The majority of the community sucks (or does it?)

Ok, little of topic but here we go.

Let me explain my 'problem' here.
I like to PvP organised and have played it in the past (mainly GvG).
However, for the past 2 years I've been an officer in my guild and became guildleader almost 2 years ago. And the guild is focussed on (HM) PvE and I intend to keep it that way.

For me to play PvP would most probably mean leaving my guild.
Could do that, but I also know it's most probably the end of the guild.
I've seen the influence of my person when forcing a split in my old guild and know there are two/three seperate groups of players combined in the guild.
They all play together once in a while, but there isn't much chemistry between the 'old' players and the newer recruits. It just takes time to get that. And the seperate groups are too small on their own to survive as guilds.
The past year I've already been decreasing my influence by putting several officers in more active roles which helped somewhat, but not enough yet.

Now if you or someone else has a solution for this, I'd like to hear it.

So you point being you can't find enough people for PvP or the people you like to play with don't want to do it?

Yes it is annoying. That is why I don't understand some people interest to see PvE or some parts of it become more restrictive

From my experience with games with adjustable difficulty are single player games and the player adjusts the difficulty for his enjoyment without extra rewards (I think you mentioned difficulty levels in Oblivion). Now if that happened to GW that would be awesome, but no , ANET screwed it up with more rewards and titles. Ok , more rewards are acceptable , but the titles were a bad idea. The HoM was even a worse idea because now the game judges players by titles and you get benefits for doing titles. People feel obligated to do stuff in HM.


Can you name me an online pve game without new content for years that is challenging? When most elite areas were new only the best could do them. They are old as the bible now and it's no wonder that more and more people can do it. Making them harder will ruin the experience for new players for a handful of people reminiscing "the good old days".

Not entirely.
The people I like to play with don't want to play PvP on the level I want to play. And I'm not talking about that I'm that much better, just that I'm far more serious about it than they are.
For me PvE isn't serious anymore (which annoys alliance members sometime), the same for many guildies. If we succeed we succeed, if we fail we fail. Big deal.
The moment I PvP I play for win and improvement (and I have a lot to improve). This is something most of my guildies don't want to. We've seen our share of 'High End' PvE guilds with that mentality and my guildies don't mix with them very well.

Is it really about restriction?
I think it's more about risk reduction. When I team up with a PUG in an elite area there is a fair chance that it's an incompetent player who's only there for 'teh lootz'. I want someone in my team who I can have fun with, doesn't bitch about tiny mistakes or even a team whipe and just does his/her job while chatting along.
When people stop farming the area I will probably start taking more PUGs again since I know they either want to play the area for fun or they want to play it because they need it for some ugly title/hom statue.
Meaning they are dedicated to finishing and not dedicated to finishing in speed record time so they can join another group for more loot.
Not caring about anything but their own ego.

The difference between not getting PvE and PvP groups is large.
I would have no problem getting into a starter PvP guild, work my way up and get visible to other players who are on a level I can't play yet.
But the way I want to play is with a (somewhat) fixed team.
PvP is about team play and you only learn to function as team by playing with a group together.

For PvE there are two options for play.
Either PUG or Guild/Alliance. PUG is fun, I still play with them sometimes. Mainly on my second account while playing storyline NM.
The reason this is possible is because team play matters less in PvE.
Sure, you need some roles filled, but that's about it.
Even in the 'Elite Areas' true teamplay isn't needed to finish.
With guildies things are easier in those areas and that's mainly because I know them. I know my ranger will run of to a chest, aggroing all foes around.
I know one of my eles will move in too fast and will get spiked. I know my warrior will chace his foe back into our party, bringing all melee foes to us.
Since I mainly monk my guildies this means I know who to prot and when to cast a skill like aegis. I can do the same with PUG, I can somewhat read the field now, but it takes more effort from me because I need to be sharper.

Now let's talk about restriction again.
I've played Deep, Urgoz's and DoA with PUGs.
Played FoW with a very inexperienced alliance team. Played UW with a team of skilled players who I'd never played with before.
All this without consumables and PvE skills.
I think everyone can do this. But they need dedication to do so and I think many don't have that dedication.
They want the price but don't want to put any effort in it.

I hear this sometimes and it is off topic. I could easily argue that many people NOW want admiration, not challenge simply by using the inbalanced things that make the game easier. It doesn't matter WHY people want higher and varied challenge, all that matters is the game needs it.

Your idea of restrictive is still ridiculous. Maybe we should just give everybody the ability to have god mode and do infinite damage? Also 20 heroes allowed per team (all with god mode). Maybe we should remove ALL restrictions and take away ALL challenge whatsoever? How about only I get god mode and if you don't like it you don't have to use it. We are playing an ONLINE MMO. You have no idea how crazy what you are saying sounds.

How ironic. You want to impose restrictions to everyone and it's ok, but giving even a bit more power is out of the question. And blowing things out of proportion is a not a good argument by the way.

It's becoming a mantra , but here I go again: a pve MMO game without new content being regularly produced loses challenge quickly. Stop blaming skills and cons because the greatest enemy of challenge is time.

Not all people get skilled at the game in just a couple nights, and if you don't put in the effort to get better in the game then you shouldn't be allowed to complete the most difficult areas.

@Kosto: Just because it gets old doesn't make it okay to strip all challenge.

I still think that if gw had a higher level cap and content was only avalible at certain levels it would solve most problems we have it's just not right you can get to end game elite content 10 mins after you start the game.

It is a perfect counter to people arguing that everybody should be able to do what they want. They are essentially saying there should be no difficulty and people should be able to access whatever they want. So why not go a step farther and give everybody god mode?

The flaw with your argument is that the current content would already be challenging for people if the difficulty and power inbalance didn't exist. You can add content until the end of time, but if the game has overpowered things that make it easier, the game will never lose challenge because there is no challenge to be lost.

completely wrong

gw did change--anet literally dumbed down the game to cater to newer or casual players


u mention like as if anet producing new content will bring challenge to the game
i will guarantee u that wutever content is added to the game, pve skills will pwn that area jus the same as they do any other area

and thats the big problem really...a single build that is capable of winning every single time and every single area with little or no variation

ursan was that extreme example
but other skills possess similar qualities

"oh noes, the monster is using a spell!! wut should we do?!" = jus press 1
"oh noes, there r a bunch of melees rushing us!!! wut should we do!?!?" = jus press 1
"oh noes, these monsters have an impenetrable defense!!! wut should we do!?!?!" = jus press 1
"oh noes, this is a new area, ive never been here before, i wonder wut to expect!?!?!" = who cares wut to expect, jus press 1 and u'll win

I don't mind if everyone has the chance to god mod. Won't change my game in the least.

That is the difference between you and me - I play and make my game. You are concerned about comparing your game to others game.

What happened was that the game escalated and PvE deviated from PvP in terms of values.

If you compare FoW, SF and UW to the new elite areas they are just incomparable. Before the PvE game was meant to be played similarly to the PvP game. Now it isn't anymore.

And I must say, when the PvP game became similar to PvE, this is when during VoD, the damn ranger npcs start to throw 1xx damage power shots, GvG players TANKED AND FARMED THEM LIKE PvE PLAYERS DO.


PvE today is about finding the combination of resources needed to solve the puzzle and not about the PvP style of play against AI.

Removing the PvE only skills would also mean removing the current elite areas and rework them.


Sincerely, are you guys telling that someone that does mallyx and duncan (hm) with 2 players+6 heroes is a noob and don't deserve to do it because they are using 6 pve-only skills (no consumables)?

u admit that its bad for pvp?
but its not bad for pve?
its bad for both imo


bad question
theres not nuff info in the question to tell if hes a nub or not

dun see the point of this question...
im not gonna call someone a nub -jus- because he uses pve skills

if "pve skills" were called "cheats" instead
i could call him a cheater
but in this situation, i cant call him anything except a gw player


no
we simply care bout the balance of the game itself

u see a problem, and ur solution is that ppl can simply walk around it and ignore it
we see a problem, and we want to try and fix it

seriously, i dun kno where u get the idea that we want to try to change the game jus to make it harder for other ppl?
we want to change the game because we want it to be better balanced...if it makes it harder for other ppl or not, thats a consequence i'm willing to live wit for the sake of the games integrity

I can't believe you are serious. You don't think it would change your game? Even if it didn't, it would change THE game which is the problem. Snaek put it brilliantly...some people are happy to avoid problems but others want to fix them. But I wonder how many people would agree that god mode should be in the game.

No it wouldn't change my game. I wouldn't use it. I don't care about other people titles and skins.

Yes, it would be bad for Anet in the long run, as most people would be fed up from the game in a few days time, as they would be tempted to use god mod and get all the goodies and, after that, the game would have no interest whatsoever.

I would like the problems to be fixed too. I was happy when ursan was nerfed, although it didn't affected my game at all either way and I should have been indifferent.

I just don't like the proposals presented to how to fix the game.

Removing consumables and PvE only skills by itself won't solve the problems at all. It won't even make it better.

So unless there is a major overhaul of the game, its better to keep it at the current state (PvE wise) than do something that can cause even more damage.

And, with the announcement of GW 2, Anet pretty much said "Look, we were navigating uncharted waters, using a very different financial model to all other MMORPG. We did loads of good things and loads of mistakes too. We learned with them. GW 2 will incorporate what we learned and hopefully be even a better experience."

Also, I don't like the all "The good days were great and now is all bad" argument. After all, necros had infinite energy then and there was no minion cap at the time, for example.

GW was and is a great game. But it is a very unique game too.

You, I and everyone wish there would be a major overhaul of the game to make the PvE play style similar to the GvG prime days, while having multiple goals that the titles introduced. But unless we are naive, we all know that won't happen. So half measures are most likely to cause damage than to fix anything (as I don't consider ranking players in PvE a priority).

Saw a very interesting tidbit right here:

Why do you feel like you should've felt indifferent?

Ursan was not only overpowered but completely went against the whole point of choosing a profession. If everyone was just going to be the same thing, why release different classes at all?

I don't care what others do in the game. I don't care about people buying gold or hacking to get gold. I care when the developers go topsy-turvy and change their game into something less. I don't mind when developers offer more variety as long as that variety is balanced, and PvE skills are not.

They don't have to be removed, just toned down. Problem there though is that many are simply vastly superior variants of other skills, so in addition to balancing them out they'd need a completely different function.

Also, you do know that "OP monster skills and abilities" are one of the only ways to really provide a certain extent of challenge in a static environment? How many hundreds of "solid" games actually put you in a "fair" fight?: Doom? Pit you against thousands of monsters. God of War? Thousands of monsters. CoD4? Thousands of assholes. Even in FEAR you were outnumbered.

To completely ignore your OP and go off on my own tangent:

The problem isn't players being good or bad; there have always been good and bad players.

The problem is that the community in general has shifted from generally helpful to complete trolling. I don't know what caused this, but it seems a new internet meme that comes out daily helps propagate it, certainly.

You know...

"whoru?"
"umad?"
"no u"

That sort of stuff. It definitely doesn't help the player mentality.

This sort of thing isn't really easily fixable though. It's kind of like knowing using the word "gay" offensively, rather than for happy, or someone of the same-sex nature is known by everyone to be improper and down right wrong and immoral; yet, we still do it, most of us uncontrollably. Why?

Habit. The way people learn is from their peers. If you teach one person something, gradually that will butterfly out and affect everyone they have contact with and everyone that person had contact with ad infinitum.

If you want to get right down to it, that's the problem. I've addressed it, someone else can try to figure out how to fix it. It'd just give me a headache and at best I can assume my approach would be decidedly indecisive and generally ineffective.

So what's goin on in this thread?

98% of the people I know that use "nou" etc. do it as a joke. Whether people take that as something that they need to use in serious conversation is up to them. I (for example) don't have to alter my behavior because someone else thinks I'm doing something I'm not.

It does have to do with the overall mentality, but in a slighty different manner.

Ursan was 'invented' because of some other community problem: class discrimination. With the blessing everyone would be roughly equal.
Ursan made it possible for many players to PUG elite areas without a farming party. It doesn't matter if you are Assassin, Rt or Mesmer. Who cares, we love you since you bring Ursan and Consumables.

But what made people call out for a nerf on UB? It wasn't the equality, it was the complete lack of skill needed when playing it while using consumables.
And at the end people were discriminating again, mainly asking for high-armor characters or those with benefitial primary professions.
Ursan for a little period solved some problems for a while, mainly class discrimination and empty outposts in elite areas.
Problems that are present again nowadays.
Well, outposts might not be completely empty but people sure ain't taking anything except the current farming builds/professions.

Class discrimination only exists because of an Anet created inbalance in the classes. To use Ursan as a coverup patch is basically a joke.

Well then the question becomes, does that reflect poorly on the community for their terrible skill or poorly on the company for their terrible design (or in my opinion both)?

I agree with the second more than with the first.

IMO consumables are far more damaging to player skill than pve skills. Consets allow far more room for error than UB did.

Don't agree.
It's a community problem.
People don't want to play balanced, they want to own stuff and do that the easiest way. AI mechanics showed that the easiest way is tank and spank.
It doesn't mean it's impossible to play balanced.

The design isn't too bad. Or to put it better, it wasn't that bad.
The true bad part showed in Faction's elite missions.
And it became far worse in DoA.
But general PvE including FoW and UW allowed balanced play though the four horsemen quest requires some dual tanking or something like that.

The problem with design is that it has the same behaviour all the time. It was abused by farmers, partly solved with shatter on AoEot damage. It was brought back since it had some unpleasant side-effects for less experienced players when loot scaling was introduced.

Now the only things we as community can blame A-net for is that they did revert the shatter-effect because of 'stupid' players.
And that they didn't make random spawns in Hard Mode.
And we could argue about the ways they tried to make DoA harder.
The fact that Urgoz's needs one specific skill now since the Rebirth was changed was already discussed a while ago.

But in general I think A-net did a fine job considering what's possible with AI programming since they started GW.

I started playing when prophecies came out, and quit right before factions came out, then started again at the end of 2008. One thing I notice, is that VERY few people look for groups for questing or missions (just runs or speed clear or whatever). I learned a lot more about the game when you had to group with people if you wanted to be successful. The "good" now is a lot better, but the "bad" is worse. Yes, the majority of the people who play GW suck. It just seems to like people don't like to think while they play. All this game really takes is quick logical thinking (and remembering what all of the skills do)

But then another problem is that the "good" people (most of them anyways) think that they are above helping anyone. They just insult them and throw a fit if a nub doesn't do something right. Thats one thing I just don't get. Maybe its because a bunch of younger kids play this game...And don't get me started on this new (to me) breed ive been seeing since I started playing again. The PvP elitist. There is nothing more annoying in this game (yeah, you are worse than the most incompetent players). Get over yourselves, because everyone else is.

If you look around in the forums I started a thread that was locked where I stated my dislike for ursan in exactly those terms.

I should have felt indiferent cause I didn't use it.

In the later days before Ursan got changed some groups where already shifting towards class discrimination among ursans. People only wanted Wars for the higher defence, so took those over lesser wanted professions like the mesmer/rit/sin etc. There was also a build floating around which you had to run or people would abuse and call for that person to be kicked if it wasn't the build they pinged..... hmmmm doesn't this sound familliar.

Anet could work towards fixing these imbalances in classes with the PvE/PvP skill split but Anet have to actually update the game, shame its got that feeling of too little too late.

Also the player base only seems to notice skills that get highly overpowered/broken for the masses to actually want the class in there're group.

My point was towards the mentality, not literal.

no u


The community hasn't turned into complete trolling, not just yet. There is a large amount of bad trolls going around though, and their horrible 'trolling' attemps lead to other players trying to troll back, which results in threads of bad trolls trolling bad trolls. I imagine that would somewhat slant your view on the community.

I totally understand why ANet wanted to implement Ursan, but no matter how you do it or the quality of doing it, it's still doing one thing: killing class diversity. Yeah, discrimination sucks. But what's worse is having only two classes.

Also, people here are gonna have a tough time proving which is "worse": PvE skills or consumables. Here you have consets, here you have SY! and other retarded crap. Nerf 'em both.

You cared about the game, which is good. What I don't get is why you're not as bugged about PvE skills + consumables?

Because its an optional thing, I don't care about the economic aspect of the game (I would love if the inscriptions system was implemented in prophecies and factions and if an upgrade and an inscriptions npc was added to the game) and I certainly don't care about ranking people in PvE (which would be an indirect way of comparing skill).

Since I don't care about an indirect competition and ranking in PvE, I don't care if people complete something in a skillful or less skillful or not skillful at all way. I care how I do it and the fun I have overcoming the challenges.

Additionally, I play most of the time with just another person - it's much less abusive having 6 (max) PvE only skills in 64 than 24/64.

so i hurd Team Everfrost [eF] was laughing stock of gw community.

ur thoughts?

Agreed.

If you want that it's easily found elsewhere. in subscription based games.

Tbh it goes straight in the category of people with unrealistic demands considering the format.

GW is now grind.

Nope...over your head me thinks.

That's where it gets interesting.

I expected no less than for you to raise it Bryant but seriously...is HM actually hard?

Imo nope...adding HP, skills and resources compute to little more than new areas to exploit considering that we already had the skills to exploit that type of scenario.

Increased HP and attack speed actually makes HM better than NM........lol

Has the AI changed in any dramatic fashion that actually demands an increase in player skill?

As a result hard mode is a cakewalk and NM is training and title fodder.

Add on imba PvE skills.

Grind titles.

Seriously.

I don't really care about people being noobs in terms of playing the game... everyone was clueless at some point. Guilds are great resources as well as the various wikis. Generally the community is/was good? but the real problem was often people rage quitting and being assholes like that.

Wasn't he saying that PvE-only skills and consumables should be removed from the game, while saying that there is no point on gimping yourself by not bringing PvE-only skills and consumables, since everyone else will use them?

Seems perfectly reasonable to reach the conclusion that gimping yourself is bad but if Anet gimp everyone is ok.

Again, you are falling back on "it is optional I don't have to use it" which still doesn't solve anything. How about all of the people who DO care about the economic aspect or the skill aspect? While these things being in the game may not ruin the game for you, it certainly ruins the game for them.

The problem here is that they never should have been implemented to begin with so it never would have been a "gimp". What happened is that gave us a super overpowered buff and we need to go back to "regular". It wasn't just consumables or PvE skills or Ursan or whatever, it was a long progression of power creep with those things being the standouts.

Ah so we getting somewhere - it is a progression. But you cant forget about the enemy progression - dumb AI or not 230 from mystic sandstorm on AL80 in normal mode is still absurd (just happened 10 minutes ago to me in DoA).

What was the first build out there to beat DoA? Obsidian tank+SF eles... That isn't the kind of game I want either - it is completely non-interactive and show no skill (cryway is the souped up version of today).

Both GvG and PvE suffer from the minimalist offense syndrome - as long as you're alive you can win, and with the threat level some mobs can dish out, more and more defense is needed.

For the game to reflect skill, the power (as in damage) of some of the HM and elite areas needed to be brought down. Then remove the consumables and PvE only skills. And nerf the tank (obsidian flesh and shadow form) skills.

And lets hope we won't return to bonds...

What about people that like grinding? Or what about the people that would rather have unlimited level cap?

I can use your argument ipsis verbis. The game can have an economy or not. I would rather it wouldn't. It is about killing not about trading. I prefer have access to the weapons upgrades and mods I need, the same way people that did PvP didn't want to depend on lucky drops.

Its hard to please to everyone.

Again, nobody said removing these things in and of itself will fix the game. I am saying that removing these things would be the first and easiest step. As long as they exist nothing will ever be fixed. The game needs a difficulty balance, and it can't have that with any form of inbalanced additions.

Well this really gets off topic and goes into other threads I have posted in...but yes it is hard to please everyone. So why not please the people who want the game to keep its integrity? A game keeping its integrity and balance will please far more people than one that loses integrity and has no difficulty balance to speak of.

Well the current eF is. its all pve scrubs who joined to feel special.

Difficulty is always preference. For me, HM certainly isn't hard. But neither is Insanity on Mass Effect, Ultra-Violence on Doom, or God Mode in God of War.

It may not be hard for all, but it's certainly harder. More builds are restricted in HM than when used in NM. The problem? PvE skills/consumables/etc. remove some (or a lot) of those restrictions. This makes inexperienced players stay inexperienced, since they have no motivation to learn more about their role.

Still seeing no justification for their addition, much less when we now have two difficulties to accommodate for. If only one I'd be more sympathetic, but that's now not that case.

...about HM.

I think PvE skills actually made some HM missions easier than NM ones. Pain Inverter, for example, makes it possible to wallop, say, Kuunavang in Unwaking Waters that much faster - mostly because in HM, mobs have an increased casting speed and trigger Pain Inverter more frequently.

i agree to an extent

if u break down the different "player-type" groups of gw...
who really benefits the most from pve skills and consets?
a) newer players, casual or lesser experienced players
b) experienced players lookin for fun things to do
c) farmers and title grinders

and i think most can agree that pve skills and consets get most abused by farmers and title grinders
so it really defeats the purpose of having them in the first place, which i believed was to help the casual or lesser experienced players

why does anet regard farming and grinding so highly?
not jus in pve, but farming in pvp as well for rank/titles

even ra has become a friendly place and more "srs bsns" because ppl want to farm glad pts

(sowrie, goin off topic)

but back on topic....pve skills and consets is nowhere near to a good solution to help out the less skilled players in gw
and can even be argued that it hurts their ability to learn and develop good skills
so why do they exist?

Because Anet has moved away from the skill model...they just refuse to admit it to the community.