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

Solo farming shouldn't be a concern. Anet has been moving in the way of giving more rewards to teams that finish stuff opposed to people that just exploit a certain group of foes.

I think that changes should be made until the most efficient group doing elite areas use [[save yourselves] as the primary defense.

When this is achieved, make [[save yourselves] less powerful (by reducing the armor, increasing adrenal cost or something along these lines).

Of course, even if implemented in the right way, may lead players that don't want to study game mechanics away from the game.

Studying isn't exactly considered the most fun of the activities by the largest part of the human population and a game main objective is providing fun (for the consumers) and money (for the developers).

Actually, learning and applying knowledge with feedback in proper environment is naturally enjoyable and fun experience. It is basic pillar of gaming on which everything is build. And where every game inevitably must start.

Learning isn't the same as studying.

One of the most popular genres of video games are shooters for some reason.

i agree
u learn by playing the game

the prob wit gw, is that it has become too much about "build wars" than anything else

build overcomes anything so ppl will rely on this
instead of obtaining skill by learning through play to beat the game
many ppl will beat the game by "studying" good builds instead

so good builds compensate for lack of good skills

of course good builds and build-making skills is very important in gw
but when there r a select few builds that will dominate without question
its broken imo

and even if u dun have good build-making skills...
pve skills have only made it more obvious to which r "good builds"
u stick some pve skills on ur bar, and ur bad bar becomes instant-win in many cases

so pve skills compensate for lack of being able to make a good build

and to top it off, consets will compensate for everything else


theres jus too much compensating "player ability" wit "in-game character ability"
its almost as if playing wow wit a lvl 60 character against lvl 20mobs...

Yeah, because that's ANet's intended form of play. Easily shown through the hero limit and limit of PvE skills.

Best solution to being able to access that hardest content? Find as many peeps as you can and fill in the blanks with heroes. Still having trouble? Well, there's normal mode.

The challenge is finding balance for everyone as a whole. Soloer's (like me) included. But either way, if ANet wanted to give a boost to those who liked to solo, blanket changes isn't the way to do that. Nor is individually adjusting success for those who like to go by themselves.

Then they shouldn't be interested in Guild Wars. The entire point of the game was to have a 8 player team (and to PvP but that is another thread altogether). As I said before...heroes were a blessing and a curse for this game. To me they were great for many people but terrible for the game as a whole on multiple levels (including skill level of community and overall game balance).

Geez...we had a big long debate about heroes a while back but you finally admit this in another thread.

Regardless of what anyone thinks about the hero limit, the PvE game should always be balanced around 8-person parties for numerous reasons. It is, afterall, where you're going to find the most fun, and I can sympathize with ANet wanting to maintain and promote that (besides, 7-heroes is a want, not a need).

id kinda like to see a few more areas with 12 as the party limit, right now its the deep and urgoz, and AB kinda..., mixes itup abit

You can find that in the guildwars web page (in here http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php) :

"It is tempting to believe that because a player is playing an MMO, and because good MMOs are social games, every player must therefore like to play with other players in a group. Our experience with Guild Wars is that this is an erroneous and dangerous assumption. On any given day, a player may want to play with his guild, or he may want to play with his best friend, or he may want to play alone. The fact that he is playing in a large communal environment is not a predictor of how he wants to play. We should be striving to make games that let you play how you want to play right now, and offer you the flexibility to progress with any combination of players you like.

Don't underestimate the importance of solo play! Sometimes your friends aren't online, sometimes you want to kill 30 minutes while everyone groups together, and sometimes you just don't want to go to committee on every damn decision. The quality of the solo play experience is just as important to the success of an MMO as the quality of the multiplayer experience. A few months before the release of Guild Wars we added computer-controlled henchmen to the game as a way to pad out your party when your friends weren't around. Later we enhanced this feature and introduced computer-controlled Heroes, which gave you control over their actions and more fully supported the notion of playing the game entirely on your own. While it may seem counterintuitive to add features that support the solo play experience into an MMO, we believe that Guild Wars would not have been as successful had we not added these features.

Two-player gaming, or as we call it "buddy gaming", is not a generic case of multi-player gaming, but is instead its own form of play that deserves special attention. Increasingly, MMOs are used as a setting for "real world" social interaction, including dating, spending time with your kids, or hanging out with your best friend or spouse. Just as the real social dynamics in a one-on-one setting greatly differ from the dynamics of a large group setting, the game experience when playing with one person differs from the experience of playing with a group. You can slow down, smell the flowers, discuss what you've seen and what you'd like to do, strategize and assist each other, and communicate on a more sincere level. In short, it's a more intimate form of community, and we should be supporting it explicitly."

Guess they beg to differ.

I reckon they don't implement 7 heroes because they don't know very well how to act, they are too "lazy" to do it now or because they are smart and want people to have 2 accounts

Comparing GWs to WoW isn't a good idea IMO. In WoW you level and acquire equipment to kill stronger "stat" mobs. What you need to do as player is not to split your attributes (or whatever they are called in WoW) too much.

GWs is first about individual and team builds.

Sure, it is a lot easier to copy a build than to make one, but you can't do much about that - that is what people do every day (look at what school is, for example).

Then it is about decisions on when to use the skills available and what mobs to prioritize.

The problem of PvE is similar to the problem that GvG faces (DON'T START TO FLAME YET!).
Long ago, GvG was about pressure and attrition (ok, there were the occasional spikes). Today, GvG is most about spike spike spike, until someone on the other side makes a mistake.

If you look at today builds, you will see much more direct defense (as in you cast it on your team mates, then by disruption of enemies). Which is odd, because defense became better and better.

Damage improved too, but mostly, direct damage, instead of pressure damage by conditions and hexes. Getting a stack of hexes and/or conditions, to see them all removed by [[divert hexes], [[restore condition] or [[peace and harmony] isn't nice.

In addition, everyone runs 600+ health now.

Now lets look at PvE - the mobs do more damage, attack faster, cast faster, recharge faster, have more energy regeneration, have more health, have more armor.

Do you want to fight a war of attrition with them? You want to degen or pressure them to death?

If you add to that the fact that most mobs don't even have decent monks, it is clear to understand why most PvE play revolves around "lets buy enough time to kill them" tactics.

Since the AI is quite stupid and players have the tools, a good player that doesn't trust its teammates, will prefer a "tanking" build or an imbagon build, where he/she can control the outcome of the fights.

Yes, it is a bit hard to tell players apart, but we can't forget, that despite being bots, the first team to do DoA was a GvG team using tank and spank.

I'm not underestimating the importance of solo play. I'm saying that it's a terribly shitty reason to keep PvE skills/consumables. Both human and AI parties should be balanced exactly the same. So what if the AI is crap, that's not a reason to give soloers horrendously overpowered facets. If you really wanted to give soloers a boost, fix hero skill usage.

It's now about boosting up your titles to boost up your PvE skills and to get boosted by consumables...sounds a lot like WoW, actually. No longer does your skill matter but rather the time you invest into your "stats", and going through that "time" isn't very difficult.

this

but the important thing to remember is that in wow, mob stats increase as ur stats increase
in gw, while ur stats increase, mob stats stay exactly the same

hence, its like ur lvl60 fighting vs lvl20 mobs

You do know that the speech you are referring to has been picked apart left and right with no response right? It has good points but also awful ones. It also fails to acknowledge his earlier statement (and game philosophy) that the game was built from the ground up to be a competitive multiplayer game and was later changed which however happy and awesome he made it sound, also pissed a lot of people off. And they know how to implement 7 heroes, they just decided not to for the very reasons I am suggesting.

Winner winner chicken dinner. I wish people would start admitting that Guild Wars has turned MUCH more like WoW over the years. It isn't WoW, but it is MUCH more like WoW than it used to be in years past which has significantly (IMO) affected player skill.

Bull. If you go from r1 norn to r10 norn, you get 50 more health in Ursan Blessing. Every PvE skill worth using is worth nearly as much at r5 as at r10. That is in no way comparable to a game where you level grind because anyone more than three levels above you has a big advantage over you, and anyone 10 levels or more above you might as well be invincible. Since the PvE skill rebalance (including the death of UB), I haven't seen a single player state his rank in a particular PvE title in the hopes of it helping him get into a group, nor have I seen any group require a particular rank in order to join their group, save DoA.

What do consumables cost? Money. How do you get money? Time. How insignificant are they? Not too much.

How much emphasis is put on putting together coherent builds? Definitely not as much.

Players coming into GW now are seeing only a fraction of what's possible, seeing much more generic MMO features.

How do you even know that everyone always uses consumables in Guild Wars now? Unlike PvE skills, that are OP and free, consumables actually have a cost, and as we all know, players are cheap and don't like to pay for things.

^not everyone does

i said in an earlier post that i believe the group that uses consets the most r farmers/grinders
which is even worse imo

wut was created to help out casual or newer players, instead gets abused by farmers/grinders to help them make money/titles faster and easier

so its lose/lose either way u look at it really

i think both pve and consets r a problem
but moreso pve skills, because as u said, it has had more of a widespread effect than consets have (which fairly stays within a confined group)

The main use of consets right now that I can think of is UWSC. Guess what, the most OP part about that, the thing that makes it even possible in the first place, is the perma-SF, not the consets. Perma-SF is done without any consumables OR any PvE skills, and its effect on the game has been far greater than anything those PvE skills or consumables are doing (anymore, that is. Ursan was a far worse offender, but it's been fixed, while for some reason SF has been left alone).

Yeup, solo farming has and always will be a major concern in regards to the structure of the game. The only thing that can be admired about solo farming builds is that require a bit more thought then simply saving up some cash or putting PvE skills on your bar.

But both PvE skills and consumables in general are both one of the many, many problems currently inflating in PvE.

Nerf Perma SF! Nerf it nao! Bring back the no-scatter AI and let me 55 farm those pesky Hydras all over again! I want a collection of three-attribute staves. To arms! To arms! Who's with me?

I don't know what is the problem with solo farming.

The rewards of this game have no direct impact on the game play.

Bots are easy to ban. Increasing rewards for doing some area/mission or increasing general drops (I vanquished Arbor bay yesterday. Close to 500 kills. I got a lockpick and 3 crappy gold items drops. Fantastic! If not for the fact I wanted the asuran points and the north points, I don't see a reason to do that area in HM.) will make farming less profitable compared to general play.

As usual given two solutions, people prefer to choose the dumbest.

Other than keeping dumb players doing stuff with other dumb players or expert players doing stuff on their own or doing it faster, PvE-only skills and consumables have no impact in game.

Trading is only a small and side part of the game.

Superficially, yes. But game dynamics are still quite different.

Take consumables, for example.

GW has conset. Grail of Might for example basically increases health and energy by 20%. Full conset is about equal to adding two party members in terms of raw numbers. They are fairly expensive, but still very cheap for their effects.

WoW consumables are much more tamer. Full suite (food buff + two potions + scroll). players having 15000hp has access to consumables increasing it by 6% maximum and serious effort must be made. Damage buffs don't add more than percentage of damage thrown around in that game! And they mostly don't persist through death.

See, WoW makes consumables not worth it for playing most of the time under their effects. Even for harder content. Only dedicated raiders have justification for getting that little extra. For rest of population it is just "serious business".

GW equivalent of WoW consumables in raw power would be things like Drake Kabob.

See, it is not being made like wow that affected player skill. It is plain simple easy-button being added that goes far, far beyond imitating wows easy gameplay.

they also lower the amount of skill required

it doesnt follow skill > time

it follows time > skill, where time < 100 instead of 1000
(that means skill < 100 instead of 1000 as well)

*using made up numbers, but u get the point


is there not a way where we can have skill > time, where time < 100? but skill still stay > 1000?

Of course we can! Its called "lets not use consumables and PvE only skills".

Or you mean mean "I want more rewards for having more skill?".

Ugh...how many circles is this thread going to go in before the position of me, Bryant, snaek, and many others is shown to be logically correct?

PvP is dying because Anet chose to appeal to the masses.

We've gone from a game that was suppose to transfer the playerbase to the end game content, PvP.
(In Proph, all that was left after you beat the game was underworld and PvP or roll up another toon)The game overall was more simplified, with less to do, which led to the crossing over to the other half of the game.


From that --> to heroes, consumables, more Elite endgame PvE content, crappy attempts again at trying to bring the mainstream community more in line from PvE to PvP through Factions alliance battles, too bad none of that transpired into a healthy high density PvP game. Some could argue though that steps or hurdles between the boundary from PvE to PvP were not addressed in a timely manner, like being able to roll up a PvP char, and balth faction/unlocks being a huge factor.

When I've played a game from the first day till now and see titles upon titles, heroes, HOM, community bitching about bots in transitional PvP arenas and overall decline in GvG/HA, ya I'd say the community sucks and hasn't even played 50% of the game yet. I guess I could say I blame the developers for that, catering to that style of game, boring monster slaying appealing to the majority players out there.

Your entire post is spot on, but I think this part is key to the thread. The PvP of this game has always been where skill is determined. The shifting of the game into a more PvE focused game in and of itself has meant a shift in lower skill level. We can go back and forth all day about the skill level in PvE, but we are talking about the Guild Wars community as a whole...and PvP is a part of that.

In regards to solo farming, it's pretty much going directly against the game's intended mode of play but is now accepted by ANet.

Firstly, you say that like those are the only kind of people who have access to them. Secondly, expert players are so good that they shouldn't need PvE skills, and they make those "dumb" players stay dumb.

How about instead of repeating yourself here, you go back to the numerous comments I've made in response to passages which are similar to the above?

I've only started reading the thread but I'll just make a comment now:

I'm absolutely willing to listen to criticism from more experienced players; I started playing about a month and a half ago and I have yet to encounter someone willing to impart their knowledge to me. I don't know if most have given up or I'm looking in the wrong places, but it seems to me that a clash of attitudes on both parts (experienced players and noobs) has led to a no-win situation.

So you think that if Anet hasn't chosen to appeal to the masses (i.e., in a GW world without heroes, PvE skills, consumables, etc.), their original vision would have lead them somewhere 4years after the release of GW1? You think "we", players who joined 1-3years after the original release, would be playing and enjoying this game in its PvP part?

(well, since the thread has completely changed topic, despite the post above me trying to steer it back into the original direction, I shall ask the question...)

Who knows maybe? All I'm saying is I've noticed a direct correlation between Proph(Simplistic in design and endgame) being released and the game toting "Skill" as a lure, to Nightfall(a heavy PVE installment of GW), Heroes, titles, consumables, imba skills, and a direct decline in the PvP playerbase, it's there and anyone who's been around can tell you that.

Until is closed I guess.

Yes, the game requires less skill if you use PvE-only skills and consumables. Actually, if you use mending warriors it even require more.

Does that changes your game in the least?
No!

You choose the skill level you want between the options you have.

Is it best if everyone is awesome skillful?
Sure!

Is it feasible?
No.

So why not give rewards (or more rewards) for the more skillful only?

Its a game. Doesn't need to be like real life.

It should be ovbious from many GWG threads (not to mention the famous Bryant Again-Dreamwind exchanges ), I'm not questioning that. Your "maybe" makes me think of what Alex Weekes wanted to do with Fury (I don't know much about it, so could be wrong, correct me if I am please), which failed miserably after less than a year. I don't think that the PvP community (so to say, because in a GW world with the original Anet vision, there wouldn't be a PvE-PvP split) could have sustained the game and Anet. Don't take my post wrong: a lot of PvPers are brilliant players, but most are just simply too "immature" or rude to enable a healthy community to exist (drama aside, it's in the human nature).

When I see that:
http://www.teamquitter.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11067
I think that it's still possible to "teach" people how to play the game, but: 1) this guide is for people with more "skill" than the average GWer (this is debatable); 2) PvPer may not like to share their ideas because it'll lead them to loosing their egde due to people countering these ideas (or playing them better); 3) there's still in the "PvP community" a very strong mentality of "you have to learn by failing a lot and don't come whine at us for that" (yes you'll fail a lot, that's unavoidable and I'm not questioning this bit but the rest).

EDIT: 4) look at QQ, some people are so stupid, a lot have these cool signatures and/or cool avatar pics...and then you want to make fun of PvErs with chaos gloves and tormented shields? It's not my intention to flame anyone, but some truth have to be accepted first before we can have a healthy community, there are stupid people everywhere and we can't do much about them, pointing fingers is not going to help us...

The GW scene in terms of progression looks like a staircase with steps of varrying height, the last ones being very tall, and people standing on the higher steps simply saying that it's the fault of the staircase builder and other people should learn to jump, or stay where they are. I know it's only a game and people are free to spend the time needed to learn2play, but somewhat I feel we can do a lot more.

not exactly...

we want to play at a high skill level
instead we're forced to play at a low skill level and may choose to handicap ourselves to fit this level more appropriately
is that really choice?


@fril
i thought fury's failure had to do wit it bein a bad game
not from bein an initial success, and then completely turnin it into a single-player game from a multi-player game cuz they thought it would make them more $$$$

and yesh i do think that gw would have been a better game if it had stuck to its vision

Or until you respond to what I said here.

Self-inflicted challenge does not equate to a real challenge. I'd only gimp myself if I knew it would help me face a difficult task that *doesn't* require me to enforce my own handicaps.

Makes no sense.

If Anet remove consumables and PvE-only skills, the game will be better according to you.

If you remove those it isn't. Its gimpimg.

Explain me the difference, plz.

Against AI?

Maybe in a few years

Retype the third sentence (I have no clue what you said there) and then I'll respond.

Do you mean you can't tell the difference between a developer removing the PvE skills compared to me not using them?

Higher skill level, and all those overpowered PvE facets really lower that level.

The average player skill level in any game is directly dictated by the enforcement, not choice, of maximum difficulty to attain commonly desired goals and/or rewards.

Throw a shotgun into the middle of a knife fight and observe the results.

Nope.

My game without PvE only skills and consumables by my decree is the same as Anet without those, with the exception I can use them if/when I wish.

Let me rephrase the last post.

If Anet removes pve only skills and consumables the game will be more challenging and requires more skill.

If you remove those from your game by your option the game won't be more challenging?

Cause that doesn't make sense.

People that are really interested to play PvP, will work to attain the skill required and the only way to do that is by playing PvP and not PvE, regardless of skills or consumables existing or not.

And GWs isn't a game where starting PvP, especially GvG, is easy. Most noticeable because it requires a 8 player team and builds.

You want to get new blood in PvP? You want skill?

Get a RANDOM GvG. How?

Have 2 team templates. People join a Random GvG, are assigned to one of the positions available and have an assigned build and equipment.

People will learn those basic builds and basic GvG tactics.

Still requires in game voice.

It is also related on the number of players. I bet small games have higher average skill per player.

That is if you want to make people play with you or PvP.

Otherwise, why are you messing with people PvE game? It is none of your business.

People don't play PvP because it is either stupid (arenas) or the entry level is too high (GvG), not depending exclusively on you and your will.

I am sorry that some people here on the forum are more interested in arguing amongst themselves than stopping to answer your question.
May I ask if you are in a guild? If you are then just don't be afraid to ask questions. A good guild has members who will be glad to you soame tips and help. If they don't go find one that will.