An Alternative Open Letter to ANet

You improve a game by telling the developers where they're going wrong, not patting them on the back.

I wish more people understood this.

Very good letter! I agree that GW has delivered what we paid for and much more besides.
I for one, has as high hopes and is as exited about GWII as you are!

I do however think you are misreading Avarre's letter and the answers of other users who has posted in support of his view points.
What we are frustrated about, is the fact that it seems A-net is ruining their own game with updates that in our opinion make the game worse, not better.

This is a good summary of how I see it. Although I agree with much in Avarre's original post, it "felt" somehow like it was missing a larger point. After years of playing, I have also started to play less and less. Is some of that due to changes made to PVE - the fact that some skills are overpowered making much of the game less of a challenge? Sure. Is a lot of that due to the fact that I have just played GW from nearly every angle, and really squeezed the old orange for every last bit of juice it has to offer? If I'm honest with myself, that is really the greater reason.

The other problem I have with Avarre's post is that it puts too much blame at the feet of Anet. So many of the changes Anet made are based on player feedback from Guru and other sites. Anet often will change a game dynamic based on what the majority of posters seem to want. The basic issue is that people are normally not motivated to post their support the status quo, so it always seems like whatever was recently changed is unpopular.

Example:

Anet balances some heavily used PVP skill. This skill is also used in PVE as a cornerstone for some farming build. Some players think this is fine. PVE should share balances and people should adjust. Other players are upset their favorite build will have to be replaced or reworked. The upset players light up the forums. Some say they will stop playing if this isn't addressed. The game just isn't what it used to be. The non-upset players post a few counter examples. Anet can easily get the impression most players are upset, when in reality, most of the people posting are the ones who are upset - subtle, but huge difference.

So then Anet gets the idea that what players really want is a separation of PVE versus PVP skills. They implement that change. The previously upset are now satisfied and generally stop posting. A whole new set of players are upset and begin posting. Now it appears as if PVP/PVE separation is upsetting the majority of the community. Many of these angry posters say they will stop playing (or have already) if this isn't addressed. The game just isn't what it used to be.

There is almost no way for Anet to win. It is almost impossible to determine what players really want because supporters of a change are always much less motivated to post than the detractors.

Take the criticism with a major grain of salt. Do what you think is right. Thanks for making a great game.

Thanks Sir. And I must say i'm in agreement with you in regards to the frustrations, I just want people to see from another perspective that ANet continue to provide so much for us, and if we don't have our wishes granted then we shouldn't be too disgruntled. I for one, avidly believe and support most of what Avarre wrote about.

Edit - "Thanks for clearing up the nonsensical posts saying I should 'seek help'."

First off, I'm quoting you not as a troller but with my own opinion.

I too have enjoyed many hours of fun gameplay since buying Prophecies a few years ago. I too don't expect updates every week, and enjoy not paying a subscription fee.

However, the problem is most updates (non bug fixes etc) that have occurred recently have made the game less enjoyable to me for a number of reasons. I will not outline these here. It is sickening to think the developers are spending their time making a game less fun when they could be spending that time making it more fun. Obviously there are other players to take into account, but I believe that making it fun for casual players and experienced players is not mutually exclusive.

/notsigned
Anet go read the other thread and take heed.

Y'know, in a way Anet's been giving Guild Wars a "NGE" treatment for sometime. Granted it's a small dose at a time but it does add up after awhile. Most of the long term players, both current and retried have noticed this.

Imo, Avarre's thread is like a friendly tap on Anet's shoulder. Not to say "stop what you're doing" but "think about what you're doing".

The last thing we all want is a bad ending to a great game, right?

Good letter and discussion yet again, I agree with the letter and feel that there are so many good points made in both threads of a small minority of players it still helps to provide feedback to the developers.

However, Anet are going to care what happens here, because they still need the small minority of people as well as the vast majority who do not 'care' to post that they love this game.

I was at an event and NC Soft were present, Guild Wars was the best selling item at the stand, people were buying more campaigns for extra accounts or to share with friends. A good game would not do this when GW2 is announced, this shows that whatever is being done is the best currently for the health of GW currently. Yes there are issues, but I doubt Anet would employ developers who did not care about their unique and innovative game called Guild Wars.

Working in a similar field, I am 100% positive that they will do the best for Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 and its community, it may not make everyone happy all the time but it will be fun, if you choose to be there for the ride. I am enjoying the game much more now in the 3 years then ever before. I can choose to be bogged down with what I do not like, but the truth is that this is an awesome game with formiddable value.

Anet will do their best especially when all concered here are part of the marketing arm to promote GW2 when it comes out. I know I will and I know nothing of what will really be GW2 (nor many of us) but that will be the wonder of starting Guild Wars World all over again. I have concerns but time will tell, but for sure I will be there and so many others too, the silent majority, the vocal minority, the casuals, the hardcore and those who simply love Guild Wars.

Count me in A-net, there are some who trust you will do what is best.

Silver

Thanks for the more positive side of this issue!

I think polls would be very helpful for ANet to, perhaps, get a clear read on its user base and to see where they ought to expend time and energy to develop/improve their product.

I'm not a veteran of the game. I came to it late - with Nightfall. So, I started with Heroes and (as I understand it) skills that were already imba. But, I went backwards, buying Factions, then Prophecies, and I began to get it. With each release, the game changed, and as new skills were added, things got out-of-whack. New skills made older campaigns too easy. Heroes made life simpler, and "killed" grouping. On the skills side, I saw this myself as EotN came out. I also saw a new, or clearer, direction GW was going in and didn't really like it: rank instead of attributes. Loss of professions, loss of uniqueness. To the point where, when I read Avarre's (and others) posts in other threads, I began to agree with them. While I love having heroes, maybe the game would have been better without them? I don't know. Certainly, it would be different. PvE skills? Could do without them. (Often do.) Consumables? Meh. Yeah, they help - but are they a necessity? Well, they are when the PvE game is designed with them in mind. (Though, still not really necessary - just more convenient.)

But, back on track with your OP:

I love the fact that I can play, and experiment, for free!
I love the look of the game, and the diversity of the skills. (The two major reasons I have stayed with GW!)
I love the unique professions (and would like to see more of that, and to preserve what it is that makes each unique!)
I appreciate that GW has given me more than my money's worth.
I want to like GW2 - but, honestly, given the direction GW1 is currently going, it is questionable. I may be the minority, and completely own that.

Thank you for creating the game you did! And here's to your next endeavor!

Dear Arena Net,

I just want to say that Guild Wars is a wonderful experience for me and it will continue to be a game that I'll log on to play even when everyone has gone on to playing Guild Wars II, I am hoping Arena Net will introduce cross-games quests and missions, ie quests involving playing in Guild Wars I and finishing it in Guild Wars II or vice versa. one can hope...

I also hope that I can have both games Guild Wars I and II installed on my computer lol and not have to further upgrade it.

Most importantly please stay free to play forever! And I like to thank Arena Net for exactly that. I also like to say that the concept artists has done a most wonderful job of creating the characters, the scenery, the houses, well, for creating a virtual world that I actually want to be part of, just don't feel like playing any game that looks ugly.

Maybe I am not sensitive to the game surrounding, to the updates and etc, but let see, Ok, I think I was here looking for a price check .... and well anyway the point is I don't lurk here like I am doing now, and playing Guild Wars without coming here is a bliss, there's no problem and its a great game. You know your game is updated when the log in screen tells you there's been an update, and if you like to know more, you visit the official webpage. No matter how skills have been nerf I use it as I have use it. In fact I still do the same thing, the only different is now I know there's a lot of complaints going on here about little things that don't even matter on the whole scale of things which is: Guild Wars is a wonderful game experience, no matter how many complains is out here, it will be the most wonderful game to me.

So Thank you for a wonderful game! Keep up the good work! Don't let the minor complains drag you down!

Dear ANET,

GW was a wonderful game.

I have no idea what happened, but you managed to turn it into a steaming pile of manure.

Whatever GW made great, you did not get it and improved it to hell.

Accidental successes are usually hard to re-create.

Hm yes.

That Developers often do not get why people like their games is not a new phenomenon. The Panzer General Series by SSI for example. The first part of the series was and still is GREAT. I still play the Windows version nowadays.

Then they added sequels and suddenly the game become something totally different and rather crappy, despite having more and more features.

GW suffers from this kind of devolution, too. GW2? Hopefully not...

It's a game, you buy it and you are free to play it as you wish. Who are you to say who is more devoted. I don't have to know every little synergy of the game to have fun. To imply that those people know what best for everyone else is just plain arrogant.

I think Anet has came along way in improving GW. Their biggest mistakes was not separating PVP and PVE right from the start. They probably should have created a better AI instead of giving them insanely powered skills and attributes, but I think they realize that now. Its too late to change that in GW1, but I bet GW2 will fix all the shortcomings fron GW1. I believe that they did make the right choices when they gave us PVE skills, and they need to be overpowered. The also gave us consumables which I am also grateful for. And heroes are the best thing since sliced bread. I really love to customize my heroes, work to give them better skills, armor, weapons etc.
The things that upset me the most was the fact that my builds were always being rendered useless or junk because of PVP balance, and the fact that it took them 3 years to finally seperate PVP from PVE. I hated the Loot Scaling, Farmming Code etc. But the bottom line is: they eventually did listen and gave us most of the things we asked for like: Extra Storage, Heroes, Powerful skills consumables etc.
With a game like GW, it would have been much easier and better for them had they have had the foresight to separate PVP and PVE in the first place, it would have kept more people happy. With the way it was originally set up, it was impossible to achieve any sort of balance because AI is predictable to a degree and real people are usually not, so skills that worked perfectly in PVP sucked in PVE and skills that worked great in PVE were not balanced for PVP.
Had they separated those in the beginning, there would not have had to be quite as many skill adjustments and perhaps only an occasional tweek to PVE skills here and there.
Short of totally redesigning the game, I think GW1 in its current form is a great game that should make as many people as happy as possible. That is why Anet changed their original direction and vision, to appeal to a greater audience, and correct the mistakes they made with the original concept, and I think they have accomplished that reasonably well.
Whatever mistakes were made in GW1, I am sure they won't repeat them in GW2, and it sounds like they are on the right track in keeping PVP and PVE separated.

When changes are made there always will be pro's and con's, players who like it or don't like it. When a game grows older a group of hardcore players arises with all kinds of sugestions to make the game harder. This happens in almost every online game.
I think its good that the devs recognize that online games cant exist only for a group of die-hards, and that causual players are a very important part of the playerbase.

The steps taken by separating PvP and PvE skills are mainly judged by the die-hards, the hardcore players. Anet shows courage to, in this stage of the game, make PvE more interesting for causual players, rather than making it harder and harder, as 'nature' demands. The message is clear: If you played so long, relax and enjoy what's left, and wait for GW2. Meanwhile give others a chance to get something more out of the game. A good initiative!

Agreed with the OP. Hopefully Anet will recognize the inherent contradictions in their claims wrt "Ursan makes pugging impossible" and "PermSF farming makes everything less valuable".

Please limit nerfs to PvP, Anet. Forum-whining not withstanding, it doesn't matter in PvE.

Excellent analogy that captures exactly how even some of us old-timers view the changes ANet implemented. When I bought this game over 3 years ago, my intention was to play it for a few months and move on. The game itself sustained my interest during those early days, but it was the community of friends I met along the way that maintained it. So much so that I ended up purchasing all additional chapters. I got my money's worth from all of them, and look forward to GW2. In the meantime, I'm enjoying AoC with a few friends I met in GW.

And um, why is that?

to the OP: QFT

i love everything anet has done and stand by every decision they have made. even the ones i didnt like i could see why they were done.

im glad they dont listen to any of the whining QQ that this forum is made of. I only registered on this forum for fear that the vocal majority would screw up what the playing majority enjoy, want, or need. luckily i dont need to bother because they ignore you all. HAHAHA

Because the detractors use flawed reasoning and emotive rhetoric instead of sound facts to make their cases.

Take [[Shadow Form] UW farming: The only people HURT by that are the power traders who have been hoarding ectos as a form of currency. That is a risk you take when you get into commodities training. The most ironic part is it's not even the farmers causing the rapid drop in price. It's the hoarders who buy into the "OMG THE ECONOMY IS DIEING!11!1" panic and dump their stores. The argument that those who already have FoW armor and Chaos gloves being hurt is specious. Those players are not effected, positively or negatively, by another character getting them.

Non-ecto items will only be affected in the high-end, in that they will cost MORE due to the inflation. While this gives the original impression of raising the cost for the "casual" players for fancy gear, it ignores the fact that most "casual" players will NEVER make a super-100k transaction in their gaming careers. And, if they SHOULD decide they want to participate in that market, they have just as much accessibility to it as anyone else.

See, the major flaw in using ectos as currency is *unlimited supply*. There is not a set number of ectos in the world. You can always get more. You can nerf the farms, but they will still drop during clears. You can nerf the drop rate, but they'll just keep dropping anyway. There is no maximum number of ectos in circulation, so there is infinite inflation potential. That's a poor quality in a commodity.


And the [[Ursan Blessing] hate is similarly BS. The arguments for nerfing it fall into three main themes.

1. "Everyone else is doing the missions so easily that I worked hard and had a hard time with! Its not fair!"

The response to that one depends on how charitable you want to be.
Nice: Well, you did them first, without gimmicky skills! Take pride in your accomplishment.
Not so nice: Tough noogies. Unless you were the first one to ever beat the mission, someone else did it before you and probably had a harder time than you did. Suck it up.

2. Most people thinks Ursan sucks because it makes the game too easy!
3. Ursan sucks because I don't want to play that way, but everyone else insists on using it!

Those two are contradictory. If #3 is true, then the haters are a minority, albeit a very very vocal one. They want to inconvenience and dictate to others how they can play by having the skills nerfed, whereas the ursan groups can only dictate how you play WITH THEM.

If #2 is true, then most people would NOT be pugging ursans, and the players would not have a problem getting into groups.


Neither of these "issues" are "game breaking." Anyone saying that it "killed the game for them" or that "Anet destroyed their own game" is trying to jump onto the QQ bandwagon to hide the fact that, plain and simply, they are just another /ragequit.

My question was more "why doesn't balance matter in PvE", but I wasn't specific enough.

When something makes the game "too easy", it's generally considered overpowered. UB is definitely a bit on the op side, but that coupled with the fact that you increase it's strength through a title adds more to the problem.

I posted in the other thread so to balance things out I guess I should give an opinion in this one.

Like the original poster I too am extremely grateful that ArenaNet continue to support the game and certainly don't expect it from them, especially now Guild Wars 2 is in the works. I did however post my support for the other thread and I want to try and better explain that - because it seems I must have misunderstood the meaning of the other thread. I thought it was about the removal of depth and a change to the core design, not about wanting Ursan removed.

First depth. A good example of a change which added depth was the addition of heroes. Allowing you to control AI players which used the same basic skills and logic of the game was great. I had a lot of fun messing around in UW with just me, a friend, and a hero monk. Trying to safely flag it in to rez us when we both wiped, and using it as a distraction.

An example of removal of depth would be when Factions came out the changes in design which effectively removed running from the game. Running was an alternative way of playing using the same basic skills and rules of the game which added depth to PvE. It use to be a lot of fun trying out different runs in Prophecies. It only really became a problem when people started offering cheap runs to beginner players and then people started complaining that there was no one left to group with and that they were being forced to take runs too (interesting a similar argument is being used as to why Ursan should go - does ANets lack of action against the skill represent an acknowledgement that maybe they went over the top nerfing running in factions? :P).

So on the face of it I should be pro Ursan (not taking into account if its current form is overpowered or not), my concern however with PvE skills in general, and this PvP/PvE split, is that it represents a change in core design. PvE skills tied to titles changes the game from being about selecting a group of eight skills, the success of which being determined by how well they are suited to the task at hand, to the level of your title determining how successful you will be. The PvP split changes the core design that it was one universal set of skills, the same no matter where you are in the game - instead of adding depth it just adds complexity (as if it wasn't difficult enough for casual players to get into PvP without having to relearn what each skill does).

Now ANet can change Guild Wars one however they like I don't mind as I don't play as much anymore, and I've got my moneys worth from it. I am however looking forward to Guild Wars 2, a game that they refer to as the ultimate Guild Wars. My concern is whether they mean the original Guild Wars design I bought into (the one based on skill selection) or this new design (based on leveling). As if it's based on the former I'm in for a treat, if it's the latter then I think I might give it a miss for all the same reasons I have passed on every other online game ([edit to add] not a ragequit threat, I'm just genuinely not interested in playing a leveling focused game - I will still probably buy GW2 Collectors Edition because I'm an obsessed fanboy like that ).

The flaw in argument 2 is not the "too easy" part. That is entirely subjective. The contradiction lies in the "Most people" clause. You can't say that a majority dislikes a skill, then claim that a majority of the people are requiring it to play with them(stance #3) without some sort of cognitive dissonance going on.

For the record, I do agree that tying any skill's effectiveness to title grinding is a miserable copout. I've thought so since factions (and until two weeks ago, never even had a Lux/Kurz skill).

The game is flawed.
But it's despite (or even BECAUSE of certain) flaws that the game is still fun to play.


(Ohh and since I am currently playing Titan Quest - I just wish to thank you guys for the HUGE inventory that we have in GW! I never appreciated it - but after having to warp back to town (TWICE mostly!!) after EACH battle - the GW inventory is like a gift from the gods!)