Update - Thursday June 12

Who is the lunatic in charge of these updates?

Laughed my arse off at the mystic regen +8 enchants.

Like farming with that wasnt already easy... they should rename the game to retard wars.

If you find the game not challenging , don't cry at ANET to make it more challenging for you , you and the likes of you hiss at ANET for catering to players who oppose your ideas , yet you want ANET do change the game according to you.
If you beat all the chapters , elite areas and everything else , i hate to break it to you but you have 2 choices : 1. switch to PvP or 2. quit the game.
Don't think that if you now have an easy time the game was also that easy when you started playing it. If ANET listened to people like you many players who started playing the game will have a much harder time than you started.
Do you really want to ruin the game experience for many other players just so you can have more challenge?

If ANet isn't willing to change the game for "us", why did they change their game for a minority of whiny, farming players?

But the thing is that Guild Wars had challenge, and it also had accessibility. So why did they have to make the game easier for everyone when the game was already a success, when people were already satisfied??

The indisputable fact is that it wasn't. A game becoming easier because you are "skilled" is entirely different than a game becoming easier due to overpowered PvE skills.

...pve is NOT competitive why impose competitive parameters onto something that is not.

its like going a swimming pool and complaining to the gym about the fact that some kids are using floaters and that "they are not doing it right", so what? wth are you doing in the public section if you dont like it? go swim in the professional lanes and stop pestering people.


Im getting awfully tired of explaining to people who have finished the game on multiple characters already that NEW players do not share the same environment as we did back in 05.
Just because we know what to exploit, what skills to grind and where to go does not mean that new players DO. Even more to the point new players play to have FUN, if the game is not fun then THATS bad design.

you say it yourselves pve was not hard....then some say it was hard....i dunno i have yet to find in over ummm lets see 26 or so years of video gaming
a game that i found "hard"...whats hard about a video game? you fail. try again. repeat. success.

Its not the "oh its hard" bit that attracts gamers, its the "oh this is FUN" bit.
If you had any knowledge of games you would actually realize this but nooooo...."gotta be hard".

take "ikaruga" the very top of the food chain as far as the shootemup gendre goes (imo).

now that game is what many would classify as "hard" but.....its not once you finish it. what then...its EASY? not fun any more ? ohhh dear.

i guess those that "gimp" themselves and play i dunno ....without shooting a single bullet and finish the game without killing a single enemy makes them...dumb? clearly its impossible to have fun when you "impose an artificial challenge on yourself".

let me tell you a little secret, there is no "goal" in life other than the ones YOU set upon yourself.

well gosh darn it theres a whole bunch of people rage quitting now huh.

--------

1. i heard pvp was cool. and in case you dont know what a ladder match is in CS....its "pro" gaming, you know, "serious biznes".

2. Why cross the North pole walking, why climb the Himalaya why cross the Atlantic in a row boat? why do anything at all, they could just take a plane.
dumb idiots clearly wasting their time.


@Abedeus
[A] means you should look up stuff before responding.
[B] means you should think a little before responding.

and that carrys over to the rest of your post.

--------------------------------
explain to us what a "level playing field" in GW is. all skills are equal? player skill is most important? build skill is most important? clicking speed is most important?

when these "gimick" builds come out its "unskilled" playing, yet they are applying your own credo (and Anets at the same time) [build] SKILL > time, victory at any cost.

what do you want? fixed skill bars? pvp ursan?


some of the changes do look strange, unless you factor in the fact that the mobs use them too.

@kostolomac

The game was challenging once upon a time, when it was just Prophecies, but sadly it is not any longer, when one skill can dominate all areas, that a balanced team of players with a good knowledge of the game used to struggle in. That is catering to the retarded...seriously.

once again, another one misses the entire point.

had anet kept with their original vision with the game, none of this would've happened. it's the fact that anet has dumbed the game down significantly that we are complaining about. if you think otherwise, then you need to give your head a shake.

the last 5 missions of prophecies were substantially more difficult (and much more entertaining) when stuff like [[save yourselves] and [[critical agility] didn't exist. this really struck home for me during the second last mission, where the lich put chimera of intensity on my assassin. the result was pretty hilarious, but incredibly sad at the same time.

So Guild Wars sold 3 million copies (before PvE skills were released and general dumbing down occurred) and the game wasn't fun?

And I can't really agree with others saying that these PvE skills cater to the "majority of casuals". Why? They're linked to a title.

Stop. PvP is not PvE. I want the challenge back in PvE.

And while you can say "look to PvP for a challenge duh", I used to able to look in PvE for a challenge. That's gone now, since the challenge isn't in PvE, it's in me not using Ursan Blessing or SY.

I thought you just said that "this is a game, comparing it to over the top 'RL' examples fails"?

dude, we are 2 games and one expansion later.

what...area of prophesies did you use to struggle in? I used to find SF hard...the first what? 3 times? then what? kept on playing it, not hard anymore, yet fun.


its crazy, people posting like they were SOOO much more clever than the new players....err no sorry, i saw some retarded $$£% back then as well, exploits and cheap builds galore.

you think infinite energy is a new thing brought on by new skills??? that steamrolling through areas is some kind of perverse effect brought on by GW:En? that "elite" areas remained inaccessible to the average "leet" player for more than a month? no its wrong. I dunno if its because you all suck up to the vets here or if its nostalgia that warps your vision but the end result was not that different, we just did it with what we had.

RAGE !!!!
When somebody says that UB destroyed "skill>time" is wrong. Imagine this , you make yourself a nice warrior(or any other class) , and desperately want to complete FoW , imagine there is no gwen and you want to be competitive and be able to play any build , so you first finish all campaings , cap all the skill , you don't pay to get runned to Droks or Consolate Docks , so you spend an awful lot of time capping elites and getting ordinary skills , after xx hours spent you play that FoW , finish it and then what , you spent a lot of time making your character competitive , and after those xx hours spent for let's say 1.5 h of "showing" your skills , that's not "skill>time" , that's grind . You ppl forget that even with UB , there are bad and good players , just because a team has the same skillbar doesn't mean they all are "good" or "bad" players.
This update is perfect , have you even considered why does ANET make this updates instead of nerfing UB?
Did you consider that "retarded" energy drain would be a nice energy menagment for a fast-cast nuker who will make a nice dps in no time without energy problems while the dervish tanks with earth prayers enchants , cripling them to stop agro break and having no problems with degen thanks to mystic regenaration , did you consider a new build before flaming these update , stop bitching and try to make a new build with the changed skills.Maybe my idea using these new skills is bad , but at least it's a new idea and not whining.

typical response, you know people actually DID those things? they are not over the top examples, they HAPPENED.

yea we did, and we dismissed those concepts as retarded.

All other debates aside...

Since [Energy Drain] is the only Elite my Mesmer has used in over a year now (stop laughing! I'm serious!), this buff is wonderful Go go High-Speed Burn!

No, really, that's it. That's my Elite of choice. Don't look at me like that....

^^
Haha, I'm a Mesmer. I know [Energy Drain] was decent (maybe not worth your Elite slot though) and is now even better. I won't laugh.

That said, I'm gonna post my first QQ post in a while; this crap is just making PvE easier than it already is. Challenge? Challenge? Bueller?

Yes, it does. It's called "PvP".

Even if you went back to Prophecies-only in the state it was in for its first month or so, after a short adjustment period (because there's been a lot of change since then), I bet you'll find it's not much harder for you as it is in its current state. The only way to get non-self-imposed challenge back into PvE for you, and certain others in this thread, would be to make it completely inaccessable for new players.

Then likewise I'll state the same:

When you hear of boxing matches and people demanding "challenges", what're they asking for? They're asking to go against the "best of the best." They don't want to compromise. They want to show how good they really are. They don't want to have to "face a whimp", they want to face someone that will truly be a testament to their skills. This applies to other forms of sports.

Climbing the mountain, crossing the Atlantic, and crossing the North Pole aren't to show feats and accomplishments of 'getting there'. It's more of a test, to see how well their survival and endurance skills have developed. Ultimately, it's still a rough comparison.

In Guild Wars, there used to be no need to limit your skills. I used to happily be able to go through areas using the best of my abilities and earn satisfaction from knowing that I did my best. These days whenever me and my friends are having trouble with a certain area, it's not entirely because we're "unskilled". It's because we're not using Ursan, or Save Yourselves, or other cheap-ass PvE skills. The game is no longer challenging, not because we "got better" but because it was dumbed down.

If it was so fun and simple as "game too easy? make it harder for yourself", then we would have seen difficulty settings die out decades ago. They are still to this day a highly demanded feature in games.

Ogre: Read later post.

If you followed the conversation you'll see we were talking about PvE exclusively.

i find Ragnarok harder than Guild Wars anymore..

off note.. Golgotha, im from Pittsburgh too :P

Actually this was the line that stood out for me.

Few people have commented on it in this thread and those that did didn't understand why it changed. One person asked why they changed it and another obviously didn't read it at all and said it was to prevent finishing the quests faster.

This is a GREAT change!!!! There was a real problem with drop stealers in the UW. Griefers would wait until folks have opened the chest then they would teleport the whole party again and again and again and again..... until the drops became unassigned. Then they would use speed buffs on their bars to steal the drops.

You can have free condition removal when rangers get stance removal.

I suggest:

Imbalancing Shot (Unlinked)
15e 1/4c 10s
If this attack hits, target's stance ends. This attack can not be blocked.

Such a perfect name, too. ^_^

Since when has stance removal actually been viable?

Imbalancing shot (Unlinked)
15e 1/4 10s
If this attack hits, target's stance ends. This attack can not be blocked. Your arrow arches as high as Broadhead arrow;
would be comparable to the stance removal in this game, which might I add is pretty much none existent and or has stiff penalties of use.

Where is the Wars/Dervishes/Assassins/Rangers infinite duration effectively free unstrippable +33% IAS? wheres every non-Paragon/necromancer class's infinite energy? where is the War/Para/Assassin/Ranger ability to do deep wound + bleeding forever on up to 3 targets? where is the warriors hexes??

classes are different. AMAZING HUH.

it surprised me too when i stopped using ursan...

i never understood all the QQ about ursan....if you want to play the game in a balanced way and clear the areas as if it was back in the old days...what's stopping you? you choose to use these pve crushing skills because you know it's the easiest way and even with all the complaining you wouldn't be satisfied either way

I think Paragon has free (adrenaline) Song of Purification AoE party condition removal, Dervish has Avatar of Melandru (+200 health and condition immunity - free of cast times), assassins have Signet of Malice and Assassin's Remedy. SoM is free, AR can be almost completely maintained.

Try to find a balanced PuG. Guild, you say? Yeah, because it's not like we don't know that 95% of scrubs can do same thing we do, without vents, on hard mode and just as fast.

Hmmm , the only good thing about this update skillwise is that they buffed (a buff is a buff after all no matter how small it is) to Charge ,Bull's charge and Energy drain are steps in the right direction since so many elites are useless nowadays.

If you beat the game multiple times , on HM too, done elite areas , you can consider yourself mastered GW ( or box in your analogy) and move on to another one.
GW is more a single player game than a MMO in terms of pve gameplay. It's level of challenge is not infinite like WoW's PvE-wise. IF GW was a subscription game , than I would support the idea of making GW more "challenging" since you gave more money to ANET , right now a new player who just picked up the game deserves the same level of difficulty as you began playing , not much harder because the "elitists" are bored now.Also the casual player who buys the game right now is keeping the servers up , not an elitist who bought the game a long time ago and after many hours of play wants more "challenge". And FYI challenge is subjective.

If by "all areas" you mean elite ones , then yes , ursan is always there , otherwise i never saw a pug group (i pug a lot) with more than one or two bears. Also UB is for catering to the lazy people who want titles , not retards.

Oh boy, I promised myself I'd never sit down and even *try* and address the whole Ursan Care Bear issue. However, curses, I have a few minutes spare and so I guess I'll give it a go after all. This isn't a response to you in particular, but more to anyone who's ever said 'What's the problem with Ursan?'...

Let us picture, for a moment, a chess tournament. For most of you, having pictured that, I'll give you a chance to wake up again

In this tournament, the players will be ranked according to how well they fare against a large and varied number of Professional Chess Opponents. The tournament will play out over the space of a week.

Now, I love chess. I love the tactical opportunities, the different styles and strategies, the quick re-analysis of the playing field when something unexpected happens, and the knowledge that the better I become at chess, the less unexpected things should happen to me! It wouldn't surprise me to find many of you enjoy chess too.

So you sit down as the tournament starts and you play chess. You play against all sorts of different Pro opponents, and the leaderboard shows how well you're doing against them compared to all the other competitors. Winning your game faster means you get to play another Pro Opponent sooner, since you're not waiting around for other players to finish (and there's more than enough Pro Opponents to go round - it's a hypothetical situation after all). Maybe, by the end of the second day, you're actually doing quite well.

With the 3rd day, new players have turned up looking to take part. Since the tournament is going on for a week, the organisers say "Sure, we'll let new people join in too. Take a seat." and you think 'Well, that's cool, I don't have to wait on them and they don't have to wait on me, and I'm already 2 days ahead of them, so it's all good."

Then the organisers say "You know what? To give the new people a chance to catch up, we're going to change the rules a little. Any time during a match, even before it starts, players can exchange any of their pieces for a queen, and also move as many pieces as they like on their turn. Your Pro opponents will, of course, still play by the 'old' rules."

You blink for a minute and think "What the hell?"

And now everything's different. All bets are off. Where before you counted yourself lucky if you won your game in half an hour, now everyone is swapping out their whole set of pieces for queens and winning their games in 30 seconds. New players are rocketing up the Leaderboard as they play 'catch up' and then never bother to stop. Old players are thinking "Well, the hell with this! I'm not going to get left behind!" and they swap out their pieces too. Pretty soon, it's just you and a bunch of die-hard chess lovers playing by the rules and maybe winning more then you lose, but with nowhere near the speed and success rate of everyone else.

Has this changed how you play chess? Of course not. Has it changed, in *any* way, the game of chess you'd been playing and enjoying the previous 2 days? Absolutely not. Has your pool of Pro Opponents changed because of this new ruling? Not at all. For you, in your little chess-bubble, the game - and by extension, your enjoyment of it - hasn't changed at all.

Or has it?

You want to stand up and shout "What the hell is this?? This isn't chess any more!" You want to hold up a Bishop and say "Do any of you even know what this piece *does*?" You want to tear down the Leaderboard because both it and the Tournament as a whole are meaningless now. You want to weep for all the new players that will come in on the next day and just sit down with their army of Queens and infinite moves and possibly never even realise there was a game of incredible tactical genius here in the first place.

You want to just walk away because the game you fell in love with is dying and you're the only one desperately trying to keep it going.

Does that sound like something's changed? You bet it does. It's shame. That's what's different. Shame. You're now ashamed to be involved in what the Tournament Organisers have turned the game of chess into, a game that you loved and enjoyed. That's why we cry. We're ashamed of what's happened. We're ashamed of how it reflects on us and on chess players the world over. We cry because we're ashamed.

It doesn't take a genius to see the analogy here. For those of you who *don't* see the analogy, I'll leave you with your army of Queens and your Care Bear button and wish you well.

Peace.

Meh, people still won't understand. They will, eventually, but it will be too late to change anything.

Btw, if the game is still selling as good as it used to... Why we still don't have an info ,,6 mlns sold copies, we rule, yaaay!!'', hem?

So they needed the game to be "easier"? They already had a solution: Normal mode. They (the inexperienced) could see any content on Normal mode with only an ounce of effort. This is especially true with Normal mode being easier in DoA. So the question becomes: why does ANet have to make Hard mode easier, too?

We *HAD* the challenge, and now it's gone. See why so many are pissed?

Then reduce the requirements of titles instead of sacrificing the gameplay.

No, it was nerfed due to people tanking in arenas and AB.

But ...

[Ether renewal] [Aura of restoration] [Mystic Regeneration]

Yay for god mode.

Lol @ balthazars pendulum nerf.

It seems that we do have something in common
Also , even if ursan got the nerfbat , with SY! and TNTF you'll see plenty of pugs who play the elite areas for the loot , not the fact that they beat it with 7 other individuals (the second fact , at least for me is much more rewarding than any loot in the game). And casual players don't have r10 norn , the ones who want profit without hardship are the ones ruining the game , not the skill.

I think you need to take a good long look at how seriously you consider GW: you make it sound like the rest of the damn world is looking at GW and laughing "hah..n00b bears. LOL".

They're not. I doubt anyone outside of the GW community even knows Ursan exists (or if they do, I doubt they give it any actual thought worthy of counting as mockery).

It's a game. It a game you play because you enjoy it. This enjoyment is far, far more dependent on YOU than it is on the game. If you're determined to have a crap time, I can guarantee you that you will. If you find yourself unable to enjoy it in any way whatsoever, then maybe it's time for you to move on. If you really can't enjoy it because "other people choose to take the easy path", then again, maybe it's time to move on.

Guild wars has never been about "getting the OMG 1337 itemz" and then boasting about it: people may act like it is, but they're wrong. A max damage crystalline will do exactly the same as a max damage crafter weapon, there is no difference. Guildwars is fairly unique in catering both to the "madly e-peen obsessed" and the "completely e-peen indifferent" very, very well. If you get your FoW armour just to show off how uber you are, you got it for the wrong reason. Get it because you like the look of it, or you like the sense of personal achievement it gives YOU.

Someone using ursan to do the same thing as you did only waaay quicker and waaay easier DOES NOT IN ANY WAY DETRACT FROM YOUR OWN SENSE OF ACHIEVEMENT.

Unless you let it.

Liken it to climbing a mountain. It takes you all day clambering up. You reach the top, and there are people up there who took a cablecar for half an hour. Does this belittle your mountain climbing? Is your achievement in climbing a whole damn mountain somehow lessened because other people did it a different way a lot quicker and easier? No: you climbed a damn mountain, and if that doesn't make you proud, then there's something wrong with you.
Hell, even if everyone who gets to the top (no matter how) gets a "I made it to the top" trophy, you still know you got yours 'properly', and to be honest, that personal knowledge and satisfaction is all you're ever going to have: you can't prove it to others either way, and you shouldn't feel the need to. If the personal satisfaction isn't enough for you, then the problem is with you, not the game.

Thus: If you really like the tactical skill-building aspect of GW, and really hate ursan..then play with skills, and don't use ursan. It's THAT SIMPLE.

Play with people who are like-minded. Play with heroes and henchies. Hell, play with newly arrived ascalonians: teach them the ropes. Do whatever it takes to make you enjoy the game for yourself, like you used to. Just stop blaming your own dissatisfaction on other people.

If only it wasn't adrenaline-based....then I can run it on my [illusionary weaponry] mesmer in AB!!!!.....(/slightsarcasm)
Addenum:
Hooray for Mystic Regen! We dervish runners missed you....
[email protected] nerfs. This must be the first time Smiting ever has gotten nerfed....
However much beaten they were, ARage and Splinter were still the shiz. Maybe that Rit support character will finally get booted in HA...

It's not about the "achievement". It's about the struggle, and the current struggle I'm facing is not that I'm "not good enough" but that I'm not bringing Ursan on my bar. As stated above, a true challenge is when you're going against the best of the best, using the best of the best, and you're still having trouble. When you have to resort to limitations on yourself is when things start to suck.

I'd understand a bit more if this is what Guild War's was like in the beginning, but it wasn't. That's why I along with many others are so concerned.

Can't go a day without someone using the "don't like it don't use it" argument, it seems.

Then we agree on two accounts, sweet!

Now what would I have done? Lessen the difficultly of the normal modes for the other areas (i.e. removing environmental effects in Urgoz + Deep, maybe). Do not touch the difficulty of the Hard Mode areas, balance UB and other overpowered bananas, etc. This way, the elite areas becomes even more accessible in Normal mode, while maintaining the meaning of Hard mode.

I don't care about titles, weapons, or the economy. I just care about the most important aspect - the game - and maintaining it.

what? you want to fight a wimp? fight one. you want to fight mike tyson? go on, fight him.
its YOUR frikin "challenge" not the federations.

there is no spectator mode in PVE i and whats more spectators are of not one single use to the challengers other than that vague "moral support", and when the challenger wins these supporters think they are entitled to some of the merit in the victory, I know what im talking about i'm a (retired) semi-pro skier.


well yes it is thats the whole point? doing it to see if you can do it. a challenge. all other above examples can be done via modern mechanical means...no challenge, do it "the hard way" and you get EPIC challenge.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ad...xpedition.html



yes well back in the days everyone sucked...until they got better.



errr if youre having trouble in certain area because you cant hack it without PVE only skills you are still a bad player.

Im sorry i just did both dungeons (HM) in sparkfly WITH PUGS without consumables or SY or other pve crap and using our own builds (ok one guy was a bear and i had necrosis.) other than that yes at times it was hard and we nearly wiped (bloodstone touchers ugh)...and it was a CHALLENGE as well as FUN.

Yesterday i did Kathandrax (however thats spelled) for the first time with a friend (also the first time) and we wandered in there with nearly 50 DP him as smiter....hes a god awful smiter but hey, a TERRIBAD hammerwarrior hero of mine, scatter inducing aoe fire els (oh god...in there???) his heroes with some semi decent heals and a ok dervish and me having totally forgotten to change my build according to the heroes i was taking...so echo ss barbs mop....(i was tired ok?)

i dunno how long that took us...we wiped, i cried we blamed each other i cried some more...and then we got our act together and worked round those horrible traps, aoe burning dmg, bad hero ai and used our pulling skills and the environment all the way to victory.
It was a Challenge and (ultimately) FUN.

now i could have looked it up on wiki, i could have taken whatever build they suggest, printed the maps and found out you can turn off those damn traps as well.

but no, i wanted to do this the way I wanted to do it.
THAT was the challenge.

now i cant go back to that dungeon with the same sprit, i KNOW what im up agaist now, so the challenge will not ever be the same again, but i also know how unless i actively search for some people like you and load up cry of pain and whatnot....that it will remain a challenge.

not that i think ill be going back soon...i found the level design horrendous.

uhhh...no the difficulty setting is there for a reason. and if you have ever beaten a game on the hardest setting you would know there are a number of ways you can go, here are 3 of the most popular i reckon:

1. stop playing.

2. play again using cheat codes.
eg :HL2 hard mode + gravity gun from start. Its FUN, challenge.....near 0.

3. play again but this time set yourself your own goals.
eg: you need the cheat code, HL2 hard mode no use of SMG. only python (except for bosses duh). this is fun too, challenge? pretty damn hard.

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@Shiro Katagari : I have participated in tournament chess too. Thing is your analogy is false.


PVE is NOT a competition. you play against the AI for chrissakes, we have our own instances.

so to take your example:

Tom is a genius, he can do anything he wants at the same time...hes so clever he can demultiply himself.

Tom is in a game room playing a friendly game of chess against me, at the same time he also has 4 other games of chess against other people.

then a new guy walks in and asks if he can play chess with the rules a bit warped (the ones you mentioned).

Tom says Ok and plays with those new rules against that person.....and we keep on playing chess.

heck some other people might stand up and say "HEY! thats not chess! thats BEAR" and Tom says, "ok we can call it that".

another dude might say "oh can we use this bishop as a queen as well in the next round? looks like fun" and Tom, being a nice guy says "sure why not".

You might stare in disgust at all these player and say "what the hell are you doing THATS NOT CHESS" and they would respond "whatever, its fun".

you want tournament conditions? pvp.

All I hear is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

First of all:
The party (or better yet - the party leader) decides what the party will run.
YOU decide that you don't want to run what the party is running - and you are wondering why they won't party with you?

And second of all:
People NEED to stop behaving like morons.
You want an easy way?
You GO with the easy way!
And then you don't bitch that you don't like it! IF ease is what you want - you CHOOSE a path that provides that!
IF you want fun (or whatever you want!) - do not complain about it NOT being easy! Because you WILLINGLY gave up the easy route!
NOBODY IS STOPPING YOU FROM RUNNING URSAN!
The simple fact that you can do something in PvE WITHOUT Ursan means nothing.
You still PvE - which means you are still shit. The great "PvE vs PvP" war decided that.

(In case you misunderstand - this isn't pro-Ursan, it's anti-your anti-Ursan reasons!)

this is why ursan would be a problem in pvp. sure everyone could do it so its fair, but it would kill any chance of build diversity, as anybody who wanted to win would be stupid not to use the very op skill given to then.
in pve you dont play against other people, you play against fixed mobs, so there is no "meta game" and they have no tendencies to run op skills. since build diversity can still exist in pve it really doesnt matter if one skill is overpowered.

It's all basically overlooking the whole problem, Sleeper Service. Challenge had meaning to many of us. We see no reason why ANet had to change that meaning, especially when there were other alternatives. To do the same in other games: It would be like God of War making God mode as easy as the Normal mode, like making the 100% difficulty slider in Oblivion feel just as smooth as not changing the slider, like making Nightmare on Doom as simple as the lowest difficulty. See why this is silly, and why many consider it hard to support such a change? This is exactly what ANet has done, and for what? The casual player? No, titles are tied to it. They've catered to a very annoying minority in the game, and many don't want ANet to go the second route with GW2.

I don't mind the game becoming more accessible, but damn, this wasn't they way to do that. Make Normal mode even more accessible if you want that, don't encourage another free-to-play MMO. Keep the integrity in Guild Wars, not dumb it down - and if you're going to try to prove to may that overpowered-as-hell builds don't beat down the integrity that was Guild Wars, then good luck. People were already enjoying this game and ANet was still overseeing as the sales began to rise ever more. It's hard to understand why they thought it best to go this route.

While I appreciate all of your suggestions in order to make the game "feel" challenging again, it still doesn't kill the one fact that the game itself is no longer hard. It doesn't change the fact that anyone with only the keys 0-9 can go through the hardest challenges in the game. In reality, I don't care how I play, I don't care how other people play. My concern is with ANet, and why they thought it best to take this direction.

@Upier: 9 exclamation points, must be gettin' angry?

Up to now, I always thought you are an intelligent person. Now that image was shattered in shards of a broken image.







OKAY, THE MAIN POINT - WHY ONLY GW HAS IDIOT-PROOF PVE AND OTHER GAMES STILL HAVE CHALLENGING THINGS?

your analogies to the difficulty of other games arent quite accurate. in gw pve its your build that decides how hard the game will be. sure, ursan is easy mode, but if you want hard mode run a fast casting flare spam mesmer to deal dmg, a frenzy healsig tank, and an echo mender to heal ( quite an exaggeration and i hate tanknspank, but you get the idea ).

some people have made the argument that it doesnt "feel" like an accomplishment because they could have just done it with ursan. o rly? then how is hard mode in other games an accomplishment, when you could have jsut run easy mode?

Personally, I'm a little bit saddened that they won't nerf PvE anymore. Even when a a skill would be nerfed in PvE because of PvP balance issues, it made the game more interesting because people could not just use the same build over and over, they had to use some variety. I was often mad about nerfs to my favorite skills, but it made me think about the game and find a new build. Games that remain the same for long periods of time get boring fast.

The problem is that ANet has nerfed overpowered PvE skills in the past (ex. protective bond) but don't nerf Ursan? If ANet really wanted to develop the game on the "don't like it, don't use it" argument then why have they nerfed skills only used in PvE? Simply put, the "don't like it don't use it" argument is one of the worst and most lazy excuses not to balance something. I mean seriously could you see ANet coming out and telling people they weren't going to nerf Ursan and if people don't like it just don't use the skill? It would be ridiculous.