An Open Letter to ANet - Part 2

While I think I understand you, let's get one thing straight.

For slightly under 100 Euros I can get all the chapters and the EotN expansion and did not even search for heavy discounts. Just picked one of the online stores I know.
I've played a lot of games besides GW and there are only a very few that cought my attention that long.
Starcraft, C&C, Half Life.
Just considering the amount of content that can be experienced and the fact that you can start it over again with a new profession (and a lot to learn) gives very good value for money.

Two months of WoW is about 30 Euro, so you can play WoW for about half a year for the price of all GW (except BMP).

How long does it take to do everything you can in the game?
Probably far longer then that 6 months.
With the help of a good guild you can probably speed things but you would still need to invest a lot of time.

Could you please explain what made the game so bad in your perspective that investing some money and time in the game is a complete waste (besides that gaming can be considered a waste of money and time), Cacheelma?

Because in GW you can do everything in 1-2 months. Every dungeon, mission and ,,elite'' area.

ANETS BIGGEST FAILURE: Changing Viper's Defense from a stance with a conditional effect, to a spell with that effect instantly.

"Dont wand the Onis"

How I will miss that one....


For me, the best time in GW was during the beginning of 2007, when I could find a 9-Man PuG for Deep in two minutes.

I have not had a good Deep group since before Ursan went live.


/cry

WTS r9 sould reaping +10 vs demons +1 blood

It doesn't turn easy, you become better. All of these changes that ANet has made have made the game easier.

If you like, I can give you my view?

As I've already mentioned before, GW is great for your buck. You could probably get all four campaigns (GWEN included) for 50$-60$ around here, and that is a LOT of game. It's just what ANet's done to the depth of it that's bummed me out.

I would never consider my time in GW a "waste", I'm just massively concerned with the directions it's taken. It's gone from being a very unique online RPG to a bit more on the generic side of your typical MMO, and I hope that they don't go this route with GW2.

Couldnt agree more with you on this point. By listening to ppl such as Avarre and them about things like removing refund points, allowing the auto creation of PvP chars, Took the actually learning of the skills and game right away from players. Then you had the crying and whining for nerfs instead of letting ppl actually have to learn to deal with them. SO you guys asked for the crow now you have to eat it. Though I do find it quite funny that things just like consumables have been in game since day one and for a fact I know alot have used them and now really only started to cry about them is quite funny.

Lets see those claims that there wasnt anything close. Better yet Ill tell you so you dont make an ass outa yourselfs. Shrine bonuses worked just like consumables.

Hell why your at it lets remove the bonuses to from killing bosses.

Yes im back.

maybe but it's going far deeper then QQ about ursan and pve skills.
Elite areas like DoA that DON'T promote skill but stupid tank/nukers/healers build , hell tank/nukers/healers is exact build that is ATROCITY to guildwars unique and original concept. So it's pretty clear that Anet wanted to get rid of it with giving first sunspears pve skills: like SY or TNTF bringing huge damage reduction from owerpowered mobs give far better chance to bring more proffesion diversity into teams. But seeing it's not working that decided to replace elitist atrocity of tank/nukers/healers with egalitarian atrocity of ursanas.

Playing as the holy trinity was popular not because it was the best but because it was easy. This was balanced by the fact that it was slow as hell and risky as shit.

The best way through the areas was knowing your stuff, setting up good builds, and playing well - i.e. by being a good player.

So yes, you could go through areas in this easy-to-use setup the "holy trinity". But it was all balanced out by the consequences.

You and Malice are both idiots.

Woah!

I just got back to playing guildwars after a very long break and alot has changed for the better or worse of the game i wont know cause my first day back i got banned for character name violation. So if someone could please pm me an update of the last 6-8 months it would be appreciated.

Also i agree with your letter 100% the game has been in decline for along time 90% of my alliance has left for bigger and better games now because of the changes.(that i dont know about yet)

Why because the lot got what they asked for and now are pissing and moaning about it. Those are the true idiots. Im not the one complaining about the recent changes. As a matter of fact I feel its putting the skill>time back into the game. Anet just needs to go much farther with it.

No, a new player cannot!
At least not with access to very experienced players who are willing to help.


Fair point, understand that.
The 'depth' is something that is kinda mixed.
The depth is still there, what A-net did was adding some 'tools' that made it easier to conquer that depth.
The reason? Probably keeping a somewhat even playingfield for HoM achievements.

I share your concern but also see other things.
Players will resort to the most effective way to get something done.
After the SF change AC was spammed by requests for the perma-sin build.
Why? Because it's efficient and most probably easier to play then the terra tank. Dunno why someone needs all that cash or ecto (except for FoW armor) but that's something else.

The same is true about the PvE skills, combined with consumables.
They provide a tool which is easy to use for players who are not as experienced.

Take for example the very fast times [agro] set in the elite areas.
They don't use Ursan for it. Did they set their record Deep time with Ursan? Don't think so. UW without PvE skills in extremely fast time in the event by DVDF? Doubt Ursan teams can do it that fast.

For the experienced players skills like UB don't really matter.
I see far more benefit from consumables than 'overpowered' PvE skills.
Where UB does matter is team organisation. That's a PUG problem, not the problem of a group of experienced players.

The only warning sign here is that A-net should not make such shortcuts in GW2.
I'm not sure they will, doubt it tbh.

You all should be fortunate the "majority" are in game playing because they don't care/don't know etc... and might be actually enjoying the game. If Anet does anything radical and causes the "majority" to suddenly take notice and care then you've got yourself a big problem. Try not to stir the pot so much eh? It might spill over.

Let's hope not.

All in all, the PvE skills make very little sense. If ANet wanted more people to see the elite areas, then they should've eased up on the difficulty in normal mode. Making hard mode more accessible was just the silly way to go.

If they were largely included to help increase the speed of acquiring titles, then lower the requirements of them. Don't dumb down the entire game for the sake of the HoM.

You (and a few others) are completely missing what some people are trying to say. The great games of all time are easy to learn but difficult to master. That is what Guild Wars USED to be. Now it is more difficult to learn and easy to master. The DEPTH of the game is gone.

Anet did not have to change their entire game vision in order to keep "the majority". Some people are making it seem like Anet had to change everything in order to keep players, even though they gained and kept a ton of players before the changes were made.

skill>time was gone after factions. And btw only the cover of proph advertised skill>time.

Exactly!!! They didn't have to change their entire game and they still don't. Things are fine as it is. Why did you even bother quoting me? As it stands RIGHT NOW, present day the majority are where? and doing what? Game is fine. Accept the changes Anet has made and stop stirring the pot. Kthxbye.

P.S. The name is byteme! not bytime. If you gonna quote me at least get my name right. =)

Name a few games that fit that. Especially Action RPGs!

You aren't responding to the problem. You are basically saying "things are fine because people are playing the game". That doesn't address the problem, that a lot of people were fine with the game previously and still would have been fine with it now if it were still that way.

There really isnt under that. I bet though hes still confused about his first move in Othello

Super Mario Bros. Easy to learn. 2 buttons. 2D world. Hard to master. (I saw a video of some guy finish the game in 11 minutes. 0 deaths 99 lives and the entire run was flawless. Hard to explain but you've got to see it. Almost bot like. Spends majority of his time in the air hopping from 1 monster to the next. I was like, "OMFG! Haxzorz!")

First let's take a look at the PvE skills themself.
From my perspective, those were introduced because certain skills/professions were overpowered in PvP and needed a change.
But because of the way PvE works it also had a huge influence there.
That's the 'old' PvE skills, introduced about a year ago in NF and Factions.

Then there is the new set, the EotN.
That one can be split in roughly 3 sets.
First of all the vanguard set, making it easier to fight charr.
HM in a 4 man area was very restricted in builds, when I teamed up with 3 guildies for that we had to work out which build works best. Loading Sabway was much easier

Second there is the non-blessing skills.
A skill like PI is good, but really shines on foes who do AoE damage. If not it's just empathy.
A skill like Technobabble is good, 6 seconds AoE daze. But the energy requirement is high.
Finish Him/You move are very good skills when used right. Still they are not on my bar that often.
The overpowered skills in this range are the ones that shine in the hands of the experienced player and are ok for the new player.

Last there are the blessings.
Only one blessing seems to cause problems, Ursan.
The rest did not hit mainstream.

I can think of only one reason why A-net introduced the skills.
Profession discrimination. No problem when you have access to friends/guild, huge problem when you don't.
To make sure the skills would solve this it had to be on par with very strong builds. Still, UB alone is meh. The more human players you have the better.
And even then it's not that good. Put up some consumables and you know the difference.

It's not in the best interest of A-net to lower the title requirements.
Easy, they need people to be involved for at least another year.
And they think grind is a solution for that. Because it works in other games.

The PvE skills except the blessings did not dumb down the game.
The thing that does is consumables.
And the main thing that the blessings took away was team building.
Now you need only two builds and one of them is a single skill.
What it gave back is a good reason to play with humans again.

Let me explain that last one for a moment.
Before UB the most optimal team was not 8 humans, it was 2 humans and 6 heroes.
Not because heroes are better but because teaming up with 8 humans takes a lot more time and you have more risk of d/c or lag.
It's also easier to combine builds, with humans they might not have unlocked the required skills. If a hero lacks a certain skill, just have the other player load that hero...
Only situations that are too complex for heroes to handle would benefit from more human players.
Or highly organized teams. Which are not available for the average player.

I'm not sure why A-net introduced the consumables.
I can think of several reasons but they don't make a good picture.

From my point of view if you want to look at the dumbing down of the game the first thing to look at is consumables.
Take away those and watch unskilled teams fall apart even if they use PvE skills and blessings.

This is just another road block on the long list of road blocks in the last 36-37 months. We've been told to adapt and accept nerfs and buffs time and time again. Have we now reached a breaking point in the community where adapting is no longer an acceptable solution? Don't get me wrong. I'm completely partial on the issues of today. For I quite enjoy my time in game and have learned to accept what's been given to me. I've grown content I suppose. This was not the case in the early goings however but times have changed and perhaps I have changed as well.

-In the early going there was a heated debate about the favor system and the limited access of UW/FoW. This lasted a very long time. The Ursan debates we have going nowadays fails in comparison to this subject. We the community demanded more access.

-Anet removed the favor system and put in a clause. We had to max titles to get in.

-There was a huge uproar in the forums. People blasted Anet for changing the favor system to the way it is. The concerns were largely centered around 2 things. 1)We will eventually run out of titles 2)Casual players don't grind

-Anet introduces more titles to fuel accessibility for FoW/UW. Many of these new titles can unfortunately be bought. However there were a few that required "grind". LB/SS/EotN Reps/Faction Allegiance

-We hate grind. Skill>Time we say. I believe this is why PvE only skills were introduced. To give justification for the many to grind for LB/SS/EotN/Faction Allegiance because we don't believe in Time>Skill. If these titles came alone with no incentives, we the people who prefer skill>time would choose not to take on such a task.

-Ironically some of the most game breaking and imbalanced skills come from these "grindable titles". They are set this way to encourage title farming.

-Anet underestimated the population. skill>time? We had more time then they originally thought. Last double SS/LB weekend we had the favor system timer reset because Anet underestimated the sheer volume of people out there willing to grind for their respective titles.

This brings us to today. If you trace everything backwards. We kinda asked for it.

You can pretty much throw skill>time out the window. As history has shown in the past 3 years. The majority of players are bad at the game. Many of them have time to spend. We ourselves put us into a position of time>skill. Anet saw this trend a long time ago I believe. Asking Anet to keep on the original path of skill>time is futile. The population as a whole has aged. We have shown what we want.

What's really funny is. WE WENT THROUGH ALLLLLLL THIS TROUBLE JUST BECAUSE WE WANTED MORE FAVOR. Anet screwed up on that part.

'No other games on the market in this genre are challenging and deep, why should Guild Wars be?'

This is a pretty flimsy argument, even you ought to be able to see that.

Bullshit. Casual players want epic l33tn355; skill never has and never will mean anything to them. What has kept the average GW moron playing? Farming. Item collection. Title collection. Epeen.

People don't want Chess, they want Barbies. Talk all you want about good game design, but don't claim you can make money with it. The good games that make money do so *despite* the fact that they are good games, not *because* they are good games. That is, they have one system that makes it a good game that draws serious players, and then another dumbed-down system designed for the casual player.

@ byteme: Interesting stuff there...

This leads me once again to a bad implementation of a good idea.
People wanted to get in UW and FOW because it's not fun to stand aside for days waiting to get favor back. It's a reasonable request.

What does Anet do? They listen to the request but we get something in return that isn't exactly what 'we' had in mind. Next thing you know, people are blaming other people saying: 'deal with it, you asked for it'. Well uh, I didn't asked for that, I just wanted that people from different continents (who ascended) to be able to play the elite areas too.

And now a lot of the hot issues seem to be our own fault? Let the devs come in here and explain some of their views and why they did certain things. But we won't see any of them as they're working on the next money cow. And a lot of us will suck that cow dry, and after that...we will suck some more even if the milk gets soar.

Thank you. Just my attempt to paint a different picture or my POV on the subject at hand.

OP was excellent.

Sadly i'm sure that Anet know exactly what they are doing.

Don't expect any skill > time promises for GW2.

/Signed

HA HA HA HA HA

Are you really that gullible to believe that? Give me one reason towards your supporting this argument that isnt complete bullshit.

I can name hundreds of games that are easy to learn and difficult to master. If you haven't played any than you haven't played any good games.

We did? I sure as hell didn't. The population has shown that they will buy a game with a greater vision as long as they have some time>skill thrown to make them happy. They BOUGHT the game that had skill>time marked all over the box (and advertisements).

Anet did not have to change their entire game to appease that population. They simply had to sprinkle just enough time>skill in for those players for each new expansion. Meanwhile they keep skill>time for the people who bought the game for the greater vision.

Easy to learn tough to master is a way of describing depth. By all the additions over the years and the splitting of PvE and PvP, Guild Wars has become tough to learn. By adding overpowered crap and removing challenge, the game has become easy to master. Thus, Guild Wars has lost almost all of its depth.

UB, infact all PVE EotN skills, should have been kept there. But this is only my opinion and the majority might think otherwise.

On the plus side for many average/below average gamers, it's given them opportunities to play in groups that complete elite areas, that they hadn't had before. Not everyone has been around for 3 years and can reel off from their head which skill is suitable for every area, or have the time to research when they might just want to play. This might just be the view from another side - before any counters come in.

The majority of the PvP community has been complaining about issues such as grind being added (until the J-menu, and even after that regarding skill unlocks), excessive skills/classes, and general messing with gameplay, as well as a lack of CR involvement for the past two to three years.

At what point do you say that this isn't the minority any more? Absolutely none of the issues in the game today are new, you can trace all of them back to Factions and the first additions of new content. Saying 'oh, it's just the minority view' is somewhat closeminded when over such a long period a huge number of players who take an active interest in the game have been voicing views. The casual player who just picked up the game isn't going to have a view - their vote is abstained, they do not count towards the total, because they don't play the game at a level at which they can make judgments for the most part.

Some problems were solved, and on the other hand, a whole bunch more were added. My question is why is ANet catering to the common denominator rather than its uniqueness, when it was clear the game would surivive and succeed either way? Why move towards mediocrity? New players join either way - most of the PvE changes are for the existing PvE crowd, an attempt to convince them to stay in the game and with the franchise.

And you didn´t list a few, because...?

Every FPS made, is easy to learn but difficult to master.

Take a look at Counter-strike for example. 1.6 is a very easy game to play, as it's pretty straight forward in terms of mechanics. Aim and shoot, throw in some movement to avoid being shot, and you are able to play reasonable. But join a Public server these days and more than likely there will be several players who will wipe the floor with you, regardless of your play style. And you can't just jump in and play like that either, it takes a long time to get really GOOD at FPS games.

Others will argue, as it IS pretty straight forward, but FPS games are a good example of games that can be quite hard to master.

What he said.

If by "a new player" you mean "a retard player" then you're probably right.

Sadly, none of my friends are stupid enough for me to fool them.

I completed Prophecies in a month. I was also new back then too.

I completed Factions in 2 weeks...sans grind content.

Nightfall took me 3 weeks.

Need I go on? The reason that some people (like you) still playing for a long time because you like to repeat old content over and over and you also grind for (pointless, most of them at least) titles. Now, if my friends want to play a game with "grind content", I'd rather recommend them to play a game that actually "REWARD" grinding in a very good way. This is just one of so many reasons, by the way. Feel free to re-read Avarre post for more reasons.

If one campaign of GW is the same price as one month of WoW, I'd rather tell them to try WoW. Why? Because WoW's content can last them more than a month. Even if my friends can't afford the monthly-fee, they won't have fun playing a "free" bad game anyway.

I am asking for RPGs, because they are in most cases much different from other genres. Super Mario Bros. has two buttons, most FPS games have 8 weapons. RPGs have like 100+ different skills and several attributes, which all play a role in how you are able to finish the game.

This is about PvE, not PvP!

By giving the new players skills to use that makes them on par with those of us who have been playing 37 months. The skills give them what we have in player skill they have in actual skills to use.

Same as consumables. We veterans dont need them at all to get through any content unless you do, I dont, which allows the new players to play at the same level we do.

It really is that simple. Ofcourse since you dont want to see it you're gonna call BS on it anyways.

Do you even understand what you're posting? Grinding to get PvE skills or consumables in order to replace player skill is exactly what time > skill means.

Because there is no point. There are plenty. My point was that Guild Wars could easily be one of those games, but now it isn't.

This is hilarious. In the face of good arguments you have went from "the majority says the changes are good" to now saying "no RPG is easy to learn and tough to master, and since Guild Wars is an RPG it isn't either!" You are basically admitting that the depth of the game has went downhill, exactly as Avarre originally stated.

Actually, I would say it is about both. Both sides of the game have lost so much depth that it is beyond belief.

Apparently you dont know anything about the game. Since you dont have to grind to get any of those skills or even consumables. Just playing through GW:EN will get you enough points to use them. But nice try. Unless you got some other excuse.