Nerf fatigue

Maybe it's just me but...

So this game has hundreds of skills/semi skills (aka cons, etc) and so on. I am trying to get into and learn stuff and be able to look at a hex/condition/enchant icon and figure out quickly from just the icon what the heck is happening to me.

I usually fail since if it isn't one of those dozens of skills that I haven't saw before is most likely one of the skills that was "balanced" and even if I knew what it was doing, it was most likely nerfed every other month or so.

So the only choice would be to hover the mouse on the icon of the skill when the enemy is casting it or on my enchants/conditions bar. And then spend some time reading the text. And by the time I finish probably figure that I died in the process. So that's not actually a choice. So what I can do is just *ignore* most of it, look at my health bar and degen and try to keep that ok.

So let's see. Anet says that they don't like the game skills system because it's too complex and has too many skills players need to be able to know. I agree, I've been playing for years now and there every now and then I see skills I had no clue that existed. But that is not the entire story.

Add to that a monthly nerfing system and if you look back since the beginning of GW you have thousands of skills and versions.

So even if you are experienced with the game and you take a month break when you come back most of the builds you used are good for nothing, skills have changed, wikis describing them are getting old and outdated faster than any community could keep up with (look at community sites with builds).

So there's a constant learning curve and catching up with changes both PvP and PvE. PvP may take it easier, but in PvE it's really not fun if you buy another character slot, level it up, upgrade its equipment to fit a specific task/farm and by the time you're all done the farm cannot be done anymore cause it was nerfed.

I do realize that this isn't a much of a problem for people that play 8h per day, but for casual players like me that get online maybe just in the weekends... trying to catch up is really exhausting and boring. I spend most of my play time catching up and changing armors and builds, than actually playing. So that's where the fatigue is coming from.

---------------------------
Now to conclude. I would find normal that skills are being adjusted couple of months after a game is released because there are bugs in the skill design that were not uncovered, but for this to be a monthly thing going on for over 3 years after the game was launched... hmmm.

It seems that ANet employees have nothing better to do and instead of providing new content that would provide new exiting challenges by being tuned/vulnerable to a specific set of skills but very resistant to another.. they just randomize the current skills, see where that gets the players.

We fight same old goblins for years now, just the skills we used to do it change, which then in turn causes a chain that other skills need to change cause the change introduces even more "bugs", which becomes a never ending story.

But then again, I've come to believe this is the one biggest flaw of ANet designers. They never seem to think of areas of situations that would emphasize a particular set of skills. They probably don't even take into consideration builds when designing areas in either PvP or PvE. They just design something and expect users to figure out what works best.

That is completely wrong imo. I think they should all start with a build and go like: "so lets add an area (PvP or PvE) where this build and this tactic gives an advantage".

I even go as far that I think on all the mission wiki pages they should list a build for each profession that does a decent job. Not good, but decent. Just like a game *manual*. "If you want to play the paragon through this mission here is a decent build we suggest". With the note that it isn't the best way to do it, but it is good given what they had in mind for that area.

My suggestion to ANet: stop spending time at spoiling the fun of people that find a good farm build or whatever, and start working on content that makes other builds even more interesting and fun so people just give up the ones you don't like.

How would it be if doing a 3h dungeon in hm with a full people team would be more rewarding than 3h of UW SC? Right now 3h in a dungeon with 7 other people is a waste of time, you get like 2k and a crappy green. So if people do that they just do it as a guild sacrifice to help new players.

How would it be if normal play would be better in rewards than farming?
Personally, I don't enjoy farmings and short repetitive actions. I would enjoy better playing another profession on another toon, but the truth is that given the current state of affairs that is just a waste of time. The only way to advance my main toon is to farm, at this point. Quests offer a laughable gold reward, missions and dungeons are even worse, etc, etc.

So please spend more time offering people choices than nerfing. You're not addressing the core problem. It is not a problem of skills and builds that people can own the entire game with a single build (as ursanway or cryway), it is a problem of the game content that all areas are so much alike.

So,I planned on commenting it by saying something deep. I really did.
But...

lol @ you. QQ moar

tl;dr. QQ less.

I wrote a reply, but it got swallowed up in a database error. I find it disheartening that you conclude with complaining about farming. Skill balances should not be based on that at all. Adapt and overcome, or don't play.

ANet's answer to your dilemma is Guild Wars 2. See you there.

As I said already, I'm not playing this game 8h per day (that would be sickening for me), nor I am reading this forum as much. I don't even know what qq means, must be better than pp, I guess, but I bet its nothing really relevant to what I've said.

Maybe switch to a different game?
Because I don't think that your wishes are compatible with this game. And considering the general opinion here - I don't think the game should be modified to suit your wishes.

This is the good stuff though.
Fix the crappy PvE and then kill the overpowered crap, rather then killing the overpowered crap and doing nothing about the crappy PvE.

Basically you're a slower learner, and you want the game to adjust to you instead of the other way around.

One good note for you. Read updates from official wiki or guildwars.com website. Easier to see changes there than in game.

Not necessarily on the subject but:
It's a game. I play games in my spare time for fun. If I want to learn something I read a book. There's no real useful knowledge you learn in GW.

I'm not at all a slow learner, I just want to *play* this game. Again for PvP a dynamic skill system makes much more sense and things are adapted to that, but even there you get problems because people loose track of what's happening. (Why do you think most casual players keep pressing the space bar even though they're hexed with Empathy in costume brawl?)

For PvE if you choose to invest time and game gold into getting the X armor + weapon set on a newly made and leveled up assassin let's say, and then you figure it's all for nothing before you used it, it's not like you can load a new equipment template for it you know?

You have to go back there, usually solo "farm" again for the gold required to update equipment and/or level up a new profession and so on and so on. Until one day comes around (like it did with me) and you figure out that all you've been doing lately was to "prepare" to play but never actually got to play.

I still wish things were more stable. Sometimes it feels to me that ANet is changing the rules of the game depending on what side of the bed they woke up.

If this really is how the core of the game should be, then leave it as that but:
- give me the option to create level 20 PvE toons
- give me the option to load equipment templates in PvE based on what I've unlocked, and even elite armors could be unlocked for all my other toons once I buy the first set
- give me the option to travel any place on the map I have already unlocked on another toon

And then we're fair. Then they can change the rules and I can immediately adapt and play. Until that is going to happen, it's going to take all my play time to adapt to their silly nerfs.

From what this sounds like your NOT adapting and playing.

To me adapting and playing would be to stick to your class and ADAPT your skills and tactics to the changes.

Your reason to be able to create a maxed out character is to just exploit the latest farm build that pops up.

0h t3h n0e2, mai Ski11z g0t n3rfz0rd!!
I haven't played GW in like 2 months and i have no trouble keeping up. All you need to do, is look at the monthly updates and look at pvxwiki.
All skills changes are shown, and new farm builds created after nerfing a certain farm are posted too.

Also it helps to browse through here once a week. You can't find like 5 minutes of time to update yourself??

And changing armors? Runes don't make that much of a difference. If your build sucks no matter how good your runes are placed you'll still fail. You can use farm builds without any runes, but with them it makes it way easier.


I agree with the rest, if you can't beat them join them: change your attitude or change your game.

Well, just play PvE and don't worry too much about your equipment, runes are cheap.

I'm sorry, but I don't think the OP deserves all this sarcasm. It was a well constructed post, and actually has some valid points if you read it all the way through. With so many skills, and so many changes it IS sometimes hard to keep track of what skills are doing, and what changes have been made and how they effect you. Builds are constantly in flux, and it makes it difficult to get a grip on skill usage sometimes.

Personally i like this since it breathes new life into the game, since I'm constantly kept on my toes, playing with builds that I used to use but are no longer relevant. I can totally understand how the constant changes can be aggravating for more casual players though.

The skill changes affect pve builds very little, in pvp they prevent one build dominating that part of the game.

Farming is the biggest loser in skill changes but then farming isn't really part of the game.
Well not part of the game as it was designed, it's a player creation.

The skill changes also prevent one build dominating farming, you just have to adapt to the change.
Find a new area devise a new build and farm till it changes, pvp players do it all the time.

If gw2 has totally separate skill effects for pvp and pve it might change otherwise we will see the same rebalancing there too.

Nah, for changes to PvE it isn't which side of the bed, it's whatever the PvE groupies are whining about the most.

Yeah, but that takes time. And we have GW2 to work on. It's far, far easier to just nerf the overpowered stuff to oblivion and not look back /sarcasm

(I do agree with skill balances for PvP btw. It does need balance. I just think Anet tends to take the lazy way out sometimes and totally kills a skill rather than coming up with a good solution)

The simple way around this is to simply read these forums for an hour a week and get an idea as to what the latest builds are and then read the skills within the builds (or simply study PvX). This game is far too meta to care about obscure spells, in both PvE and PvP, as your chances of seeing or using them is too little to care.

That's what i'm thinking they got wrong, or maybe not fully addressing. They nerf skills all the time. put it in a different light they nerf us as what we can do as players, but they never address the core issues of their PVE (and PvP I dare say) content.

What if they would spend a little bit more energy on breathing new life into the game not by limiting what we can do as players but more like updating their areas/content and possibly adding new areas meant/desinged for a certain set of skills?

Take any PvE area as it is today and you will find out that it was probably never designed or fine tuned with a certain set of player builds in mind. They say the build is most important in guild wars, they why are they not designing content with a given team build in mind?

Yes people would find different ways to do stuff, maybe even more efficient that what was originally designed, but right most PvE areas are just the same. There is no area to require heavy interrupts as the major tactic, there is no area to require heavy healing as major tactic and so on. Think of all the different challenges each area could pose.

Oh and farming, yeah. I really don't get why they don't offer say 20k for completing a 3h HM dungeon run. Is that such a horrible thing to do? I guess so, it would encourage people to play the game instead of farming it.

Even with a 20k reward it would be under the farming income had people farm the whole 3h, but at least playing the game would be a viable option to farming.

So instead of offering options to farms they nerf the farms and still leave us with no option to make money out of normal play. Heck they could even add a reward of 1k if you play a mission with a team that has at least one member that didn't finish that mission. Yes, you could abuse that by "farming" the mission, but how much worse is that compared to solo farming? At least to farm it you would need to help a new toon through the mission.

Now this I TOTALLY agree with. We all know, and Anet knows that the skill system is broken. No amount of nerfing, or tweaking will ever make it perfect, or even half decently fixed. Instead of focussing so much of their energy on 'skill balances' which really only end up pissing off most of the community anyway it would be nice to see their time, energy and funds put to a use which will bring something new into the game instead of constantly rehashing the old.

The best way I found to cure it was to move to a town like Shing Jea or Great Temple of Balth and sit and stare at the screen, then log off and do something else.

Oh and the reason I think they don't give high money rewards like you said, so things have prestigious value. So other folks can say haha I have 10 sets of FoW to your puny 2 sets and 3 15k sets. Plus my mini panda>your account. I think Anet just likes to have that e-peen factor out and about.

@Test me:

Do what everyone else who find it diffuclit or tedious to read skill descriptions and figure out a skill combination for themselves do: get your build here.

Edit: Also, in-game money aren't real, and buy you nothing but vanity crap. HTH.

because then if you are not one of the required classes then you would simply be left out, how would that be helpful in any way?? think about mesmers in the current game in the PvE environment.

but with your suggestion this problem would be made worse when they tell you which classes to take if you want to succeed. At least in the current game any class can make it through the game as not 1 class is severely penalized in any area (although this is untrue in certain elite areas).

lol at most of the replies here

The OP is correct in many ways.

ANet dug themselves into a hole by the way they designed the skills in the game. The original game had hundreds of skills and each expansion added hundreds more. Each huge set of new skills also made earlier areas of the game "unbalanced" because they had never been designed to cope with the new skills.

The logical result, which should have been very predictable, is a constant nerfing/buffing of skills to correct and "balance" a game that has been basically static as far as content for well over a year now. Balance should have been achieved long ago but because of the overwhelming number of skills it never will be. They will still be balancing the day before they turn off the servers as far as anyone can tell.

Prima never produced a guide for Nightfall or Eye of the North for a very simple reason. By the time the the guides for the first two chapters were printed, the skills had already changed making the majority of the guide useless. For the same reason ANet itself has never produced anything beyond a bare bones and essentially useless manual - leaving the players with only "unofficial" sources of information such as wiki and guru.

Farming is also an indirect result of this weakness. Rather than create new challenges (which they could not do since they are spending their time constantly balancing the game) they added more and more title grind. The result was that players are moved into farm-like behavior. (not necessarily farming itself but playing the same content over and over again to achieve the titles)

The lack of people playing together is also a result of this flawed design. It has nothing to do with heroes or consumables. It is a result of the game being title oriented now rather than content oriented. It is fun to play with others when you are "discovering" the game together. And people do join together when something new comes up (such as Mox) But when you are at the point that you are repeating content in order to achieve a "title" other people are a liability. you can't risk them making a mistake and forcing you to do it all again.

Frankly, GW2 was needed not so much because the game mechanics needed changed (though that certainly was true) but because the game was at the point of total nuclear skill melt down. It simply could not take the infusion of hundreds of new skills that would be expected in another chapter.

The OP is absolutely correct - the constant skill changing is a severe liability in this game. But, unfortunately, a necessary one because of the bloated nature of the game itself.

I did say in OP design it with a build for each class in mind and I still believe that is doable. If a class is so fundamentally broken that it doesn't even have a purpose for all the areas of the game, then I would say that spots a different issue. And designing content for certain skill sets for all classes is quite a good way to figure if there are such problems with different classes.

That's why I even went as far as saying that they should include a decent (notice the use of decent) build for each area/mission like part of a game manual. That may be taking things too far, but still...

These complaint threads are more entertaining than the game itself. I say Anet should continue nerfing the game, maybe every skill at once. That way there will be an over abundance of complaint threads which will keep us thoroughly entertained until Guild Wars 2 is released.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Help

There you go - enjoy

Read the game updates. It's as simple as that. Most builds that I use have been fine. Maybe ten skills a month are changed (if we're lucky). It's really not that hard to log onto wiki and check the update page before you sign on.

If you can't put the time in to learn how to PvP well and stay up-to-date with skill balances, I suggest you not PvP.

I don't think I could ever support ANet making cookie cutter builds for every area so that all professions have some "equal" level of functionality.

The BalanceHas To Happen. Thats How It Is.
People exploit Over Powerd Skills. They Have To Control That. considering Alot OF The Skills are Copys Of Others.. its Not THAT bad.. honestly.
Learn The Icons. If you Have Been PLaying Alsong As You Say.. Then It Cant Be Hard. Also. For Less Reading Use Concise It Helps.

@ Dawn, I Heard That Typing Sentances With All Capital Letters To Start Wuz Good! (Sorry, I just woke up, and that just seems really, really funny right now)


Anyways, @ OP, you raise a few good points (like how if a class is not useful in all areas of the game, then there is a serious problem) which I totally agree with. Then you come out with a few doozies such as following up your great point with It is not Anet's job to hold our hands as we cautiously pick our way through the big and frightening world of Guild Wars.

And then, my absolute favourite,

You lose pretty much all credibility when you throw something like that out there. Reading between the lines that just says "I can't be assed to actually play the game, just give me all my elite armour NOW!".

Yet another example of how you wish for your GW experience to be handed to you on a silver platter. Your heart is in the right place, asking for more stable skills/balance, and a better incentives for playing vs. farming, but you absolutely lose all momentum/credibility/respect/srs bsns in the thread when you ask to be babied as much as you have.

Um... obviously you need to know the skills if you're gonna be any good. It's not as daunting as you think, because I'd say 50% of the skills never get used, and if they are, you can be sure it's a crappy skill and doesn't do anything threatening. Out of the remaining 50%, probably half are rarely used and the other half you see all the time.

Also, you don't need to learn the exact wording. For example, I don't remember what the hell "doom" does (one of the 50% that are never used), but I saw a rit in AB use it. All I remember is that it's a damage skill. So I savage shot it and it doesn't do damage plus whatever else it would have done.

That makes learning easier, doesn't it?

But really, you can't expect to be on the same level as "players who play 8h a day" regardless of what you do.

I'm going to take the OP at face value and assume he/she wants some challenge and wants to play with some builds, but is annoyed by
a)the ease with which one or two builds can clear large swaths of the game, and
b) the number of skills out there.

There isn't much to do about b) except...make a bunch of characters of all classes. Spend the next year or so playing them. Or, change your secondary. Unlock all the skills you can, including elites. Repeat steps one and two. Spend your weekends doing this. Once this is done...

..hard mode. Your line about "designing an area that needs a certain build..." shouts hard mode.

Now, let's not get all "hard mode's not that hard" here. There are team builds--even seemingly reasonable ones--that will fail hard mode. A group of popups, a bad pull, a boss when you've got some DP, all of these can cause a hard mode fail. Seemingly rational hero and hench builds will wipe out if you don't find some way to deal with what you encounter. I've found a mesmer to be nearly indispensable in HM--and I've also walked out with a bad mesmer build and found the mesmer flat-out useless.

So, if you're serious about learning the skills and using the skills to clear areas, then..try that.

It certainly doesn't fix the central problems of the game, as both the OP and Tom Swift identified--the power creep of skills, the introduction of cons sets, and the use of PvE skills--but, if you feel like being a purist, it comes close.

The skill list can be intimidating..but I've actually found it -- or rather, the learning of it--to be one of the most rewarding parts of the game. Getting skills to work together, seeing damage pile up, or watching casters go through a bar getting interrupted the whole time...that's a small joy left in a game where a lot of small joys have disappeared.

OP, play chess.

What i've said there, is to me, the counter-balance equivalent to the godly powers of ANet to change the rules of the game every day they wish. If they do have this need to nerf all day, then give me the liberty to quickly adapt to any possible nerf they might do. And that means unlocking armor and weapons and map locations. Exactly what you can do in PvP, you should be able to do in PvE if you are expected to play with whatever nerf du jour they throw at you.

Otherwise working hard on leveling up a toon of another profession than what you played to get some advantage your current profession does not give you AND buying all the equipment needed AND getting the build (elite caps and all) can, and happened to me several times to present... can be just wasted time cause they just decide to nerf what you were going for. Yay!

Anyway, the core problem is not that and I was just being sarcastic. But still, if they want to keep their silly nerfs give me the freedom to adapt to them as quickly as they nerf it. Is seems only natural.

Otherwise what's the real point of all these nerfs? Really? Would the world go down and no one would be playing anymore if they hadn't nerf Ursan for example? No, quite the contrary, probably people left *because* they nerfed it. I don't really see any point in all this added complexity on top of an already far too complex skill system: the monthly nerf. (PS I don't really care about ursan, cryway, sabway past, present or future nerfs in particular, it's just trying to fix a big GW problem with the wrong tools).

And whatever they do, they will never nerf it right, something else will always come along. So just let the people play this game and give me (and others like me) a rest. So I don't have to be in a continuous catch up phase. And invest the energy they invest in nerfing skills today in coming up with new content.

Now there is a thought. And I am repeating myself far too many times now.

Get a better memory or quit GW,prety simple.

Adapt, encounter, overcome.
The game wouldn't be challenging if you could just log in and push god mode everytime.
You haven't mentioned your start date with GW, nor the campaigns you own....
But assuming by your forum user creation date: Sept. 2008
You have alot of wiki reading to do.
Most of the fun had in GW is the challenge of countering other builds.
So, enjoy the changes!!

Wut?



Let me get this straight... you are saying... that because they nerf skills... you should be able to have FoW on all your toons after you bought one... ooohhh, and you should have voltaics for all your toons because you bought one...

LOL!

Dude, you sound as if a few skill nerfs are hurting your ability to PvE. Cry more please.



Your main point about how multiple nerfs are bad is still a good point. Just stop adding in this crap about how a few nerfs entitles you to perfect PvE characters right off the bat.

what do you call a player who wants the game to be easier without putting in the time to get better?
i can't seem to think of the word...

a-net nerfing and farming is like a cat and a mouse, we make a new build to farm something a-net nerfs it, we make a new one a-net nerfs it so and so forth. what they need to do is make rewards for actually playing the game better than those of farming. do you really come play a game so you can farm? or do you come and play because you would like to play that game?

what gets me is the fact that most of you people instead of actually giving an answer to the OP you give sarcasm and grief...WTF. it's like 'Damn i am so mad at mommy and daddy for not giving me more, but i have so many insecurities about my nerdy appearance...ahhh i know i will bash people on the internet to build up my confidence!!!'

and another thing all this "ANET has to work on GW2 stop crying about new content and leave them alone!!!" F*** GW2 i have spent over 150 dollars on GW1 either leave the skills alone (never got it right, never gonna get it right.) or give new content as the OP suggested.