So what Did killing SF really do?

Ecto prices are low again, and ppl still farm UW.
It didn't do anything, all it did was proving that whiners win.

Having a go at it as well?

It didnt do anything, ppl just made new SF builds for it

Can't win when you whine. There's always something sparking up more QQ and SF is one of those things. No matter what's its state, there will always be QQ.

- Ecto prices are too high = most people can't afford them.
- Ecto prices are too low = people whine they can't make money.
- SF is nerfed = people can't farm well, thus whine.
- SF is buffed = ecto prices are too low, can't make money...

IMO that's what it did. Created more QQ amongst the community. Probably not intended by ANet, but that's what it did.

To me personally it didn't do much - just made me rolling on gold for a while, but I got bored. Won't whine if there's a nerf, I'm not begging for a buff either.

SF wasn't really killed in terms of UW farming, the damage reduction just made the runs slightly slower. From what I understand, the nerf really hurt boss farming and raptor farming for builds that use SF.

never used it, dont even have a sin....did nothing to me at all.....most of the skill nerfs leave me pretty much out of it as I dont use the builds that are popular (you can make your own you know).....
so nothing at all.

At least the price has stopped dropping. The market was stabilized a little due to the nerf but ecto's are still being farmed. I cared at the start but now I just can't be bothered to care about ecto.

What did get me a little mad was the fact that I can no longer farm bosses for elite tomes, I used to make a nice sum of gold doing that.

Within 12 hours after the nerf, my guildies and I had a few workable SF builds.
If you do a little testing at Master of Damage, you will find a handful of skills that weren't diminished by the nerf. And yes, you can still boss farm...

and be a runner...

and tank...

and farm ectos (though not quite as quickly).

Yeah, I'll bet you have some KILLER builds... Wonder why the rest of the community hasn't thought about new builds?

Actually you are mistaken.
It killed a CERTAIN gimmick.
The thing that A.Net fails to realize after 3 years though is that if you counter a gimmick with a gimmick a new gimmick arises.

I was talking about farming with my elementalist and of course I did come up with some new builds but some bosses just aren't possible or profitable at the slowed kill rate. I used to be able to kill a mesmer boss, escape, kill an ele boss, zone, repeat. The whole process took 4 minutes. Try doing that with OF for example

Wait...Sam Ferguson is dead? Well, dammit, why am I always the last to know?

Why?

Solo farming is lame. Systematically nerf every popular farming build just for the lulz. The resulting threads will be far more entertaining than performing the same simple runs over and over anyway.

Well they kind of timed the random addition of 30,000 minutes of pointless favor well with the whole SF thing. They introduced it just long enough to screw up the economy a bit, and a couple weeks later, no progress at all can be shown in-game for a restoration of it. If Shadow Form was an EotN skill, it wouldn't have gotten a nerf. For the same reasons they're leaving Ursan as it is.

Just an FYI, it wasn't a "random addition" but was 30k of minutes from when they had an SS/LB weekend when the minutes"clock" went around on itself (a bit like the clock on a car going all the way around until it hits 0 again).

Never got around to farming UW with a sin, so I guess I dont care either way now. I used to farm bosses for greens and tomes though, so the dmg nerf hurt my ele a little.

I wasn't aware it had been killed. What "kill" are we talking about?

So what Did putting a capital for "D" really do?

True, thats why ectos should be at 13-14k/ea like they used to be and there shouldnt been SF

SF did nothing to me exept i lost liek 20k

i made a sin tried A/E thought it was to boring and i sucked at it end of story

Since when did they kill SF? They had a fiddle with it and are evaluating.

SF is a god mode skill but is balanced with a serious downside, the loss of health when it ends. Problem is, gimmick builds allowed god mode without the down side. ANet fiddled with it but left god mode and the gimmick intact.

It's still Godmode in limited area's. Just like other farming builds are also Godmode for limited area's. I don't have a problem with people who are using this. Makes it more easy to affort ecto's to buy armor. It's peoples own fault that they used ecto's to trade.

It killed the assassin effectiveness of farming in all aspects.

How many ectos do you have?

A.net is not interested in the "value" (lol) of your pink globes.

For their business model, they need that as many casual players as possible are able to enjoy every aspect of the game, included the FoW armor and tormented weapons.

Casual gamers are by far the largest majority.
They are those who bring money to A.net, the money needed to continue their business.
A.net need to sell millions of accounts, not just some thousands accounts to a bunch of few "dedicated" (= lifeless) 24h/day players.

If casual players find that obtaining FoW and tormented is utterly frustrating and requires several hundreds of hours which they don't want to spend in a videogame, they will simply quit the game, like any sensible person would do.
And they will not be interested in other chapters, nor in GW2.

Instead if casual players realize that with a "reasonable" effort they can put a FoW and/or a tormented item in they HoM, they will be proud and satisfied with those achievements, they will think and say everybody that GW is a great game, and will look forward in buying GW2.

What is the meaning of "reasonable"?
FoW armor at 650-700k is reasonable, it means 70-80 hours playing in endgame areas.
FoW at 1.5M is more than double time, and not so many casual players will consider it worth such amount of time, so they'll give up.
Tormented weapons in 15-20 hours of ursan runs are reasonable. 3-4 times that amount of hours is a waste of time for the majority of players.

A.net needs to be very smart to decide what is the "reasonable" level.
They don't have to set too high because of what I wrote before, but even not too low because otherwise they would remove the "challenging feeling" from the game.

That's why they introduced ursan and permasin, and now they will "tune" in order to find the best compromise.


Remember always that A.net cannot make a game for few thousands of people with stacks of ectos in their inventories.
Selling few thousands copies = death for A.net

If you want to continue playing this game and the future GW2, you and A.net absolutely need that casual players can afford what they like spending a "reasonable" amount time in game, and being satisfied with the game they purchased.

QFT I wished everyone realized that.

It would be nice if the money made from farming were worth really anything important in the game. But, now really since everyone can farm and go pretty much anywhere most everything except a few rare pieces are really worthless and are just common stock now. There was a time when people with lots of money was a stature/prestige thing, but, not anymore because you just don't need ingame money anymore like you used to.

Wow ... I'm glad you aren't in charge of developing any games.

Large-scale, long-running games NEED to be able to support both casual AND hard-core gamers. A thriving community and economy does not develop in games with only 'casual' players ... those players are too ephemeral.

Hardcore gamers NEED something to continually strive for ... something that separates them from the pack ... take that away and they leave. Then you are left with a bunch of once-a-week gamers and no community. Therefore, you have to make the game accessible and fun to casuals ... while still retaining visible accomplishments for the hardcore.

There's nothing wrong with once-a-week gamers .. you NEED them and the game design should reflect that ... but they are not enough to support a game of this magnitude .. you NEED the hardcore too.

Up until the last 12-18 months ANET was an almost PERFECT MODEL for supporting both the casual and the hardcore. Casual players could get everything they needed .. in a reasonable amount of time .. to have fun and access basically every zone. However, recent changes have cheapened the hardcore accomplishments to the point that they aren't accomplishments anymore. There isn't much left for the hardcore player to distinguish himself .. everything is available to the casuals. Hence, hardcore players are leaving in droves.

You could argue that at this point in the games lifecycle .. this is ok and makes sense .. and that's fine. But it's scaring alot of people - people that think this mindset will carry over into GW2 ... that would be bad.

Why don't you put some numbers where your mouth is? At no point in that extended diatribe did you come anywhere remotely close to explaining HOW casual gamers generate continued revenue, WHAT a casual gamer is within the context of Guild Wars or WHY they're a superior class of gamer to whatever the alternative would be.

I realize it's hard for some people to accept, but just because you post something on the internet, that doesn't mean it's true.

I just stop at this point to show the mistake.

In a game like GW there's no continued revenue, since there's no monthly fee.
An extreme hardcore 24h/day player with 1 fully expanded account generates the same revenue as a casual player who bought a campaign, played for a while, then moved to another videogame and maybe played several other games in the meanwhile, and then 6 months later bought the following campaigns because he liked the previous and so on.

Instead of asking me numbers, if you think and want to demonstrate that I'm wrong, bring us YOUR numbers showing that the main percantage of A.net incomes comes from hardcore players and just a small one from casual gamers.

My God you are still missing the point. Anet needs BOTH casual and hardcore to have a thriving game. Do you hear me ... BOTH.

Even with no monthly fee ... GW survives (and thrives) due to a healthy community. Future sales depend on it. It must be fun for BOTH casual and hardcore players.

Recent updates have tilted the game towards casual only ... there is little left for hardcore players to distinguish themselves. That is bad for the game as a whole.

The sf nerf no longer allows me to clear the entire tombs of the primeval kings on my own under 2 hours, just because of the 50% less damage.

I could still do it, it would just take a lot of time, which frankly isnt worth it.

Because they are too lazy and are more into efficiency than effectiveness?

The only change that I have sensed after the SF "nerf" is that the UW speed runs take a slightly longer time. Ecto farming was largely unaffected.

I agree with you, but I found this part rather funny, considering it is the hardcore gamers that are the ones having the negative impact, not the casual player.

You can't tell me that the ecto crash is the result of the guy who jumps on 1 or 2 times a week for a couple hours total to farm SF chaos plains. It's the hardcore players doing it over and over for 18 hours a day that did it. That's the ugly truth of it. And here's another thing I've not seen mentioned in all the various threads about this exact same topic, I don't think you can call yourself a casual player if you've had the time to max out your norn title and get the various skills that people demand you have for the cookie cutter W/ME ursan build.

Nobody can post any numbers, but I will say this and I'm pretty sure I'm right. The hardcore gamer is far more likely to buy every chapter/expansion of a game than the person with the casual gamer mindset. I meet alot of casual players in this game who only have 2 out of the 4 releases for this game. Hardcore players also buy extra character slots, I doubt the casual player does. As far as making a game easier in order to keep customers, take a look at WoW. Money is harder to come by, it takes far longer to reach max level, certain quests/dungeons are limited to only one trip in so many hours/days, perfect weapons are more expensive. If success in the mmorpg industry relies on appeasing casual gamers, then why is WoW so successful? WoW's existing customer base is easily twice that of GW's and they are willing to pay to play the game. The fact is that in order to keep people playing a game, it has to remain a challenge, and GW is no longer challenging the way it is.

I bolded some sentences which I want to discuss.

What do you think casual players need?

Do you think that a casual players needs 1k armor and collector weapons?
Of course, that's what it's strictly needed to play the game.
But like everyone, casual players don't want only bread, they would like roses too.

Maybe you don't remember it, but before NF came out, there have been threads with thousands posts about the announced inscription system.

And the so called "hardcore players" QQed shamelessly, saying:
"OMG inscriptions will ruin the game, I'm quitting GW, now everyone and his dog will be able to get a goooold r9 15>50 swooord, bohooo A.net why this? Casual players already have collectors weapons, what do they want more? The goooold weapons are only for the hardcore who farmed their asses off to get them, bohoohooo "

That's the attitude of the hardcore players: you wrote well, "distinguish thmselves from the pack". And specifically, distinguish not because of ingame skill, but through the exibition of "exclusive" items.

With the recent changes, A.net has clearly shown the intention of continuing on the path started with inscriptions.

If a perfect "gold" item, or a FoW are source of enjoyment for players, then they lowered the amount of time required for the acquisition, thus extending the enjoyment to a larger number of players, who paid for the game the same money as the hardcore farmers.

People will always work around a nerf to their own advantage.

They can completely destroy Shadow Form and a Guild Wars player will eventually make a build to use the destroyed Shadow Form.

BUT, ArenaNet does do all these nerfs to cripple down the farmers. When they do this the ecto prices will raise a small bit, but eventually go back down since the farmers made a completely new build to farm with Shadow Form.

Still godmode, and allows you to be vitually unkillable.

It made the ecto income a bit slower but it's still farmable with a little change in the skills, but also more limited.

What an absurd statement. Of course there's revenue. I seriously doubt nobody is buying anything from ANET in relation to Guild Wars. Furthermore, I have no idea why you think a monthly fee is relevant to the discussion and no idea why you even brought it up. Monthly fees aren't the business model, so they have nothing to do with revenue, so there's no reason to even mention them in relation to this discussion.

So what? A mother who buys the game for a kid who never even installs it generates more profit. Do you have any reason to be bringing any of this up?

I will do that the instant you show me where I ever made the claim that "the main percantage of A.net (sic) incomes (sic) comes from hardcore players and just a small one (?) from casual gamers"?

There's no point arguing with you, you clearly have no evidence to back your opinion, you're just throwing strawmen at me, and I have better things to do with my time. I reject your entire claim on the basis of it being completely unsupported and I refuse to continue the discussion with you on the basis that you're being illogical.

Good day, sir.

Ecto prices are 1K higher atm than they were right before the nerf!

No! - you don't win!

Not only you don't have any evidence to support your opinion, but actually you don't have an opinion at all.
Because of that, I agree that you have better things to do, everything is better than pushing random keys expressing nothing.

Good day you too, sir.

That's just fine .. but there should be many levels of 'roses'. Some 'roses' SHOULD be inaccessible to causal players ... or you will have no hardcore players.

We're discussing PvE here are we not? What does 'ingame skill' have to do with anything. People distinguish themselves by collecting rare items and/or titles.