Tie PvE skills to attribute lines

/notsigned
Just make all reputation titles account wide. There you have it , less grind , more real play.

Well, there are pro's and con's to this suggestion.

Imo PvE skills were implemented to open the game up to the masses, to make it easier for the more casual player. Yeah ok, this infuriated the more hard-lined PvE people but in general they were accepted. It also removed class-specific skills so people could use outside of the norm. UrsanMonks for example (of which I was one I admit!!).

Linking the skills to certain attributes could be a good idea but breaks the idea of this accessibility. And I think it would seriously p**s a lot of people off, quitting the game in the process. And ANet will not do something that could hinder further sales of GW, as PvE skills were one of the major selling points really.

But yes, PvE skills are overpowered and the grind was removed in the previous major update. If people still think its a grind in general for these skills, quit with the QQ already as it isn't anymore. And this is what I didn't really agree with. For example, do a few quests, taking hour or so, and bingo, Pain Inverter is yours and giving you 100% damage returned at rank 0.

In conjunction with the high damage output (PI, CoP etc), this is what is broken and this is the part that needs fixing. CoP is (and always has been) stupidly OP and I am surprised the nerfbat has not hit this. Hell, its quicker than ursan ever was in the hands of a team that is reasonably skilled. Throw in Ray of Judgment for good measure into the team and voila, bye bye insane volumes of groups in seconds. And that is so wrong. So drop the damage dealt, change the construct of some of the skills too. Fairer on everyone then.

Yeah ok, may ruin a few builds here and there but it would sway the game slightly back to how it was originally designed to be.

Just my 2 cents worth.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I think Tyla has hit the proverbial nail on the head here. You may think that grind only hurts the people who are 'too lazy' to chase the rewards, but think back over the times you've been waiting for a member of a particular profession for a group. How many times do you think that there may have been a member of that profession sitting in the outpost who would join, except that they only have rank 4 in the I Have No Life title? Or even someone who's already in your group who would offer to 'take it for the team' and come back with a character of the needed profession, except that their character of the Supply < Demand profession is still at only rank 6 of the title? Or that the person who would otherwise fit in the needed slot is still out grinding from rank 7 to rank 8 of I Have No Life?

One of the recurring laments about GW is the lack of people in outposts to form groups with. Think. How much of that is because people who would otherwise be joining groups are still out grinding (a use of time that doesn't really result in that much improvement of player skills)? How much of that is because people who would otherwise be joining groups have decided that the barriers to entry are just too high and have found other things to do?

As I've already said - the genie probably can't be put back into the bottle until GW2, since it will annoy people to find their grinding was now for nothing. But it would have been better kept in the bottle in the first place, and in GW2 maybe it can be again.

Thank goodness I don't have to form pugs anymore - took me ages to get monks to do the desert missions. I don't pug much since I spent an afternoon trying to do Boreas Seabed with a PuG and fail and then did masters on the first run with henchies (no heroes at the time).

Anet RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up their game when they insisted on keep PvP and PvE together. Its absurd to fight mobs that have the kind of stats they have in PvE with skills balanced to fight level 20 opponents.

That absurd is what degenerated PvE in what it is - BIG NUMBERS from both sides, abuse of AI with tanking skills and overpowered consumables. The game just went on a escalation that left previous areas unchanged and ridiculous underpowered.

This will never happen, a change like this would make GuildWars PVE less grindy. And we don't want that, right?

/notsigned

Why are people pretending this is a thread about griding?

Grind was in a large part mitigated by the awesome "LARGEST PATCH EVER".

Because PvE skills are both imbalanced and based on grind. One argument for imbalance is that it takes no attribute points, another for grind based is that it allows people to be more inclusive at the risk of a few attribute points for incredibly powerful skills.

Laziness isn't really a key area in grinding either - that's like saying that everyone bought this game as another chore which will eventually give players the ability to play with other players aswell. That was one of the very same things with Ursan. It is also more friendly to the casual playergroup.

In imbalance, it's the skills power and the fact they don't need attribute points outside of select Sunspear skills. Sure, they would still be imbalanced with the change, but at least certain characteristics of a character trait from before the introduction of PvE skills will stay.

They pretty much go hand-in-hand if you ask me.

First of all, I like the idea of PvE skills to attribute lines. But keep max benefit at 12, so both primary and secondary have the same benefit.
And maybe keep it linked to the title track, but with less benefit from that compared to the attribute line.

However, this will in no way help players find teams easier.
Why? Because most people don't seem to be willing to play outside of their own group.
Oh, yes they will, when there is a roughly 90% succes rate and if things don't take too long. Hence the success of Cryway and Ursan.
But other than that? Perhaps players who don't visit forums but the vast majority here on guru had the opinion 'pugs suck' since 2006/2007.
So please don't even pretend that you are helping the general PUG player.
You are helping yourselfs and the people you play with most often (like guild and alliance) since with the proposed change you don't have to grind for the titles anymore.
That means rolling a character more efficient and getting benefit from those very overpowered PvE skills right away.


And Abadeus:
The game still is around skill and not time spent playing.
Some people from agro showed that recently in another thread.
Nothing has changed, you don't need those PvE skills and if your alliance teams require them I'd surgest finding a better alliance. Though I find it hard to believe that TAM or their alliance guilds would require certain builds.

I will kill another person that will write that, mister Do Jes.

Yeah. So why SY, why overpowered at r1, is still better at r5-10? I think it lasts almost twice as long, making it piss easy to maintain.

With people who do PuG in any form of group, it will help.

This is especially with Cryway and the like - less grind needed to farm and test variants on other characters? I think those people would like that, as it doesn't hurt any crowd except those who can't adapt to said change.

Regardless of the opinion or status of a PuG, this will be helping PuGs.

How can I help myself by proposing a change for a game I don't even play anymore? Infact, I'd rather have PvE skills removed (And I bet anybody that has a clue and cares even a bit about PvE would agree with that), and it will not positively affect anybodies power in missions, but positively affect how they play and such. And no, it's not for the crying, as that got boring with the nerfs anyway.

Also, if I do end up playing again and participating in PvE, I'd go for GWAMM again - and I'll be grinding to get it, because I want to see those letters under my name to say "I've pretty much finished PvE!". Why? Why not? I'm some teen who's got an incredible amount of time on his hands.

And this is a bad thing how? You don't have to grind everything on every character to test a variant of whatever build that way, and you don't have to grind everything to join a PuG upon creating a new character. This is not a bad thing at all from a casual players' point of view.


You've never required PvE-only skills, it's just they allow you to do something stupid easy at such low requirements. SY? 85% of most damage mitigated on one person, with an extra 32% and decent damage is just dumb. CoP? A skill with such a small requirement yet so cheap in terms of skill status, recharge and energy is horribly dumb. I would talk about SF but that's another thread. If there was a skill that killed everything on the map for so cheap, would it be the same argument or would it be going against?

Chance based entirely. Unless the coin is biased.
First player will win if they know what they're doing.

What.

Fair enough, but with games like this, it's defined by first player/second player.

Never heard of it.
Relies a lot on chance.
See Parcheesi.

What.
Only two of the games you presented to me are skill based. The rest all contain so much chance it's laughable. Unless you think a game of chance is balanced.

In games like this, the concept is completely different. Balancing by making both sides equal will make it stale to most people - you have too much variety. Hexes, shutdown, spike, pressure, all sorts can be used. In PvE, shutdown doesn't see much use, hexes are only used to fulfill a condition or act defensively, spike is only ever used with quick recharge and in PvE AoE, pressure is/was used most of the time in PvE.

Limit them when they are too much? Are you f*cking kidding me?

We are not computer generated. The enemy AI is.

You think about chances too much. Skill should be what matters. On several occasions, you are overpowered by something, and you must generate a tactic that can overthrow that thing. That is putting your skill to the test, looking for a blind spot within the enemy. Chess is one of those games where you're starting on equal footage, but from the first move, you're using skill and searching for blind spots in the enemies' tactics. The first can also determine a winner in some games, such as Noughts and Crosses, or as you say "Tic Tac Toe".

Cryway is hardly used outside guild/alliance groups.

And tic tac toe ends in a draw.

And so will chess and Go, if people can know from memory all the millions of possible moves. Perfect computers should draw all the time.

What is imbalanced and makes PvE easy is consumables. PvE skills help a lot, but aren't as game breaking.

Most of the time, though, when people talk about imbalanced skills, they compare them to the level of power that exist in PvP.

83% damage reduction isn't that much if someone does, for example, 1000 damage, considering the level of energy and heals lvl 20 monks have.

And now the "press to win " button rhetoric will appear. As long as the "press to win" button can be countered in a easy way, there is no problem. In Supreme Commander a single nuke will win the game. But a single tactical anti-missile battery can destroy one of the most expensive things in the game.

Ursan Blessing + consumables destroyed the game. There were no counters to it. Everyone was a walking tank of destruction or a healers boon monk. There was no need to fill other niches, there was no need for getting a build for the team, there was no need to consider the enemy skills... Just go, get a conset and rule.

The problem in cryway, isn't as much cry of pain (which is very powerful and would be completely devastating in PvP), but consumables and shadow form.

My mistake, I'm sorry I misspelled your name, Abedeus.


Let's get back to the box:
First of all, one needs to invest at least a little time in the game to get 'skilled'. Even worse, time does matter.
If I play PvP daily and you play it once a week, I will probably be a better PvP player if we both start as equal players. There is this thing called experience that makes a difference.
So this skill the box talks about is partly experience, something one gets while playing the game.

Next, do the PvE skills take the ability of the skilled/experienced player to achieve victory away?
I think they don't. PvE skills will not make things any harder for experienced players.
So that's not the issue.
The issue more likely is that people who don't have skill/experience are able to do somewhat the same as skilled players because they can use PvE skills.

Now we are getting into a funny situation.
Where players can grind some title and become stronger that way instead of getting more experienced.
Still, an experienced player will have the benefit unless (s)he can't find a team because of rank.
For the rest of the situation the experienced player will be off far better than the unexperienced with some title.
Does that sound familiar? Yes, which will get me to Tyla's part.

You know what? That's because PUGs only do things that are easy.
If there is risk of failure involved people don't PUG.
In the old days, please bring warrior, ele or monk. Perhaps necro.
Mesmer? Never take those, they suck. Ranger? Sure, for trap or B/P. But other than that?
Assassin (without perma)? Never wanted in PUG groups.
Player discrimination happened all the time.
First on class, then on Ursan, now on PvE title status.
It's part of PUG life.

Look at the old PUG farming builds. Most of them are tank&spank, few exceptions.
All are the most efficient build, not to finish as fast as possible, but to finish with the least possible f**k-ups.

Things didn't change, but nowadays people want cryway and perma because those are the easiest to play.
That's the way PUGs play and will keep playing. Boring builds that make sure that an area is finished as fast as possible.

Y, rigth... Pugs try variants. Like that ever happens.
Well, some do, but most don't. They want the pvxwiki build or the build they know, not the one you know is far superior.
Experimenting is mainly done in a group with trusted players.
In a guild team I can play whatever I want because players for some stupid reason my knowledge and are capable of seeing if a build would benefit the team or not. In a PUG team, unless I form it myself, fair chances that I get a dedicated build.

I agree on that, but it's not going to happen.



For me it's relatively easy.
I mainly play with a relatively closed group of skilled players.
I hardly see skills like CoP, SY and Shadow Form used because those players just don't care. Most of the time they want to do things together with others even if it's not the most efficient way to play.
And as group we take our time to get players on our level of play.
Help them with regular builds and explaining game mechanics.

I also get the impression that outside certain areas and groups those skills are hardly abused. I do PUG 'normal play' from time to time and hardly ever see them used.


So now the real question is, what is the real problem?
- Is it that you can't enter a certain area with PUGs because your title isn't high enough? Could be, but that's just another PUG discrimination thing, they never liked my mesmer for exampe.
And most 'trouble' PUGs are farming groups nowadays, the average player who is just enjoying the storyline isn't hurt by that.
- Is it that those PvE skills allow experienced players to abuse them? Yes, I think that is happening, however part of that abuse is because of their experience.
- Is it that PvE skills allow unexperienced players to finish stuff they shouldn't based on their game-skill? Yep, I think so. And it's one of the things I don't like. However, both SY and CoP can be replaced if played by a somewhat skilled player or a partyleader who has some knowledge.
- Do PvE skills degenerate knowledge? Yes. But that's also a guild problem.
I've seen several of those in the past and bitched about them.
If a guild mainly supports PvE skill playstyle maybe it's better to look somewhere else if you don't like it. Or chat with your guild leader.

When looking at the problem, stop focussing at PvE skills and start looking at consumables (I think I will keep repeating this mantra for a while, maybe someone will listen).
Abuse of PvE skills (outside tank&spank with a SF assassin) is mainly in fixed builds and certain areas. Sure, an experienced group can and maybe will abuse it in other places, but that requires experience or knowledge.
Consumables on the other hand are obtainable for everyone who is not in Pre.
They buff the entire party and enhance the entire skillbar.
In the 'ursan days' the moment consumables went down it was visible if the team was made of experienced players or just button smashers.
The button smasher team would go down in seconds while the experienced players would adapt to the loss of the buffs.
It's even visible nowadays, a team in DoA can have a ride in the park with consumables while without them it can be a struggle if they don't work closely together or the monks remove hexes/conditions from the wrong player.

I agree with you , cons are quite powerful and problematic. I'd remove them. Maybe leave the ress scrolls , powerstone but give it a limitation like the summoning stones have and leave the summoning stones.

And that is the main point. Why should anyone care?

Why do you care if xxxjonbxxx is doing something or not?

How does that fact interferes with your own copy of guild wars?

The only place where other player interference exists, is price of materials/runes, etc, and in that case will just lower the price if more people are doing all the content.

Or is someone trying to tell that money in gws is a way to measure ability? Are you telling me that someone that 55'ed hordes of ectos 3 and a half years ago is ubber good at the game?

Now you can ask me, and with reason, "then, why did you want a nerf to ursan"?

I wanted a nerf to ursan, mostly, because it was pointing a direction for gws 2 that I fear it will happen - I don't want a grind fest. Secondly, it was removing the incentive to play more than one character, again because of the grind and because everyone was an ursan or a monk (or a monk that could be an ursan).

I didn't care a little that tormented weapon and armbraces of truth were popping everywhere.

"So won't u mind giving players a win button"?

I do and I don't.
I don't because I'm playing my game. What others do is irrelevant. Anyway any such player would leave guild wars in a few days - if you can have everything with ease, it gets pointless and tasteless. Getting there is half of the fun.

On the other hand I do, because if everyone gets bored and leave the game, it means the death of the franchise and it is a franchise with potential, doing stuff than most other MMORPGs lack the balls to.

So, balancing PvE between players is a joke. You aren't competing against other players! You are competing against a static set of instructions!

After almost 4 years of play, which could easily translate in thousands of hours played, if you cant defeat that set of instructions you are either retarded or the game is just impossible.

And the game could be impossible - Imagine you would only have 3 life's per character, after which it would be unusable. That would make things a lot harder (well maybe not with Shadow form, but I would think the number of monks and cryers would be dwindling by the day).

So basically all these threads about PvE balance are "Make it harder that so only a few, that can form human teams regularly, can access some of the game content and be considered Gods and be admired by all the mortals".

Now any game that can keep the attention of a player for thousands of hours must be good or addictive in some way and, its only natural that after that time span people lose the interest on such static environments.

But then there is GvG. Opposed to many games, where 1vs1 prevail, and you can understand that it easily since you can play whenever you want and don't have to rely on anyone, GWs player-vs-player is team based (at least the things that are balanced are GvG and HoH, all the other forms are entry level). That require great flexibility with your time, cause it isn't easy to find 7 other people that have your mindset and have the same available hours to play.

So, those that want to expand their interest in GW's and prove themselves as good players, should move into GvG. Unfortunately, it isn't easy, both in time and skill level and coordination required.

It is in GvG you are competing against other human beings. It is there that a skill that allows a worse player to the same than a good player needs to be balanced, not in PvE, where you aren't playing against other humans.

You want a challenge (I'm not talking directly at anyone, even though I started by quoting the_jos post) and want to brag your skills beyond any doubt? Play GvG. Smash everyone else on a fair fight.

Who the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO gives a damn if you can defeat a mob somewhere, especially if to do that you need to play with 7 other people? In my box doesn't say that I need 7 friends. It actually mentions henchmen, ready to go adventure with me whenever I want, avoiding the long waits...

This is true, but grind requirements add an artificial barrier. Plus, does a player who makes a PvE version of a profession they've mastered in PvP really need to go through all those hoops to get up to scratch? Sure, they'll need some adjustment time to learn the differences in the two settings, but that should only take a campaign or two, not several repetitions of each to build up rep points.

Plus, there are plenty of grinding methods that I'd say don't actually build up skill. Worm farming is easy, and I daresay that a player who wormfarmed up to max Lightbringer and Sunspear is at most no better than someone who's still sitting at Mighty and Castellan respectively. Devourerfarming is slightly better, but the player who uses a devourer isn't learning how to use their own class, just the devourer. And there are likely people around who's Kurz/Lux rank largely came from hFFFing - or leeching another player's hFFFing - something which, at best, gives practise in flag placement.

On the other hand, nowadays you can build up those titles to levels where the difference is minimum by actually playing.

Sure. R5-6 in an EOTN title or 8-9 in Sunspear are all decent values. Kurz/Luxon I'm not so sure about what a 'typical' value is for someone who plays through once and does a few quests nowadays, especlially since it's account-wide and benefits from being played through multiple times.

That said, with no offense to Linsey, those improvements are essentially a bandaid over a mistake that shouldn't have been made in the first place. Given that the mistake has been made, the current situation may well be the best compromise, but IMO at least, it shouldn't have been made in the first place.

Furthermore, is it really necassary for our hypothetical expert PvPer to have played through every campaign - or even Factions-Nightfall-EOTN, since the original doesn't have a grind-for-power title - to be on par skill-wise with everyone else?

Those henchmen dont moan either what you do or how or what skills...

Back on track... no need to mess with the skills of the game for PvE to attribs... each PvE is key to an area... let the success in that area determine how they can use a PvE skill. Not some cheapshot "oooo ooo please let me put points to increase my CoP power so I can kill Urgoz quicker...."

/signed.

There is already a thread about this subject, but it was specific to Cry of Pain.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10343934

I still can't see why CoP is not tied to Fast Casting, so all other classes can use it efficiently as mesmers do, while

regarding PvE skills
*) THTF is tied to Leadership,
*) Critical Agility to Critical Strikes,
*) Seed Of Life to Divine Favor,

regarding other skills
*) SF has been nerfed, as a result only primary assassin can efficiently perma.
*) Water Magic has been changed so that mesmers are less efficient than eles in water snares.

This + limit the use of them to 1 PvE-only skill per bar (Signet of Capture should be a non-PvE-only skill then of course)

This is a nitpick, but wasn't the real change in tying the Elementalist damage-and-conditional-energy-management skills so they were tied to E-Storage for the second part, thus hitting the energy management of the Me/Es?

hmm
id like the max point level dropped down, so if you complete the game your abour rank8 of 10, and level 9 and 10 being within easy reach, from questing/vanqing etc

the downside of titles is the grind. i probably did 40 wurm runs during the SS/LB weekend to max those titles on 2 chars, and i wouldnt of done that if id actully had correct info for my maths. (20mins a run, all in)

atleast 35 of those runs didnt make me a better player, and its damn boring aswell.

tie up the rep points to semi account based (50% or so goes into the account), or fully account based would be a good step i think.

its kinda odd when a side wont craft you armour, but will happly goto war with you, and still wont make you a set of armour after uve saved the world. again.

its also kinda depressing that someone whos grinded away on a title can have that extra capacity over someone who hasnt, but is just as good skillwise.

i think tieing up some of the pve skills to proffessions would be good. kinda fell bleh about
assassins promise
sumoon assassin dude
you move like a dwarf
finish him

then filling up your bar with whatever your proffesion is

/notsigned

Dont know if this has already been mentioned as I havnt read the whole thread but come on its P V E. Nobody is forcing you to use PvE only skills, want to run it with normal builds? go ahead its your own personal choice.

That is all

\not signed

If anything make the gwen titles account based

Notsigned only reason I still play gw is to max my titles to make me better