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

Since it's a multiplayer game, and you can see other players, everyone else will feel any armor/titles/miscellaneous achievements etc. they were spent a lot of effort achieving, have been devalued. You can deny it all you want, but people compare themselves to others, both in computer games and in real life. If anyone, including yourself, can get absolutely anything they desire so trivially, the perceived value of those things will plummet to zero, people will see no point in playing, and will leave in droves.

"The harder to get, the better to have."

Okay, then.

That doesn't excuse that there are a thousand other paths ANet could've taken in making it easier for you to get those titles.

They could've simply given you the titles in normal mode as well. Hell it would've been better to simply give you the titles as soon as you long in.

But nope! Instead they dumbed down their entire PvE game drastically, further isolating players from knowing what the *%#@ they're doing, making the transition into PvP that more shitty.

Every other good developer is, yes, giving you that opportunity to play as stupid as you want. But they make walls, ANet doesn't.

Hahaha, yeah - so you have a less harder time transitioning into the harder areas where you can get better loot!!!

What happens in "ALL DOSE RPGEE'S" is you get better loot because the monsters get better loot. In Guild Wars, only *one side* is getting "better".

But what Guild Wars does is give you that "high-end power" before you even start to "level" yourself, via consets and PvE skills. So you've just proved it's even worse than an RPG. High-five!

Why can't you read my posts?

Here you go, in the most Laymen of terms I can hope to create:

This is what makes sense:
-Providing an easy mode, with access to all of the content
-Providing a normal mode, with access to all of the content but slightly harder
-Providing a harder mode, with access to all of the content but slightly harder

Here's what you don't see happen from good developers:
-Make that normal mode *as easy* as the easy mode
-Make that hard mode *as easy* as the easy mode
-Make that easy mode 10 times easier

The above would be understandable if there were unlockables obtained from the more difficult settings that drastically changed your gameplay.

But there is NOTHING like that in Guild Wars.

Hence, all these changes - PvE skills and consumables - are retarded.

When there's a mandatory skill threshold for the hardest settings.

No. The threshold is lowered via PvE skills and consumables.
The threshold is lowered via PvE skills and consumables.
The threshold is lowered via PvE skills and consumables.

Hammer this into your head, dude: the skill level of ALL PLAYERS IN PVE has been DRASTICALLY lowered. You cannot deny that everything now takes far less effort to complete.

Before I'm done, I want you to go through my posts and count the number of times I stated "I don't care about the rewards".

Got it? Good, now you can stop saying stupid crap like this:

Thank you.

That is fine...unless your escape from reality ruins the escape from reality experience of other people.

So you are saying the cooperating part should have no challenge or skill whatsoever? I doubt many will agree with you on that.

Individual skill, team skill, guild skill, etc etc. All that matters should be skill is the determining factor in your choice of how to play the game. If it isn't, then Anet is definately at fault.

Having inbalanced stuff in the game absolutely affects my game because I'm not a "don't like it don't use it" type of player. I use the best tools available, and if the best tools make the game easy that affects my game.

This to me is the root of your problem. I doubt anybody agrees with you about this. If you honestly believe this then I don't know what to say. I'm sure there are many people here who will tell you why this is a problem because I am getting really tired of typing. It absolutely would affect the health of the game...just as things in the game currently are just to a lesser extent. When you realize this we can talk again.

I answered your question in post #612. Playing the game in that manner would train you towards moving directly from having an impulse to responding on that impulse. At which point, I would be highly concerned with how you respond to any of your impulses when dealing with other people. I share common zones in game with you, a forum, and less specifically a planet. That kind of impulse training only benefits innocent or very mature people.

As for the rest of the population, they are very sloppy in regulating their poor behavior, and within a short time period they will be infringing on the enjoyment of other people within the game. Historically, the human species has thrived by making the world a difficult place to be a hostile person, not because all people are so genuinely nice. Game health, as well as world health, had always been achieved by letting those who seek to destroy everything fail under those kinds of whims. In an easy game, there is no collective strong enough to regulate those beliefs; in effect, there is no way to deal with those who seek to destroy the game because they are shielded from their flaws.

If you ask me what that guy using the 10 million damage attacks with all weapon and armor skins needs, he needs a good AI beat-down to know what his place really is, to teach him how competent he is in reality.

That's what a good challenge is: Having to give it your best and while *using* the best you can find.

When you have to shelve some of those things, what using the best erases from the challenge, when you have to not do it to your best abilities, it just proves what you're doing is not difficult. Players don't like having to bring challenge upon themselves.

To which I direct you to my previous post.

Argh, guru is annoying (ps: that wasn't me saying "GOSH you're annoying!", rather that the edit button works half the time.)

So you want to make the game harder for everyone and that's not affecting everyone's game? You want to impose your way to everyone, and criticize someone who wants to do the same?

I don't really have a problem with a game being easy, if it's too easy I don't play it, or play a more difficult mode, and thankfully GW is still difficult if you press 'm' and travel to the isles of the zaishen. Even RA is more challenging than HM without pve skills and cons will ever be and will teach you a lot more. I have yet to see a game with both a pve and pvp mode where you learn more, become better and are continuously challenged by playing pve instead of pvp.

Basically you are telling us most people suck at the game except for a minority of good players who know what is best for the game and everyone else. To me that is annoying.

This is undeniable: for the best input developer's look for the best players. Every single game out there has a minority of players that know a lot about the game, but not all know what's best for it. Only stubborn players who don't have harmful interests for the game should be getting the stick. Newcomers need to be welcomed, too.

Most players are inexperienced and are largely unaware of what's going on in the game. This much is true. What you don't do is you cater solely to that. You try to appeal to both extremes of the playerbase.

If you just want to jump in and have fun while not maintaining a whole lot of experience in the game, that's totally fine. But that shouldn't come at consequence to someone who wants to find more depth to their game.

Unfortunately, that's what's happened with Guild Wars.

I am surprised at how many play Perfect World really well and go out of thier way to help others.You don't hear the type of language on the servers over there as yoyu do in GW servers.It feesl as if I am playing with grown adults wh don't swear.beg and whine for nothing.

They even know how to play thier classes very well and high levels helping out in low lvl dungeon missions to pass on to your next 10 levels called cultivation lvls.

I would say it is because of all the short cuts players can take in this game.They don't play it fully through and use runners way more.

Guild Wars still has depth, a lot, but not in pve, and pve never had any real depth to begin with after you beat all the missions.

Regardless of how much it had to begin with, now it has even *less*. There's no reason anyone would want to do that.

I have to agree with you. I just started to dabble with PW and have had much of the same experience. The only thing I find unnerving is the getting married thing, kind of creeps me out.

I will preface this post with the knowledge that I haven't played this game in over 2 years. I was a beta tester for the original release. And finally that I was an avid PvPer.

The major problem with this game, and thus the progression from PvE to PvP, is the actual players themselves. Guild Wars was originally designed to be a PvP game that incorporated a PvE element as an introduction to 'how to play this game'. The real metagame doesn't start until after you have completed the PvE campaign. However, this wasn't enough for the hardcore PvEer(who purchased the wrong game in the first place) so ArenaNet decided to lean more heavily on the PvE side to appease their fanbase.

You can't blame ArenaNet for making the changes they did to make the PvE community happy, but you can blame the community for ruining a quality game. Guild Wars is not WoW or Silk Road or Neverwinter Nights, or (insert awful grindfest game here)...unfortunately the community forced Anets hand in making it one. And thus you are left with a terrible bastardized version of the developers original intent with no congruity or learning curve between the awful PvE and PvP.

just my opinion

no, its not like that at all. i've already stated this many times, we simply want balance.
this includes both nerfing and buffing.

ideally, we want:
- easy areas to be easy
- normal areas to be normal
- hard areas to be hard

i.e. a place for everyone to play.
not easy across the whole board, as bryant again stated numerous times in this thread.
we're not rejecting lesser skilled players from playing hard areas; we're inviting them to increase their skill if they choose to partake in the challenge.


why cant i blame anet for selling out?
no one forced anet to do anything, they simply saw an opportunity to make money, and they decided to take it.
even so, there are numerous options that would have worked at keeping the 'pve community happy' without 'ruining a quality game.'

A company is in business to make money? Well I guess ANET said we can make a nice little PvP game that will attract a limited amount of customers and it won't make a lot of money; or we can change what we started out to do and a make a bunch more money with the PvE people. Seems to me it's a no brainer if you want to stay in business, you go where the money is. Perhaps now you can see the reason for a whole new game that will try to incorporate the best of both, here's hoping they can pull it off.

Personally I don't think they will. I will of course purchase the game and support Anet. I see GW2 having a very distinct WoW feeling. That's what PvE players want and let's face it PvE players are paying the bills for this company. Anet hit PvP perfectly the first time around. Were some of the skills unbalanced...absoultely. But I distinctly remember the first couple of rounds of nerfs/buffs way back when the game came out as being recieved with admiration and support from the PvP community. Of course the PvE community screamed about how they're "uber builds" could no longer solo this area or that area. But the game play was solid both PvE and PvP and I remember 15-20 districts being full EVERYWHERE! I logged in a couple of days ago for the first time in over 2 years and my entire guild is inactive.(I guess we really are Pros at Inactivity!) Of the 300 or so people I met playing GW, and played with often, only a small handful (5 or 6) still play...there's a reason for that.

To the op - this is why the community sucks - they are children.

And if they see too many people having the titles they have, they cry and whine.

Any intelligent person knows that in a non changing world like guild wars more and more people will attain those titles.

The balance people talk in here is nothing more than "Too many people are at the high end. We cannot have that because I dona 't feel special anymore".

I bet Anet only heard the top GvG players in concerns to GvG. People still complain that GvG is much worse today than it was before.

But you are talking as a veteran.

No player start with consumables. No player start with PvE-only skills.

Actually, before you had to grind more for your PvE-only skills to be effective.
But no, that is against the skill>time.

But then people whine because people don't need to work for their stuff and is so much easier now.

Whine whine whine.

Ursan was bad - nerf it nerf it.

Ursan was nerfed. But Anet only listen to the noobies that don't want any challenge.

Now, 2 years later, the guildwarsguru community decides all the evils of gw is cry of pain, even though cry of pain exists in the exact same state for 2 years. It actually existed before ursan.


I wished they had labeled Normal Mode - idiot mode and Hard Mode - Not too idiot mode.

Then relabeled all the Missions to Idiot mission and all the Elite missions - Bigger idiot missions.

Then all people could be happy.

There are a lot of people that are playing multiplayer online games that should reevaluate why they are playing multiplayer games to begin with. This is not to insult anyone, but these people are the type that because of their attitude towards the game and the attitude towards others in the game, are going to have more satisfying time playing a single player game.

For instance, I enjoy RPG's, but if you add the MMO to them I enjoy them far less. As such I tend to only play single player RPG's. I stick with GW because of the PvP, had it not been for that I would have quit bac in 2005.

@Risky Anet originally had the attention of the competitive gamer crowd. This is by now means a "limited amount of customers." Starcraft, Warcraft, Counterstrike, Halo, TF2 are all very profitable games that are supported by that crowd. While the numbers in the MMORPG crowd aren't enough to support competitive games, there are other gaming markets. The worst blow that sent most of these players away happened on release day. In the betas everybody had everything unlocked, such that they could beta test; then release day came and everyone had to play PvE to unlock stuff. The competitive crowd up and left, they did not come to play an MMORPG.

Anet had a large crowd interested in the PvP, but they blew their chance. After that marketing failed, then they reached back to the PvE crowd. Now perhaps you can see why many of the old PvP players feel so backstabbed by Anet.

Still what you hear is people wishing to make PvE and PvP more intermingled, wishing to make the transition between PvE and PvP "less shitty".

I did like 10 skirmishes against the AI before going online playing WC3 PvP. WC3 is one of the games that consumed more of my time and I've never finished a single PvE campaign.

PvE and PvP crowds are mostly different. Those that seem disappointed with GW seem to be those that wished PvE was more like PvP.

I'm not sure what your point you are trying to make. Starting PvP regardless of whether or not you have done any PvE is just flat out shitty. This was what lost a whole market of gamers at release and this is what is holding much of any new blood from entering into PvP.

Really I haven't heard many people wanting PvE and PvP more intermingled. For years all I could hear were people begging for a pure PvE/PvP split. So again, I am not sure what kind of point you are trying to make.

/slap Bad!

Reread this please:

The large and general consensus here is that PvE skills have always been harmful to the game. It's not often discussed here because everything that's been said has been said to death. Then someone like you comes along.

We're not trying to looking for something new to rally against. It's just that what's been said has been said, and ANet doesn't want to do anything about it. It's quite upsetting.

Also: How come you've ignored DreamWind and I's posts from earlier that were in direct response to yours?

I think PvE-only skills are bad to the game too, not as much because of their effects, but because they require no attribute allocation and some not even require a specific profession. I just disagree, especially by the reasons given in this thread, that removing them will fix anything. I actually believe that just removing them will make the game worse, if only for the fact that making the game harder (and I don't see harder as a synonym of skillful) will cause frustration to some type of players, making them leave and giving a reputation of a desert to the game.

Additionally, you and others, grossly exaggerates the power of PvE-only skills, calling them auto-wins, when not all of them are or not even some of them are so, in all circumstances, and clearly 3 PvE-only sills won't make the game a auto-win for players that play alone, neither will 6 of the said PvE-only skills for players that play in duos.

24 or 36 of those, supported by a conset, on the other hand, will certainly change the game.

In another thread, regarding the balancing of Cry of Pain and shadow form, TAM alliance (I believe) showed that consets are actually the main power behind the unbelievable times full guild teams can get these days in elite areas in HM, by doing the deep hm in like 26 minutes (if I'm not mistaken) without Shadow form or obsidian flesh tank and not using any PvE-only skills at all.

I think, as I said multiple times in this thread, what they should have done was split the skills in PvE from the PvP because the stats in both games are quite different.

I also dislike monster only skills and environmental skills - those are just retarded ways of making monsters artificially harder.

I already said that either GW need a big revamp or it needs a new start. A big revamp is economically unattractive because GW way of making money, stand alone expansions, in a game like this, where the levels are capped, only adds more and more of the same content (most RPG add more and more of the same content too, but at least it gives you the sense you are progressing and not "ok lets do the noob missions of the new campaign").

If you were a designer from Guild Wars, what would you introduce for a new expansion?
Remember that you need to make money for more content, for servers and PvP tournaments.

It is my opinion, even if they fixed most of the design problems, they couldn't turn the game in to a profitable 6 months expansion release, without removing level cap and such.

There is only so much you can do to make the mobs stronger - C'mon, Mallyx is ridiculous! No conditions, no hexes, no enchantments... Retarded way of making a monster more challenging, if you ask me, much more related to figure a solution than any skill by the part of the player.

By skill, in GW, I consider the ability of a player to manage his resources (health, adrenaline, energy, etc), the ability to recognize what is the biggest threat to your team strategy (if you use a physical team, skills that shut physical characters down are a big threat, for example) and the enemy vulnerabilities and how to surpass their defenses.

The more the AI play and react different to players, the more those players will exploit inherent disadvantages of the AI programming over game mechanics, since the AI doesn't obey those mechanics.

Maybe, that single fact, that AI doesn't obey the game mechanics, is the main factor players don't have to learn them to beat the AI.

The other solution Anet have is completely disregard PvE, and make a PvP only game.

Instead of adding PvE campaigns for the players unlock stuff for PvP, they can instead create several types of PvP that will introduce the new players to the game.

I for example suggested in this thread, Random GvG, where players would be given a random build and a random team. Those teams would follow a pre-built template: 2 Monks, 1 or 2 warriors, 1 mesmer and so on, to give the team coherence instead of what you get in RA . I would select random GvG and I would be placed, for example, as the monk, with all items and build already given to me.

The question is if that kind of game would be profitable.

First, I'm not talking just to you.

Second, you didn't answer my question, about if the only way for you to accept challenge is being rewarded for it afterward.

That seemed not a stupid question, but a pertinent one, since you say that not using PvE-only skills and consumables by your own will isn't a valid way to increase challenge, but that if Anet removes the PvE-only skills and consumables, the game will be challenging once again.


I believe these forums are a place of freedom of speech (freedom encompasses rules too).

As so, I can disregard whoever I feel like (and in a thread like this, that once you return to it you have like 2-3 pages of huge posts it's quite easy to do so unintentionally or even deliberately to avoid turning this thread in a dialogue) , the same way you can disregard my post or my points, as you and Dreamwind like to do to my points when they don't please you.

More, I'm not going to discuss game design with someone that compares the use of a nuclear device on a human population with killing a monster, to give me a lecture on moral standards. Those individuals are so set on their beliefs, that I better not waste my time arguing with them.

You forgetting about the accumulative side effect of always analyzing all your impulses. Humans have quite an ingrained ability for violence and stupidity, so while games could indeed create a stimulus for thinking your impulses, games are also a nice place to get rid of residual violence and stupidity accumulated during day life. Turning games into places where you need to carefully consider all the consequences of their actions, creating an additional place where those violent and stupid impulses are created and stored, might not be a wise solutions.

It might be better having a person with god mode and 10 million damage attacks kill all the mobs of GW and then some more, draining all those violent impulses to controllable levels, than risking the collapse of a fellow human being impulse control system while he is in a public place surrounded by other human beings, after spending a night consider the most efficient way to chop down a huge purple gorilla to pieces.


One of these days I will have to hear your opinion about the influence of sexual urges and impulses regarding the obsession of acquiring quite ugly items, but viewed by the general populace as desirable, turning everyone in the same indistinguishable entities and if people like to express their individuality or are just slaves of pack mentality.

I agree that outright removing them would indeed be bad for the game. Balancing them wouldn't.

The PvE skills simply need to be put on a level that places them more in line with the rest of the skills. Sure there are still plenty of skills in PvE that don't see much use, but you fix what's breaking the game first, not later.

Consets are a different beast altogether, and will require a different form of fixing.

I'd understand more if all of these changes were all just to "make more monies", but there are a few things that many seem to forget:
1. Even though these days it's becoming more and more accessible, WoW garnered such a *huge* and active playerbase while only a few got to get even a glimpse of the best content.
2. Pissing off those who know a lot about the game is a very risky decision, one that ANet's found fit to follow with in Guild Wars.

I'll copy it from an earlier post:

You wouldn't have to have asked that if you weren't ignoring me.

This is a much more interesting base for understanding than "remove all the PvE-only skills and all the consumables approach".

I will still disagree if the only or main reason is to improve player skill. If it is for the reason of allowing other skills to be comparable, then I will agree. But I would like to see the skills that were changed due to PvP reasons reverted at the same time.
WoW is so successful because you can find in the box the Blizzard logo.
And while you can find threads like these and even much less polite towards Blizzard than those you find in here towards Anet, Blizzard is a name that gives till this day guarantee of return in fun for the money you invest.

If WoW was released by someone else, first it wouldn't be so good, second it wouldn't be able to attract such a larger player base that wouldn't even consider a MMORPG in other circumstances.


Different way of facing it - I'm more for the "if i can do it while blinded and manacled I will do it in any circumstance" type of person.

And against static AI sooner or later the challenge just disappear, unless they keep making your skills less effective or buffing the AI. Against a fellow human, both players will learn as they play, sometimes one will be the better one, either because he is just better or because he learns faster, sometime the other will be better, til they both reach their maximum possible potential. Then, there is always tricks (legal ones) and cunning.

I agree. I could have been interested in PvP (mostly when I started, but I had to play PvE and there were no heroes at the time), and I sometimes do arenas and stuff mostly while waiting for GF to show up. But there is no way I'm going to get involved in GvG - takes too much time either to start a GvG team from scratch or to find one accepting new players and willing to train them... and then the schedules for organized team play.

But on the other hand there could exist other intermediate steps between arenas/HA and fully organized GvG.

Some of the arguments presented in this thread and in others to remove PvE-only skills and consumables, is based on the fact that people don't move from PvE to PvP because they don't learn enough in PvE due to said PvE-skills and consumables.

I think that people really wanting to do PvP either have moved to it or are prevented by the huge commitment (in time) required to move from arenas to GvG.

I guess there is HA, but its mostly played with FOTM builds.

Player skill still needs to be paid attention to. Most developers would much rather prefer *not* to have a completely mindless playerbase.

I wouldn't say that to those at 80.

I stated, either here or in another thread, that there has constantly been an influx of problems at endgame, and it's always pissing off quite a chunk of the minority of players.

We won't see much affect on the game as a whole, though, since it's those just wanting to jump in, play, and see the world that are going to bring the most bucks (i.e. the casuals).

Precisely...which is why you don't make it easier.

Challenge when going against an AI never lasts very long, and that's why you have to maintain it as much as possible - hence why what ANet has done has been largely harmful.

If ANet wanted to better benefit those who wanted to play through the content, the best way they could've done that was through implementing an easier difficulty.

Difficulty is a very interesting thing, and for many players it's not something that can just be "made up". It's not so simple as just making it yourself. That's why developers introduce difficulty settings, for both extremes: ones for people who find the game too hard, ones for people who find the game too easy. People can't make their game "harder" anymore than people can make their game "easier": while it is indeed to make tasks more "challenging", it's not in the same degree that so many other players want to experience it.

I reckon they prefer to have a large player base, mindless or otherwise.

But that is beside the point. Skill versus AI is complicated since AI is predictable and do not obey completely to game mechanics.

Do you consider good body blocking skill? Because it can be the difference between a wipe and a wash, but in the end it is just stupid AI path finding, unable to sidestep.


People will never be happy. Starcraft and Warcraft III are probable considered the most balanced RTS in the market. If you look at their forums you would believe otherwise.



But are you saying that because it isn't challenging for you anymore or because it was never challenging?

You never thought/think HM was harder than NM, never took/don't take additional precautions in HM compared to NM?

Or it is just the case it isn't challenging anymore to you because the AI reached the its limits versus you, and you require Ultra HM?

And then in a given set of time you require Super Ultra HM?

And so on so forth till the AI is just unbeatable by you?

And looking back you will see it is the same stupid AI but attacking 500 times faster, dealing 10 million damage per attack, taking 0 damage from your attacks, while having 100000 health?

Isn't nerfing (or balancing them if you prefer) the skills pretty much the same as adding another difficulty level?

Isn't what PvP is all about? Giving you an everlasting challenge by pairing you against other people that don't need to be buffed to beat you?

Isn't that why PvP games have a lot more replaying value?

Ignorance we have. Violence we learn, even stumble upon accidentally, because we do kill living things to eat. In regards to easy, monotonous activity, the particular responses to impulse that can be checked in game are: threat of competition, failure, power over others, etc. I certainly take a break from the game world whenever I dislike my response to one of those. But you can check your responses to impulse within any relationship involving competition and power, and you can understand reactions to failure at any time also.

Again, this is a multiplayer game. Saying people can activate either violent, perverted, or other types of urges safely in this environment wouldn't be a good idea. Environments where people don't have control over themselves and act poorly upon those urges are isolated on purpose (jails, mental hospitals).

The hydraulic theory of emotion has already been proven false. People do not store things up like a bottle and then release them to prevent a future blow-up. The act of replaying an emotion strengthens a brain circuit that makes a person more likely to follow that neural pathway in the future. Releasing your anger makes you an angrier person. The proper way to regulate is to take what triggers the anger (anger is the response) and learn a different response in place of it, and to try not to activate the poor response.

I'm assuming you are refering to Freud's theories of people acting on sexual impulses. He's very likely wrong about that; however no one has truly gone to the extent of trying to understand human motivations to be able to thoroughly refute his theory. He tried to do too much for his time, and he's currently very harmful because his ideas went so mainstream before they were properly analyzed. His celebrity from understanding the unconcious helped to spread all his ideas, but not all of them have the same factual value. No one source can be perfect on everything; "it take a village to raise a child" because the child needs to learn from many people to turn out right.

I think it was Gigashadow who came across this: people need to have something rare and special, and it's a unique identity that they need. I can't explain things like polygamy because I don't know them well enough, but a person usually accepts being part of the pack when they give up hope on being unique. When the game imposes increasing uniformity (same armor, same titles, same weapons), the need for identity is infringed upon and it comes out in other ways. However, after a certain point it's just too much infringement on that need and so the people will leave.

I have greater questions about the human desire to masquerade under a false identity. To me it's either enjoyment of the illusion of identity or the illusion of power. But it's not truly an illusion in my mind; it seems like the power and the identity are actually competed for, and the person who doesn't have the capability to earn them wins through stealing. It's a pretty powerful crisis to have someone else pretending to be you, hence the bad players need to seek out their own unique identities with what they are good at instead of seeking to 'steal' from the good players.

You don't have to control yourself when facing non-existing entities.


Regardless of people being bottles or not, and the theory being wrong or not, we are constantly faced with situations where people lose control.

Never facing the capability for anger or violence and learning how you react, may not let you know what trigger that emotion in the first place and how to subdue it or use it for your own profit.

Controlled environments or virtual environments seem a much more interesting place to learn about each one dark side - and all of us have one, our brain is built like an expanding city, each layer on top of the previous one, and deep buried in it, there's a reptilian brain responsible for our most primitive emotions.

The training of a human into a soldier (and sure, some of them are sociopaths) or martial arts is based on training the person to use its emotions in a controlled way, not denying them, and that doesn't have to turn a person into a violent uncontrolled one. If the training is adequate its quite the opposite - you get a human that is capable of violence in the situation society demands and a peaceful person in all other circumstances.



Not really. I was just pulling your leg to see what you came with. Concerning people psychology, I prefer to search for answers in the past and see how could the evolution of our species benefit by a given response, by a given behavior, and which of those are side products.

Sorry for using you.

they go hand in hand. does a balanced game not make for a suitable learning environment, moreso than a broken game?

we want a balanced game--this will come with numerous amount of benefits.
i don't know how many times i must stress the importance of balance in this thread.

You don't have to make the game easier to flock more players. Countless good games have proved that: if the game is good, it will do well, it *will* do amazingly. For a game to be more largely successful, you provide accessibility *and* difficulty for *both* ends of the playerbase.

Easy and Hard modes, Casual and Nightmare settings, these things are key to success. You don't make just an Easy game. You don't make just a Hard game. There are consequences following both paths if you solely go down to one.

Case in point? Right now. Many experienced ticked at what ANet has done, some selfish and others less so. There's nothing wrong at all with ANet wanting to cater more to casual players, but they went in the opposite way of accomplishing that.

It depends on why they're unhappy.

If you get a person complaining about having to adapt to a new strategy, that's a completely personal problem.

But if you get a person who lists some horrible issues that aren't subjective and *do* cause problems to a game, that's something entirely different.

It's true that not everyone's going to be happy. You just have to listen to why they're not happy. Someone being unhappy because it takes so long to get a set of Obsidian Armor isn't the same thing as someone being unhappy because the meta has been the same thing for months on end, or because one race in a strategy game is better than all the others.

Starting at the very top of the quote: Neither of those. It's because the content in itself is no longer as challenging. Of course it wasn't easy off the start: going through earlier in my career as my character was highly enlightening. Indeed I reached that peak, but it's not me we're talking about here.

The only problem in reaching your peak of skill in a gaming career is how long it took you to do it, the shorter the more worse off. Your "peak" is decided when you're able to beat the hardest content the game can offer.

With all the new tools ANet has added, that "peak" is much more easily reached, and I consider that a huge problem.

For other players who have spent a lot of time to be successful in the game, it may come off as a slap in the face. Some are pretty upset to have spent so much time learning how to play their class only to have ANet release additions that make all of that training non-required.

I wouldn't say "just go play PvP" as a solution to the problem, either. I'd want to maintain integrity, longevity and substance to the PvE setting as much as possible. You can't just bork up PvE as much as you want and just use the phrase "go against other players for a challenge" as an excuse.

I edited this and reposted this, it got lost in the sea of quote wars

So some people in this thread are on a futile crusade to force players to raise their skill by nerfing those overpowered PvE skills, you do realise these players will just move onto another game or stop playing, right?

Look at most of the game, people use the tried and tested or a variation of "tank and spank" build which is in all some cases just as skill-less and mind numbing as ursan was, it just takes longer to do what you're doing.

Its hilarious how when a "elite" area get donimated by a overpowered skills/builds people come to this fourm and start the calls for nerfs yet a smite/600 can run just about any dungeon in EOTN and the community is completely fine with that?

Don't even get me started on the UW speed clear, can anyone say loot scailing for end game chests? It completely fine to farm an "elite" area end game chest in 10-20mins?

People want shadow form nerf because of the damage its doing to the game, the 55/invimonk back in it day im sure done so much more damage to the game but that was accepted? I remember seeing some of the threads asking for this build to be nerfed, people trolled and dismissed it so people just got on with it, again why do people care now?

I also remember not being able to find groups because the 55/invimonk was the "new thing" and i was told to suck it up, now why are things so different?


By the comminity allowing some these changes to take place (for ex the 55/invimonk) the community paved the way for what was to come, yeah its kinda the dev's fault for bringing this type of stuff into the game but damn people look in the mirror.

Where was you people when these builds where hitting their prime?, i guess you where too busy playing the game or abusing the hell out of these builds.

Its amazing now all these talks are happening now, finally give a dam now you've finished what you wanted to do in game ro you've got nothing better to do?


The community comes across a hyporcrite picking and chosing what they want changed when other issues just as bad go by unnoticed, its so smells of them having their own agenda.

I agree. You never saw threads like this when the game was newer. Now that some people have done all there is to do(I am am not one, because I must suck at the game), the game needs to be changed to satisfy them. As much as they must love this game. they find it hard to move on to another. GW is pretty much in a holding pattern until GW2 is ready, we must accept it for what it is or find something new to play.

LoL...you have got to be kidding me. The Africa thing was just an example explaining how you aren't caring about what happens to other people in this game if it doesn't affect you. You don't care why other people paid for this game as long as it doesn't affect you.

Why can't you just admit to everybody here that you don't care whatsoever about the health of the game, but only the health of your game. Anybody who says a 10 billion damage skill or god mode in this game would be ok is clearly somebody we better not waste our time arguing with (although I continue to do so out of boredom).

Can you give your definition of a balanced game?
I'll give you mine: a balanced game offers the same options/tools to all sides, their choice of tools and how they use them decides who wins. By that definition Guild Wars would be very easy (look at proph, it's easy even without pve skills and cons), the only way to make the game harder is to break the balance.
It seems to me that you are thinking that a hard game=balanced game which is far from the truth in player vs AI games.

Look at teambuilds that AI is using in Prophecies. They are joke. Mursaat for example:

Air ele without Blind and no energy management. Doing little damage.
Mesmer that does no do like ... anything. Little damage, Interrupt that is on 20 second recharge. Stance that is part vulnerability
Necromancer that fancies degen and has suicidal tendencies remedied only by copious amount of lifestealing and single spell that actually does some damage
Monk that never heard of good prot, but is fond of spending 15 energy on removing conditions and is desperately pushing bars up with orison.
Hammer warrior that never uses his elite until he selfenergydenials himself with wild blow and then cant use followup.
Ranger with zero interrupts, zero conditions which has essentially no elite skill.

Not even using secondaries.

They are weak, but not because AI is overly dumb. It is because it was neutered.

(PS: AI using "balanced stuff" does not necessarily has to win by immediately wiping party while suffering no losses. It can win by attrition - one or two deaths per group can easily get most of teams to high enough DP to eventually crack down under pressure. That is not that hard to achieve with equal tools.)

A Deconstruction of Balance


Diagram 1, a normal game. (e.g. sports games, racing games, fighting games, fps)


(1) Red is the learning curve of the player. The more time he spends, the higher the graph gets, indicating his getting better at the game. At some point he will stop to grow better.

(2) Blue is the difficulty curve of the game. It starts out well below the ability of the player to instantly grasp the game. Sometimes it can unexpectedly get too hard (3) and exceed the player's skill. Then hew will be stuck, unless his red curve goes over the blue one. We have all been there in GW at some point and a guild of group of Pugs was helping us over the hump.

(4) Is endgamish content, the player is good, the game keeps demanding 90% of his ability, so on a bad day he will fail, staying concentrated will make him win. At this moment you will have the feeling of balance, even if it is an illusion.

(5) at some point the game moves to its final level of difficulty. If it "outranks" the player he will have to abandon the game. Many people do not finish the games they buy, often for that reason. Over time people might even get accustomed to that (not in diagram) and then complete the game at will. Be it Guild Wars or Ninja Gaiden, you then farm enemies at will for loot. The feeling of balance is shattered again, just like I once though fighting the Mursaat was tough.



Diagram 2, an MMO game:


Red is once more the amount of skill asked from the player. Take Diablo, all they ask you to aim your left mouse at an enemy and click it. There are no intricate combos like in Street Fighter that hinge on perfect execution of multiple consecutive inputs. Many MMOs will not challenge you, the red line indicating the amount of dexterity and mental quickness you need to bring to the table equals close to zero. Can't risk scaring off people after subscribing for two months by making the game harder to play.

The blue line is the difficulty. With your input skills largely removed from the equation, it's all a matter of mathematics now. Statistics decide the battle, with the eventual diceroll for some more randomness.

The green line is the power curve of the player. While he is not asked to perform better, his stats simply increase. More time spent equals more power. You either grind some more if you hit a bump (Diablo) or the enemies' statistics are dynamically calculated to be conveniently well below your level (Sacred 2). The increasing distance between the red line and the blue line is the perceived illusion of grandeur. The fake equal distance between the red line and the blue line is mistaken for balance.


Too many people mistake GW for a game that is like games in diagram 2. They are used to winning with no effort and GW never challenge this belief by giving a proper tutorial for that reality. Since 99% of GW's direct competitors are THAT different we, as a community, will struggle with an influx of players who are accustomed to like games the way they are in diagram 2.

If you look at the origins of ArenaNet as a bunch of guys who left Blizzard (or to be more precise it is heavily indicated they left the WoW project before it went public), you can see where the designers of GW and the designers of WoW had their falling out. The result were two games. One according to diagram 1 (GW) and one more according to diagram 2 (WoW, although I simplified it a bit much I guess)

Press release of said events:
http://www.arenanet.com/press/trifor...d_programmers/


For PvP I need no graph:

Build construction, build execution, opponent's build execution, tactics.

Those are the factors determining every PvP. Amount of grind for stats and loot is removed from the equation. If you loose you can:
a. blame your lousy execution
b. admit the enemy was better
c. blame your lousy skillbar
d. blame your strategy
e. blame something that is not you

At least 50% of people will loose any PvP encounter. Most people think of a tournament as one big encounter, so 80% of those will loose. Most of them will have answer "e" as their reason for loosing. The result are complaints about anything. The server lag, the cheaters, the boobs on the own team, the skills not being balanced.

The lack of perceived balance is a natural phenomenon and result of the amount of people ending their GW encounters with a perceived loss.

The human “dark side” is achieved by surrendering control of the conscious mind back towards becoming more unaware of oneself. Cruel or stupid actions are the responses of a weak and ignorant animal, not of a more powerful being that has control of itself. To be human is to have a greater degree of control over the conscious, not to be subject to automated response by an inability to control oneself. Most people are wrong because they do not have control over their own thoughts; anyone can put a thought in their head and convince them it is their own.

As far as exploring the dark side goes, there is a philosophical analogy of ‘selling one’s soul to a devil’ that refers to that concept. It refers to making a long term sacrifice to achieve a supposed short term benefit; a benefit which ends up harming you. The way the story goes, the man sells it and immediately regrets the decision, after which he has to work many times harder just to get it back. Once you relinquish an important part of your consciousness you very likely won’t be able to discover it back, so it doesn’t really matter whether you believe something or someone is keeping it from you. But as far as the story being untrue, if you relinquished your consciousness, you’d be lucky just to remember that you did so because you could have given up those memories.

So it sounds like a dangerous idea to be undertaken without thorough consideration (strikes me as terrible initially, reminds me of motivations for LSD/drug experiments done on patients). Sounds like this theory could backfire based on humanity regressing as a whole back in the direction we have already worked hard to move away from and repeating an endless loop (you did say you prefer answers from the past). One might not need to explore forgotten animal side too much; an animal side still remains. One already needs to explore the non-animal side to gain the tools to cope with still being part animal. Light side, human strengths, whatever terminology anyone uses. If you are heading in the other direction it’s extinction you’ll find (or reasons for extinction maybe). I would rather find someone already doing it than create another.

But thanks for telling me that you feel games can do this, because I recognize that is a possible harmful side effect of the positive human interaction that could be possible. Other people are probably the most powerful reminders that one is regressing backwards.

I like statistics, but there's also a non-subjective definition of balance that refers to build viability. So, at times I defend excuse #e, and you can check the pvp forums at any time to see the accumulation of knowledge base towards forming that argument. Hypothetically, if I play a one monk backline, yes I am demonstrating a poor grasp of working game mechanics, but I may also be recognizing that I don't have two good monks on my team so it would be harder to win in that manner. Excuse #e encompasses a complaint that the game does not specifically support certain talents that players would have.

I think you might agree with the reasoning that the separate excuse #e always works. Whenever you fail at anything, it is because the activity was not centered around your skillset and talents. So if you take the lazy route out, you can always blame that activity.

However, I can remind you that things have been 'shaken up' in this game as they might be in any online game, and some people are not making an excuse but pointing out that someone has changed design to their detriment. In that case, they are the smart ones for being self-aware enough to notice the outside changes, not the ignorant ones.

But on the topic of teaching, they might just need better coping tools to dealing with forced transitions.

Oh my goodness. I just kinda stumbled apon this thread. I really really enjoyed the reads I got. There are many many good points brought up. After reading through many of the posts all I have to say is. I am off to play my necro this thread has really inspired me. I feel for a few of the posts because. I am a casual player. I used to put in alot more time into this game (but that was way back when it was proph only.) I have had many people say I am an excellent player (I kindly disagreed with them.) I think it is all a matter of view really. There are many things that I have done that you guys might say (nice wow he's a good player.) But there are many things that I havn't done so others would probably say (what a noob.) I think it all matters on the situation. On how you meet the "noob" player. For example: I have beaten proph many many times. Other players have not. So when I jump into a party I of course have a general idea of what I plan to do (If I don't I whip out wiki for help or reminds on how to do some thing better.) There are those players who have never beaten proph so they would get confused or lost. So some people might call them a noob for that. But turn it around if I went to some sort of pvp. They might be more apt to be better then me because I am a pvp noob (Pvp has changed so much and I don't have as much time as I used too.) I have no idea if I am repeating someone and please excuse me if I am there were 11 pages it was just too long. But the various situations that you meet people in can sway your opinion of them (so don't be so quick to judge.)

PS: Hopefully I didn't just speew bleh out on to this thread. I never was good at explaining my views on things so sry.

Choosing eight skills is an elemental part of the game experience. So much that the attribute refund points were removed in a patch to even play more to that gameplay.

But for this selection of skills be meaningful, the choice has to make an impact in the match. Therefore we need good skills and bad skills. If they were all the same, their selection would no longer be of any meaning. We would be back at Diablo, where you just pack it all into one skill and keep spamming that. One is as good as the next really with minor differences so late in the game that 95% of players will never notice.

Players can sort of skip this phase and adapt a build from another player. if he is #1 with this build, then I can be #1 with this build is the argument. Just like evolution, the community is a big DNA computer, which over time gravitates heavily towards one direction from time to time [DNA did the same with Dinosaurs as top species on the planet, later mammals took over].

The consensus of a skill's superiority and the training most people put into it, leads to an imbalance in build distribution. Not a bad thing, but usually that's when Izzy shuffles it up a bit and rightfully so. More than nerfing a skill, he is giving the "selection of skills gameplay" back its meaningful part in the overall match. Searing Flame was originally considered too strong, got nerfed, look where it is today.

As I said: Skill Selection, Skill Execution, Tactics
Those are the big three things you have control over. Sometimes you might be so good in one department that it compensates for shortcomings in the other two. But that is part of the successful whole as well. We should not prefer one factor over the other when we want to know who is the best. As an online game we thrive on people being the underdog and winning by using the one strength they got. Too balanced and the same guys will win over and over, frustrating all other people out of existence. That's why each factor is allowed to be strong, but no single factor is allowed to get too strong.