Nerf fatigue

When I read the title I thought this was going to be about removing the exhaustion mechanic.

Bad idea, but would have made a more productive thread.

QQ came around as the two "q"'s together look like eyes that are crying.

OK let's get more examples in as people seem to have trouble understanding what I'm saying, because I am saying too much under one single thread.

So instead of nerfing skills and builds and working against players, I think ANet should:
1. work on providing new content/areas and design them with a certain player build/set of skills in mind since the build is the holy grail of GW. I do very much doubt ANet ever designed content thinking about the build players would use in that content first. They just throw crap at us and see what we come up with, and then they nerf it if they don't like it.

Ex.: They chose to nerf ursanway after it was in use for more than a year. What they could've done instead in that year: add a new elite area to the game designed so that ursan way = fail big time way. Make this elite area the coolest and ursan would have died anyway without people complaining about it being nerfed.

2. work on "nerfing" the crappy 250 items limit per stack - what is that? Like ANet can't afford another byte to count how many of the same thing you've got? Really pathetic, imo.

3. work on lifting the character gold limit - ridiculous. And that's why we need ectos as currency and that's why people farm them and that's why people cry when the farming builds get nerfed or their value changes and so on. They could also add a higher account limit while they are at it.

Also add new cool drops that take over the dying ectos and others. Anything that is in the game for a long time is doomed to become more common and loose value, it is impossible to prevent that people "wantz" it. I don't see how they can't get that simple thing.

4. work on adding much bigger rewards for players actually playing the game. Make them so big that they rival any farm. Let's see who is going to farm when actually playing is just as profitable. After all 8 real people working together to clean up a dungeon for 3h is something that should be promoted over solo farming the UW for 3h. How to you promote that? Make them profitable.

5. introduce simple rewards that invite people to help new players to get through the missions. What's the current incentive to go back and play a mission you've already mastered? None. People only do that when a new guildie begs them. Otherwise everybody is either PvPing or solo farming.

Really I fail to see where GW actually encourages you to play with other players. As someone else very wisely stated, other players are just a liability in this game. The rewards and everything seems to stack up to support that idea. Would it be so hard to "nerf" the quests so that this changes? I don't think so.

6,7,8 you name them...

And imagine all the other things they could do if they would just leave the skill system as it is (broken as it will ever be) and work on something else that is far more relevant and needed.

With all the changes you want, GW might not be the game for you. Have you considered this? I would suggest you a few single player RPGs where you can mod and upgrade them at your desire.

God, why is it so hard to understand this?
All I suggest (can't even want things, who am I to want changes in this game?) is that they spend less time and energy to nerf skills and frustrate people and make it impossible for wikis or anyone to hold up to it (and write guides about it) and turn that energy into more positive nerfs: "let them have whatever farm du jour, we'll implement a new cool area where that build is countered".

I just suggest that change of attitude.

Yes it's borken. And they can fix it by pissing everybody off and cheating (because that's exactly what they do by changing the rules of the game, only that it's not a player that is cheating but rather the game itself) AND make it impossible for casual player to keep up AND ask a tremendous effort from the community to maintain sites and builds (saw how outdated pvx is? or even this forum's build templates? - why do you think that's so?)....

when they could do it the other way around: "let them have the UW and farm it all till they're death bored of it, we'll just give them a new challenge in a new elite area with new elite drops that would become the next cool thing".

How about that approach for a change? And all the energy invested in this ridiculous and pointless skill updates can go towards other areas, I just gave some example.

Come what may, I rest my case.

fatigue is overpowered and should be nerfed

Closest Anet got to this was DoA, unfortunately duping and anet refusing to update rewards makes this area still not as profitable as it should be. Mallyxes greens are worthless, the demonic sheild is worthless, tormented weapons are relatively dirt cheap for the effort.

That's because OP is a whiny crybaby who is annoyed that Essence of Celerity has had its duration lessened from 25% to 20%, so his pvxwiki ecto farming Shadowform build doesn't work any more, and he still hasn't figured out what skill to change to make it work again.
He's just smart enough to realize there already are threads about that, so he's framed it more generally as WHY DOES ANET HAVE TO NERF EVERYTHING?!?!?!

Every. Single. Time. there's a skill balance, even if it's a buff not a nerf, we get threads like this. It gets old. It gets really, really, really, old.


(hint: it's Glyph of Swiftness! hth!)

i dont see how these 'skill balances' make the game any better
pve'wise, its all sins
and pvp'wise, most sins' skills are still broken....

When people say you may want to find another game, that's really sound advice. But there's also nothing wrong with wanting some changes you think would improve a game that you like. Unfortunately, not only are there many people other than yourself that play who want very different things than you, but the game just wasn't designed to accommodate some of these changes.

The no monthly fee/chapter model was intended to have people play through the game's limited PvE content a limited amount of times, then focus on PvP if desired, and/or put the game down until the next chapter was released. Get it? Beat the game, put it away, then come back and buy the sequel so Anet can keep going. With no monthly fee the new chapters were their major source of revenue and they needed to concentrate on those. They even had two teams working concurrently on two separate yearly chapters; while one team releases and polishes one game, the next team is 6 months into the other.

But Anet underestimated the amount of MMORPG/WoW reject no-lifers and were genuinely surprised to see so many remain in the game after playing through it and not bother much with PvP - some of the best co-op play at the time IMO. Instead, with no higher levels to grind towards, no Legendary Sword of Doom to hunt, no areas restricted to level infinite players only, they did pointless crap like farm endlessly to amass virtual wealth and take prices out of reach of regular players, stand around towns uttering such stupidity that many had to make use of their chat filters when in these places (some still have them off), complain that there was nothing left to do and how bored they were.

So Anet decided to throw the no-lifers a bone and gave them more things to keep them busy while they work on new content i.e. the next chapter, or as is the case today, GW2. The nerfs/balances are meant to keep the current game "balanced" and players happy. How much they fail at that is open to debate but their intentions were good.

I'd argue there's nothing more relevant or needed than GW2 at this point. Seriously, find something else to pass the time (guru is a good place for daily kicks).

I've never done UW SC, nor am I interested in.

The reason I've started this thread is because I got 3 of my friends convinced to give it a try to this game. They bought all campaigns and GWEN with the new all-in-one offer and they've completely quited in about than 2 months, by the time second nerf came around.

It was hugely insanely hard to explain them how to play and that you need good builds with sklls form all 3 campaigns and by the time they got that their builds were outdated PvP and PvE and no one would pug with them cause they didn't have the skill du jour.

So how exactly do you explain to someone new hundreds of skills and then even explain them that they will change monthly:

"you know all I tell you and all builds I give you are good this month, next month when they update/nerf it I would need to give you another one, but for now just use what I gave you should be good for a while"

They really found no point in sticking around and they kind of blamed me for their wasted money, cause I said it's a really cool game.

When I started playing, things were much different. Had I started now... I agree with them. And I got tired of following up their update wiki and all as well. I just want to play! And I just want to be given the stability that when I learn what a skill does and how a build works I don't have to throw all that to the garbage next month. How are you even expected to keep up with this game?

I do realize that this may not be a problem to hardcore fans that give it a lot of time and attention, but I just don't have that much time to invest in it.

And the thing is that the opinion of hardcore fans doesn't matter. A game is successful if casual players like it. Hardcore fans will play it anyway no matter what they throw at them, and they are not the majority of the player base (or maybe that's not true anymore with GW at this point, I don't know).

That's where I come from.

PS: I didn't even know they nerfed the essence, I don't have any cons on me and rarely had to use them, and I didn't see it in the update notes. Is it true?
But anyway if true, if you think about it this is even worse than a skill nerf. Is like ANet going into your pocket and replace all your $25 bills with $20 bills. So you can't even be sure on the item stats now? You buy it today because you think this item does X and you buy 200 of them and tomorrow this item is useless to you cause it doesn't do X anymore, but you already have 200? Hmmm.. just as a PS. I don't know if they nerfed it, hadn't seen it in the official updates when I looked. And I wouldn't care, just more proof that nothing is safe to the big nerf wand of ANet. Next I'll find that my 20% enchant staff mode will be nerfed to 15%, cause it's too unbalanced. Or who knows what they'll entertain us with (one thing is for sure though, it's not going to be new content, they never nerf the content - golden rule).

PS2: Anyway the observation is right. I did become a cry baby with this thread. So I'll just shut up. If you people find all this OK, that's fine with me. Since I started playing this game long ago, I kind of accumulated a lot seeing how it all went from good to worse to really bad and I've expressed too many ideas and points that could be improved in just one go. Take my feedback for what it's worth, at least I bothered giving my feedback as I believe this is least I can do for a game I really liked and enjoyed time ago.

Regarding PvE - that's pure and simple bullshit.
1. People do not not play with other people because said people would lack certain skills - but rather because multiplayer is dead in GW.
2. Your friends will be able to win GW PvE with crappy builds. We all did.

Skill changes are what keeps the game interesting. It's much better to change the skills so people have to find new ways to beat an area. If they never changed the skills then the old areas would be the same every time and would get stale fast. It's the fact that the skills change, and therefore so do the enemies in each area.

in essence, you're suggesting that the current content never changes (letting it get stale so it can always be done the same way every time 'til the end of days) and they just keep adding new content with better rewards. That's just asking for a very fast cycle since as soon as people have done whatever new area they'll ask for more, and more, and more. Then what do we have? You back on here QQing about having too many areas to keep up with?

Skill updates are what keeps the game fresh since every time there's a skill update people look at them and work out what they can use to their advantage and what other possibilities there are now.

Also, to note the point in your first post, you noted you have to keep checking what skills are being used on you as you can't tell from the icon? If you get to know the current content better then you'd know what skills the enemies in each area use. The fuctionality of the skills very rarely changes, so it's going to be the same effect every time give or take a couple of points to the power/duration. My advice to counter your problems of not knowing skills is to get to know the current content better.

As for having to level up a character every time you find new farming builds, just create a character of each profession and get it to a certain point throughout each campaign. Then if you find there's something you want to do there's very little work to be done to get to the point where you need to be, if any at all.

to OP:
go play WoW
it seems that GW is just too smart for you...

[QUOTE=papryk;4345977]to OP:
go play WoW
it seems that GW is just too smart for you...[/QUOTE]

I lol'd
12chars

It was mostely PvP. One of my friends didn't even want to hear about PvE, although he didn't realize a PvP toon starts with all things "maxed" and etc.

As I said, I was trying to make too many points in one thread cause I don't get the time to do this usually. I taked about PvE, PvP, farming over normal play, nerfs etc etc NVM, if any I said is useful to anyone than so be it.

My nerf fatigue is still a fact. But it may be just my problem, I admit.

In PvP terms, to me this explains why most of the people are "noobs" after 3 years of play and why there is no real easy transition from PvE to PvP. And the few that do actually master PvP, all they do is complain why the player base is so terrible. They never go think a step further to why that may happen.

But just for my own curiosity and maybe to prove me right or wrong.

Can you please point me to any sort of doc (official or not) that explains how to start playing, how to get in PvP, what's a build, how to create your own build giving some examples of skills synergies and offers some good suggestions on what basic build to use at start up time and how to grow?

My bet is that if there would be any such page, or if someone wanted to add one by the time the page was done it would be already outdated. You're free to prove me wrong.

Maybe I'll learn something from this one.

Skill > time starts to apply for PvP once the player becomes acquainted with all the skills, builds and techniques ran in the arena of choice (for instance - weapon mastery classes are pretty much the worst thing one can bring to the Luxon side at Aspenwood compared to the status of the warrior in arenas where targets can not hide behind closed doors).

Simple.
PvE and PvP do not follow the same rules.
If you want to play PvP - you need to learn the mechanics of GW, and if you want to PvE - you need to learn how to spam Protective Spirit.

While that's true, that was only his first part. After this imo valid point, he concluded with a whine about PvE not being rewarding enough, how people are "forced" to farm for new armor and skills that are needed to adapt to the "nerfs" Anet introduces.

Then later he states:

- Part of the fun of the game is leveling a new toon up to level 20, and learning new skills while doing so.
- Equipment isn't that big of a problem. Ever heard of collectors? All you need is ONE toon through the game(s), who can go and kill some creatures, collect 5 of their drops, and trade those for a perfect blue weapon req. 9, max stats, that might only need a few upgrades (prophecies are already fully modded). Sure, you might want nicer looking weapons, greens or elite skins, but you don't NEED those to have a well equipped toon. And as you play, you easily make enough cash for that elite armor or cool weapon.
- That would be too easy. Create a new toon, map to emberlight camp, buy all the skills you need, map to Droknar's Forge, buy maximum armor, then breeze through prophecies untill you get to Droknar's Forge the normal way. *yawn*. You can already get a run to droknar and learn unlocked skills with tomes, so this is not needed. At all.

These 3 points would do exactly the opposite of making GW fun: it would make it boring.

So the OP shouldn't moan imo if that's his grief.
The only valid point he made is the fact that skills change so often, it's sometimes hard to keep up for the casual player.
But then again, I'm also a casual player, and I really don't know all the skills in the game that well, but i just make my own builds, or get them from forums or friends, I read them ingame before going out, and see how they work, then later tweak them to better suit my playing habits. And yes I kinda ignore a lot of skills I don't know about (mostly mesmer skills lol). And I do pretty fine in PvE. (suck at PvP though).

And even though upier slightly exaggerates it by saying "learn to spam Protective Spirit", it's true that PvE isn't that hard. The only hard parts are some bonuses (like the annoying runners in Moddok Crevice) or missions that you just aren't that good at while doing them alone with H/H (I can name a few), some master difficulty quests, and perhaps Hard Mode.
And even those more difficult parts of PvE can be overcome if you just take a little time to build your toon and your heroes to form a team that is fit for a specific task/mission/quest.
I won't say PvE is too easy, but it's not that hard either. To me, it's enjoyable. Yes, I admit most of the game is easy to me now, having played it for 3.5 years, and even my girlfriend who has just started playing a few months ago is pretty darn good at it (amazes me really, as I remember having difficulties with a lot of missions the very first time), but then again, she mostly enjoyes quests, and dislikes missions, so I help her with that, and 2 players with 6 heroes that are selected and given builds that are most effective for a certain mission make it a lot easier than the early pre-hero days. Now you can pick up heroes pretty early on in the game (Koss, Dunkoro, Sousuke/Jin, Melonni, Olias, Zenmai) and when you reach level 10 (which can be done in a few hours just doing quests) you can go get MOX and go to EotN and get Vekk, Ogden and Gwen. Voila, 4 level 20 heroes, 2 level 15 heroes, and some others you might need to level a bit. Bring Ogden as a healer/protter, Vekk as a nuker and Olias as a MM plus 4 henchmen = win. After doing that for some time, you gain more heroes which you can build and tweak some more, along with the occasional elite skill, and stuff just gets easier, which is good, as the missions and quests should get harder as you progress, which imo they do.

Long story short: PvE is not hard at all, but should give the starting player enough of a challenge to keep it fun. And I think it does.

Yay to less nerfing.
Nay to suggested changes.

Frequent skill changes are vital for GW because it automatically seperates those who are good at the game and those who are bad.

Good players: Read the skill updates, learn how the new descriptions act and interact, and discover new builds and strategies that are equally as good or better then their previous builds. This allows them to gain an advantage over Bad players, both by developing better farming builds sooner, and also by discovering better PvP builds sooner. By the time the Bad players read about in Guru/Wiki, the Good players will have had their fun and the next update will be on the way.

Bad players: Make whine posts on Guru, either before or after quitting.

And the best part about it, is that a vast majority of skill changes have no effect on PvE whatsoever. Everyone can still finish all the campaigns with any build (or no build at all). The only area where the subtle changes in skills are actually important is in PvP and let's face it, if you can't bother learning all the changes, you don't belong in PvP anyway.

People who can't learn these things for themselves by simply playing the game are Bad players.

You can't actually think I was suggesting all that, can you? I was just being absurd to try to prove a point.

PS: Still curious about that guide/link I asked in previous post. Genuinely curious.

tl;dr. gbtwow.

You know, I am a software designer myself, although not a game designer in particular. And you just made me realize that GW is basically in a permanent beta state. They shouldn't even call this version 1. The product was never launched. It's just 0.9945. That's the only way I can explain such an unstable software product.

I do understand expansions/upgrades which would be counted as version 1.1 or 2.0. But that's not what they are doing with these nerfs is it? Technically they are still fixing bugs, so there you go they're in beta.

And to put it in software-ish terms, they break backward compatibility every month or so. So there you go, they never launched a full mature product. They're still in beta testing and still struggling to launch it.

A mature game would not challenge players by changing the rules of the game, but by adding new content where the old ways just don't work and then people know they face the unknown cause they enter a new area they haven't entered before. Also that would not deny your previously acquired game experience, old areas will still be defeated as you learned to do it one year ago.

The thought that people actually think that this way of handling things is actually entertaining cause it keeps the game from getting old... I find that really saddening. This is not how things should be but we all got used to it, as it is the only change we get, and therefore a possibility for excitement/something different.

Really sad. ANet is treat its *great* fan base that sticked through till this day like crap and they don't know better so we accept anything. And we get excited at the most minor of the changes cause we've got used to getting nothing.

Maybe the balance of the skills is going better, but in reality that is not most important. Imbalanced games can be tons of fun as well. I even find a lot more rewarding defeating a PvP team that was way overpowered than defeating an equal team, and I find sometimes fun just the fact that I can go in some PvE area and smash every monster like in god mode cause I know that area so all that I can handle anything there. However they are obviously obsessed with balance and that's they only thing they see.

Really sad. Yes, the couple of people that suggested me to move on were right. I need to move on. Sadly cause I really loved this game a lot time ago, and I was "loyal" and didn't want to move because I liked it so. Hope dies last, how they say it.

However I'm just getting too tired of waiting for ANet to finally get it right spoiling and ruining everything in trying to do so. It's gone from excellent to good to bad to worse and it keeps going down.

i personally doubt you are a software developer. if you are, then you must realize that software change and evolve. this is just greatly magnified for a game like guild wars, which was initially slated to be an extremely competitive e-sport game. balanced pvp was supposed to drive this game forward. obviously that part of the plan fell through, but the game was designed with constant balancing in mind, and that's not going to change.

if you still think constant balancing is somehow bad, consider this: before reaching the state of more-or-less perfect balance, the game starcraft went through a ton of balance changes (anyone remembered when zerg queens had the glaive wurm attack? or hatcheries costing 400 minerals? or terran wraiths had to upgrade before getting a ground attack? yikes). game balance happens, and it will continue to happen. it's called SUPPORT, which as a software developer, you should know. GW simply needs more support than usual, since its 1000+ skills, their interactions with each other, and other game mechanics, are enormously hard to balance.

I have no need to prove anything regarding this point. Your "if you are then you must..." is not relevant. If I am then I must have a geeky look and wear glasses as well?

However, software changing is called versioning. When a software is released it goes through a cycle from unstable versions to a stable version 1.

In games in particular the situation is pretty bad because most games nowadays are released not as a final version, although publishers push it as a final "stable" release cause they just want to cash in. And then a bunch of updates happen to actually make the game stable. In reality they launch most of the games in beta or even alpha and then they patch it till it gets to a stable enough state, which is actually what they should've released to begin with.

In the case of guild wars, it just seemed obvious to me that the skill system is not yet version 1. Any software system that needs so many fixes cannot be called stable or "out of beta".

Therefore documenting such software (in this case writing a decent play guide) is impossible. Since the software is still in beta and subject to change.

If ANet would document anything about it then they would have the issue of backwards compatibility. "Oh we can't nerf this skill this way because we documented it to work as it currently works in our manual and we would break that". But they've been very careful at avoiding giving players any such sort of documentation. Third parties are reluctant to do that as well. And I reckon there is a very good reason why this doesn't happen. I also reckon that had the system been more stable and therefore possible to document the quality of its player base would see a substantial increase.

Good example. Another game launched in alfa/beta that got fixed after the sale point. Did they take 3.5 years to "update" it to a stable release however? Are they still updating/supporting/nerfing/fixing/(whatever you want to call it) it?

GW is going on a quest for perfect balance when it should go instead on a quest of making players have fun. Even if they theoretically get to the point of making the skill system perfect, would you as a player have more fun with this game?

I suspect the answer is NO. As long as there aren't any huge flaws in the balance of the game, no one would really care. They're just being perfectionists and stubborn to let it go and address other issues that need addressing.

And while skill balances are good in the beginning, GW is way past the point of diminishing returns in this regard. The fatigue/frustration effect on the players of the skill changes overcomes the benefits.

Alot of games I play add new content to keep players interested instead of readjusting existing game mechanics to give a false impression of something new. You can adjust all GW skills all day long but at the end of the day even with your newly redefined skill sets you're still tackling the same boring shit. Nothing really changes.

Perhaps I should uninstall sometime in the near future.

There are places in the Prophesies game that are different each time you enter the area.

Some parts of the Southern Shiverpeaks and the Fire Islands, you do not always find the same boss creature in the same area.

I don't know why they didn't make that standard for the entire game its pretty absurd for Boss/Mob location and content to always remain constant.

I am really hoping that GW2 goes with more variety and allows evolution to occur depending on player actions.

To put it in gw1 terms, If someone always goes to the big rock outside a city to kill a Necro Boss and usually uses the certain skills to beat his fixed skills.
The game should start to compensate, Boss should evolve move on or cease to exist.

Most of the time we would see little change as players and parties vary but when a specific farming build is used by many then things would start to change as the AI fights back.

More ambushes would be good too and not always in the same place, Be nice to turn off the radar too so you have to actually use your eyes to see enemies.
No radar should be the default for hard mode.

Oh well Ive done my QQing lol

OP, I find the skill changes somewhat fun. While I am not always excited to have to change runes and weapons on heroes, the skill balances do not always result in my having to do so.

You say that GW is still in Beta? Did you stop to think that maybe regular skill changes were always intended? Certainly not all of the changes were intended, but I have to think that the skill changes in general are good for the game, overall. The PvP crowd often complains when enough skills are not changed. On the PvE side, I look for changed skills and think, "hey, this will cruise through area x." The skill changes also affect the baddies, making some areas easier and some harder. If not for the skill changes, I would likely not change more than a skill or two on my bars, and probably would have been bored to death in short order. Half of the fun for me is looking through the changes, forums and wikis to see what new stuff the changes will allow me to do.

the OP continues to try to convince people that GW is somehow "not stable", and therefore continuously in beta. that is not true. this is because he is fixated on skill balancing, which were always intended to the variable elements in the game and therefore has no bearing on GW's "completeness". GW's completeness is purely judged on how well it runs on a machine. does it often crash? no. does it run well on its intended hardware? yes. therefore, it is stable.

going back to my starcraft example: no, it did not take 3.5 years for it to reach a balance equilibrium. however, keep in mind that blizzard had an actual TEAM to manage its game balance (as opposed to just one person for arenanet). their battle.net system can keep track of everything, from player race distribution down to the actual win percentages by race, by skill level, by map, by early/mid/late-game scenarios, etc. they had a lot of data to work with, whereas izzy did not. as such, starcraft, by virtue of being easier to balance and having a lot more data to work with, reached its balance equilibrium a lot sooner.

starcraft is also the perfect example to completely defeat your concept of "new content = good game". starcraft has not received any new content for NINE YEARS. how does it stay fresh? well, by its mostly flawless balance and by player generated content. the last part is important. keeping a game fresh by constantly adding new content, using GW's revenue model, is IMPOSSIBLE. to keep its players interested, GW will have to follow the same path as starcraft. that is, it needs absolutely incredible pvp balance. player generated content in a well-balanced game will never get stale, because the endless permutations of strategy/counterstrategy/style/counterstyle is always fun. compared to continuously pumping in new content, balanced pvp is both far more cost effective and far more interesting. new content will eventually get old; balanced pvp will almost never get old.

So... moral of the story

Some people bitch about GW for not adding new content
(see: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10336427)

Some people bitch about GW because they do (like this guy and the OP).



Ultimate lesson to be learned... you can't win.

this is the meaning of life. for one, no skills should ever have been split for pvp/pve. they should always all be the same. the game was made with minimal grind for max level/equipment. its a pvp game, thats your new content. with that in mind, they should change skills that effect pvp mostly. (aside from shadowform which is just utter garbage) pve is quite easy now. anet introduced pve only skills (anything on a title track) so people dont even use a full compliment of actual skills in pve anyway. so why should they care when basically they have 4 elites on their bar? as for the OP talking about how hes a casual gamer and such and doesnt play 8 hours per day, anet got the money from you when you bought the game. anet gives you free usage of their servers. they shouldnt slow the progress of a game for casual gamers. the people that have the most insight into how the game works and the people that find the newest FotM farming/pvp builds are the ones that play 8+ hours a day. these are the people anet should be responding to.

Those pasty 8+ hour a day players are exactly the people anet nerfs things for. Those are the people who come on sites like this wailing and moaning about balance and broken play because at first they were benefiting from it then their secret got out and everyone joined in.

Casual players aren’t on here PI$$ing and moaning about how now everyone can farm DoA, how now everyone can farm ectos in UW, how now everyone is running blood spike or Iway in PvP, the ones who are doing that are the ones who started doing it and they slipped and told what they were doing and the word got out.

After that then everyone was doing it pro zombies and block headed casuals alike. The thing was and is the pros don't want the casuals doing what they do. What people fail to see is that most people even with the right build and equipment still cant do the stuff so then they join in with the crying and stuff gets nerfed.

I have railed against nerfing since I started playing I was on these boards learning before I bought the game. Most people raise cane about farming, faction farming, green framing, PvP play, on and on because those players aren't playing how they play and everyone should play how they do.

Anet doesn’t pander to casuals anet panders to whiners and those come out of the wood work from all sides, PvP, PvE, pro, casual and the middle.

I've ranted my fair share but always about things being taken away, not for them to be taken away.

The skill split was the best thing so far and should have happened sooner. It would have lessened the conflict between those who like to PvE and PvP instead now there are those on each side who blame the other things they don't like.

I'm always for more content and always against changes that reduce enjoyment.

PvP balance is a must, but making changes to stop people from enjoying something just doesn't seem right to me. But hey I'll whine about the changes for a little while and hold a grudge that they are no longer there but I'll continue to enjoy the game.

It would just be nice to receive new content instead of putting so much work into reducing it. Yes the areas are still there but the builds that were fun and enjoyable are gone as soon as new ones come up they will change it so those will not work in a short amount of time as well.

This mode of operation seems to pander to those who have devoted huge amounts of time in the game so at the slightest hint of a new FotM farming build they can mobilize and take advantage of it before the process of nerfing it starts all over again. The changes don't seem to benefit casual players who have to find out about the build, build up characters and get them to the spots, then by the time they get there the place is nerfed.

Gimmick builds aren't nerfed because they're 'too good' (usually) or because 'pros' don't want their secrets to get out (good players don't rely on gimmicks). They're nerfed because gimmicks abuse a single mechanic to get a dispropotionate result out of their ability. Gimmicks ruin the mid-level playing field because Jimmy McGuildWars running gimmicks, who knows nothing outside the game, will utterly demolish Bob SupGW who is trying to run balanced builds and get better at the game. It doesn't take skill to count down from 3, or to cspace, and you shouldn't be able to roll players better than you without playing better. That's the basis of competition - skill wins, and gimmicks exclude skill from the equation.

As a result, everyone starts running retarded gimmicks and either it gets unpleasant and not fun for the newer players who are trying to get better by playing a proper build, or boring for the solid teams who don't like having to crush gimmick scrubs all day long. That's not good for the game. At the same time, Guild Wars needs gimmicks - there has to be space for mind games in tournaments, and to give weaker player an easier way in. There'll always be gimmicks, but they shouldn't be outright imbalanced stuff like pre-nerf IWAY, SBRI, DMos, etc...