you don't see the difference between time invested (as in, learning how to play) and time invested (as in, grind so your skill will do moar domage!!) then /pity

jos you will get in bother for talking like that

/not signed

as much as i think something should or could be done for the people that don't want to run ursan, i dont think saying, "ok well the people that have grinded and want to run ursan can't anymore" is very fair either. cuz lets just say it, this thread is all about getting rid of ursan isen't it.

Haha, oh wow.

You've misunderstood what I said. Stop trolling. You fail at it. Obviously, you hardly read what I said, and interpreted it the wrong way. PvE is hardly difficult; this entire thread is not about the difficulty of PvE (because that seems to be a perception; I honestly don't know if the game as gotten easier or what, but this is another issue).

Fact: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Befriending_the_Luxons and http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Befriending_the_Kurzicks both require that you gain 10,000 faction to advance through the storyline. I never said this was difficult; in fact, I don't really believe these quests are a big deal, but the point still stands that these quests force a player to get 10,000 faction to advance in the storyline, whereas there are no quests of this sort in GWProphecies. The same applies to the quest http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/And_a...hall_Lead_Them.

Furthermore, I never said that titles = skill. Titles = time spent; experience. Moreover, of course PvE skills aren't required to complete PvE, but does that mean that people should, essentially be required to grind titles to complete certain areas of the game? No, it doesn't, but that clearly is not how it is. ArenaNet has assisted in creating requirements for playing PvE using those above quests. The majority of the community has created the rest by requiring players to have a high Norn rank. Removing PvE skills from a title track will completely stop this ridiculous requirement.

You've missed the entire point. The skillbar on the box is irrelevant.

No, it wouldn't require grinding. It would use the same 200 attributes that you now have, unless you consider getting to level 20 with 200 attributes grinding. So no, it would not give a level 1 overpowered skills; furthermore, there is a level 20 requirement for obtaining Kurzick/Luxon skills.

I'm just going to ignore bullshit like this because you are clearly too ignorant to understand that an argument like that avoids the problem, not fixes it. Also, this thread is not about the strength or weaknesses of PvE skills.

Fair enough, and I agree. It would be a gross exaggeration to say that a player who just picked up the game will be just as good as a player who has played since 2005. However, people don't always get better even if they play longer. There is a correlation between time invested and skill developed, of course, but the point is that these PvE skills have grinding requirements to be adequate, as shown by the majority of the community.

The functionality of the Norn blessings violates the original premise of the game. They give you a second skillbar, and they have essentially no penalty (ie. zealous and negative energy weapons do not give you negative energy degeneration). That is why they should be removed. They take no skill to use, just time invested.

With Norn Blessings, you don't really need to learn how to play the game; all you need is to be able to have the time required to max the title so that these skills can be "good". Furthermore, the PvE aspect only improves a players ability so much. You will have to PvP if you want to become better at the game, but this is another issue.

the pve skills not only break the game but turn all of us into clones. pretty much the only thing people run nowadays is hb monks and ub. pretty sad for a game with hundreds of skills and 10 professions to only run 2 builds and button mash to victory.

Like I said earlier, where did you get that pic from? is it dated from back in prophecies?

wonder when this will get locked.

This thread is not "about getting rid of ursan". This thread is mainly addressing the issues that PvE skills have created. And that is, title discrmination (which was created by the community), and title requirements (created by ArenaNet in a few quests). This thread is about removing PvE skills from their various title tracks and putting them into a new, PvE only attribute. This would remove any feel that anyone needs to grind a title to make the numbers on the skills bigger.

Yeah, it is from GWProphecies. If you can't see that the game has completely shifted away from it, then you're just ignorant of it.

I wonder when you will stop posting +1's in my thread. If you can't have a civilized discussion about this, then don't bother posting.

Allow me to make a clarification before I make my point. It seems to me that you're asking that titles have no effect on PvE skills. Rather, every PvE skill that belongs to a certain rank would require an investment of the 200 Attribute points that you are allotted up to a rank of 12.

I can't agree with that. I like the idea of separating the skills from the titles, but I don't like the idea of having to split up my 200 Attribute points even more to retain some of the functionality of some of my PvE skills while hampering the rest of my build. I could support this a little more if the # limit of PvE skills was removed, but it would still be hard to manage even then. The only solution that I can think of is some way of earning points that you can put towards PvE Attribute lines, but that would result in the same grinding issue, resulting in no solution.

The only suggestion I can support out of your whole opening statement is to remove the elite Norn blessings. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, and the topic of changing/retaining the blessings has been discussed a thousand times over in other threads, so I won't bother arguing it here.

Yes, that is the point. PvE skills would all be bunched up into one "PvE only Attribute", and your 200 attribute points would be used.

Fair enough, but it would promote player skill in being able to redistribute attributes in builds. If attribute spreading is as tight as you make it seem, maybe another solution could be added (Somehow gain more attribute points for PvE only?). This solution, however seems extremely impractical. Originally, I was going to propose that pve only skills are linked to existing attributes, but it would be difficult to put some of them in already existing lines.

I don't really expect the Norn blessings to be removed, honestly. They are still bad for the game because of the way they function; I'm not discussing if they are "overpowered/underpowered", I'm discussing the effects they have on the community, and the contradiction these skills have on the original premise of the game.

Just one attribute line for all PvE skills?

That sounds a little more fair and manageable.

/signed

Perhaps it could be argued that it takes some investment of time to get to level 20? 10,000 Faction and Rank 7 Sunspear are gates that provide a middleground of exploration in the campaign progression. Once you reach that point, you are encouraged to explore through completing quests. The alternative would be that you arrive in a town and either complete the main quest or the side quest. This integrates the side quests to the main quest, and I think it's a sound game design decision.

You should remember that, even if these most powerful builds and skills are nerfed to removed, the next strongest builds will just take their place. Player discrimination will always prevail. Remember Barrage/Pet? Note that not all monk bars are the same in terms of efficiency, especially in a team build. If you don't ping for the group to prove you're not running Flare on a Mo/E, why would you expect to be added? Skill does count for something, and believe it or not, it can be reflected in the skills that you choose to use. I wouldn't add a Hamstorm to my team, and I don't think that makes me elitist, that just makes me practical.

As far as grind goes, I think there is grey area here. The Sunspear skills were implemented well, because reaching the higher ranks of 10 is pretty easy (rank 7 is required for the quest). Faction skills weren't, because it takes 300 times more grinding time to reach 70% of the title compared to the Sunspear skills. GWEN PvE skills fall in the middle. Certain skills are stronger without progression either. Eternal Aura doesn't need much investment, because the main strength is already present at all levels, but Necrosis is much stronger at the top level. Pain Inverter is pretty much as effective at rank 3 as it is at rank 10, which is nice, because it's kickass against ele mobs that can wipe your party with AoE, mobs with party wiping power you'd never see in PvP.

Less grind would be nice, but for many skills, they are just as potent at lower ranks than at higher ranks. Now that PvP nerfs no longer affect PvE, perhaps a better way to look at it is that PvE skills are simply a bonus tool for those tackling Hard Mode, Vanquishing, and max titles. You don't really need them to complete the main quests on Normal Mode. As far as numerical potentcy, all PvE skills are at 50% at rank one, and to get to ~85%, only requires a third of the grind as 100%.

Sure, it does take a few hours to get to level 20. Obtaining 10,000 faction or rank 7 sunspear is hardly difficult, however. The point still stands that these are obstacles that encourage "grinding", which is not what the original premise of the game stood for. Those quests are just examples of the contradiction, and I am not saying that they need to be changed because it isn't much of a problem to meet these requirements by simply playing through the game and completing quests. It is also worth noting that the Sunspear rank only applies to native Elonian characters.



While it is true that profession discrimination will occur, at least it displays a higher level of skill than any rank 10 ursan will ever have. Further, this is about title discrimination; profession discrimination can be a bit more understandable depending on what the team wants to do. However, profession discrmination in PvE is essentially based on ignorance and stupidity, and while it may be true that some classes are able to "get the job done" better than others, bars without ursan still take more skill than bars with ursan. Furthermore, the functionality of the Norn blessings is the problem, not if they are overpowered. The fact that they essentially provide a second skillbar with virtually no penalty is bad for the game because it does not promote "skill>time", and that it can be easily abused or exploited with a high energy weapon set. Also, the terrible bar on the box is really irrelevant to this issue.

That is true that some pve-only skills do not require a large investment, but that seems to avoid the issue of pve-only skills being tied to titles instead of one pve-only attribute (or something similar). The title grind would still be there, and the incentive may have been lessened, but it is also true that titles used to be completely optional.

I too would enjoy less grind to get the most out of my PvE skills, and your idea helps those who haven't grind for them much, but there is a serious downside.

Plenty of folks have already spent plenty of time on their titles to gain full power PvE skills. If their current builds were "nerfed" by requiring a dilution of attribute point investment across the board, they would be upset. Note that these people who did grind, did so willingly.

Even if you added an extra clause to your proposal where those with titles needed to invest less points for the PvE attribute line, well, your build is still strongest with all the titles max because the points can be placed elsewhere.

The next best solution would be to scale the power of all PvE skills to a lower rank that isn't max, like, getting rank 5 would let you use all the skills of a track at full power. That way, folks with maxed titles wouldn't really lose anything in the process, and more people could enjoy PvE skills with a greatly reduced time investment, but not for free. This is an idea I've pushed since the beginning of PvE skills.

For the record, I have norn maxed, and rank 9 Asura; I plan on maxing the titles regardless of the effectiveness of PvE only skills. I'm sure that people would still max the titles if they didn't have skills attached to them; after all, they do have inherent benefits as well.

Currently, this is true. Your skills are stronger because they are linked to a [maxed] title. But that is the entire problem in the first place.

Possibly, but allowing max PvE rank skills even at a non max rank still contradicts the original notion that "skill>time", and still does not completely solve the problem of title discrimination. This would only lessen the impact of title discrimination.

Why should people be required to work on a title to have a better skill in the first place in a game that promoted player skill?

Unfortunately, It's not going to happen, this is 2008 not 2005, what worked then, won't work now. New players are coming in, and these new players don't want to bother learning 3 campaign's worth of skills. Customized skill bars are not only easier to use but also reduce the time spent putting together a bar that will probably end up getting them killed.

/signed, at least for the changing the grinding stuff part. I dunno if they should remove the ursan/volfen/raven because they are fun to use in different situations. I DO NOT want GW or GW2 to end up anything like WoW (which is an absolutely horrible game). Anet needs to focus much more on the skill aspect that drew players to this game in the early days. I know that the skill factor was one of the reasons i bought the game, and im sure many people would agree. PvE should not be about grinding (which is why i am against a high lvl cap in GW2), it should be as much about skill as PvP.

/signed for the love of everything that is holy.

Oh, and titles CAN work. Lightbringer can deal +5% * rank to some monsters and give damage reduction, Norn can give +health and so so on. Just in the areas it mentions in the title description.

Customized by whom? Oh, by A.Net. If people fail in pve with their builds, they have pvx. We didn't have pvx in 2005/6. And we still managed to make builds. They have everything EASIER thanks to wikis and pvx. Maybe you want to hold their hands until they get bored with game, eh?

Sure new players come. But older players will, and that's for sure, if nothing will change, NOT build gw2. Because they will have GW to grind. GW2 would be just some new areas, more skills (not used probably, because there will be like 5-10 overpowered that everyone will use) and more monsters to kill (stupid as usual).

I really can't see people's problem with PvE skills. THEY'RE OPTIONAL!

If you don't like them, don't use them!

We all managed perfectly well before they were introduced. I don't use any except for the Sunspear Rebirth Signet on my non Monk characters.

I'll /sign this, it keeps the point of PvE skills (I.E making the game easier) without the grinding part.

You know where you can put this DLDU philosophy? Go to Temple of Ages. See something strange? Everyone wants at least r8. Then go to Domain of Anguish. Even stupider - everyone wants at least r9 Ursan and r7 lightbringer, usually only r10/r8. They-are-not-optional if you want to join Pugs.