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

4thVariety hit the nail right on the head. Easy to read and concise. Well done.

by your definition, 8 human players vs 200 enemy monsters is imbalanced. what your asking pve to be is really just pvp vs ai.
sorry to burst your bubble, but we already kind of have that in ha and hb (unfortunately).

my definition of balance is simply for both sides to have the balanced tools to defeat the other side with an equal chance.
i understand where your coming from, in that if both sides have exactly the same tools, then obviously they have to be balanced because their exactly the same! this is the easy option, but it is not the only one. and generally i find it to be one of the more boring options--because its basically pvp gameplay vs ai.

but the problem pve skills created, is that instead of re-balancing existing skills to fit pve. they instead left those skills crappy, and gave us a new overpowered set of skills. this causes internal balance problems within player skill selection.

also, yes gw has many broken things on the monster side of the equation as well, which is what called for pve skills and consets in the first place. but you have to remember that these things came from hard mode (i.e. its supposed to be hard).

i will agree that hard mode was badly implemented, but pve skills were not a good fix and only made things worse.
pve skills...consets...hard mode...titles...they all have to be redone imo. of course in the current situation, this is impossible.
all we can do is just hope for the best in gw2. anet needed a fresh start, but if they don't understand the problems of gw1, then they are very likely to repeat them again in gw2.


how hard is it really to choose and use pve skills... really?

i disagree. we don't need good skills and bad skills--we need skills for situation a, skills for situation b, skills for situation c, etc.
when a pve skill dominates in every single situation, there is no need for any other skill at all.

exactly, but the current gw situation hinders this.
one player might make a good scout, one might make a good sniper, one might make a good spy. in gw, however, we're all forced to play rocket launcher soldiers.

I already said that a balanced player vs AI game is almost always easy, but ANet could have made it harder just by changing the builds. zwei2stein made some nice suggestions (if I may say so) that could make the mobs much more challenging without breaking the game. However pve skills are needed (not the OP ones ofc) to balance the classes internally. And I really don't see the need for cons except the powerstone.
But to be honest HM isn't here for more challenge or to improve the playerbase, it's here to lure us to replay all the content again.

What you appear to be saying is that the definition of the game resembles "selection of skills > time practiced" instead of "talent > time spent". Players don't know that and they might not agree with it, they use the consensus definition of skill (which is closer to talent) when they want skill to be rewarded. In the real world, that kind of skill only comes about by a commitment of time perfecting a craft. People want to be rewarded for becoming very good at something, not feel like someone is reshaping the world every time they come out on top. You gave the right explanation, it's not a friendly world to be a dinosaur, did we really want every part of them to die off?

A skill shakeup is like teaching someone to paint, and then taking away the brush and expecting them to use a pencil. Some parts of the transition can be kept, but others have to be relearned. If the skill shakeups are working effectively, they would be promoting skill in that they would be forcing someone to become well-rounded. However, if periodic skill shakeups aren't being effective at getting people to relearn, it's like someone choosing to make paintings worth 50 times the price of a pencil drawing. So the pencil drawers are compelled to quit because the market does not support their skill. But they still do not have access to the resources to adapt to the desired talents, so they all become bad painters because they are forced to make a living that way. All they do after that is sit around complaining about how terrible painting is to do. But most importantly, society loses all pencil drawers whether they wanted to or not!

So in that way, game design already functions as an arbitrary skill value determination (like all games in any genre). Each and every shakeup is taken as an attack on each persons talents to express to them that the work they have put into developing them is worth less. If each skill change were instead crafted to equalize we would have less complaints about things being unfair (non-subjective definition of balance).

Instead, skill crafting is interpreted as "If you play in this manner, we have a big reward for you. If you didn't play in this manner, here is further punishment." That happens because the tools are so powerful. If you don't understand what that is, that is a pressure to conform and not be yourself. For people who want to be themselves (and aren't harming other people in the process), that's going to result in them considering a new game. Pressure the deviants to conform, not those who have done nothing wrong. People are going to choose the game that lets them be rewarded for being themselves (whether they are friendly or hostile anyway).

If you need to see where this goes a step further, people do not quit life because someone else is at the top all the time. They quit life because they are so far from being close to that point, and without the resources to get out of the very bottom. They perceive that they have taken a very large and hopeless fall from where they want to be.

It's more like Skill selection is also an understanding of what skills do what, and how they are effective.

It's not so much taking away a paint brush and totally replacing it with another tool. It's this paint brush can do x pattern(effect), and provide so much paint on surface z(damage).

While skill alterations sometimes make a certain paint brush pattern current customers or era no longer wants/requires/desires(relating to said skill being less powerful). You just move on to another paint brush that will provide you with similar patterns and amount of paint like the last being used, but is currently in style(power/effectiveness).


Only if they don't understand what makes an effect skill for said situation. Relating back to their ability to paint overall. Skill/understanding.

GW is supposed to be a game of skill, however, right now the game is not supporting ultra modern complexions of skill display. Certainly the set of skills in the game has grown to huge proportions and is catered to a variety of people. Purist get just as happy as grinders. It is very hard to unite them, one side has to make concessions if they want to group together, especially in group farming efforts taking place in PvE. Guilds have less problems finding the right middle ground. But PuGs tend to move towards optimized speed runs, therefore to power and therefore to using skills and consumables other players might not find that entertaining. And it's always entertainment they seek! No guild, no pugs -> player stops playing the game.

Psychological speaking, they just need the right carrot. GW can't offer that. We have two game modes, normal and hard, that's it. The Hall of Monuments might track some things, but it is in no way as complex as the achievement system of a console game. Like it or not, that is where we need to go.

Imagine the UW, but now it would track if you completed it
a. with all means available
b. without PvE skills and consets
c. while using PvP balance rules
d. Condition a. on HM
e. Condition a. on HM
f. Condition a. on HM

You can see that by mixing up the rules, we acknowledge the existence of all groups of players. Each player prefers one of the six options over the other. Seeing them, he might feel inclined to go after multiple ones, or feel challenged to do it the hard way and not just the cheap way only. Peer pressure among the community will lead to people showing off their ability to master condition f.

Knowing all these settings exist, the game could modify the drop rate for each mode to reward those more, who really go for broke, instead of breaking the game with combos other might perceive as cheap.

We agree that we want skill driven gameplay. Some of us also want time investments to be viable on some level. We can have both, but it requires the game to be more configurable. GW is instanced, that is one huuuuuuuuge advantage. Play an fps with your guild against a group of bots and you have all those intricate methods of configuring them. Often down to accuracy with individual weapons, which one they prioritize and the style of gaming they display. GW is a very similar game (see Diagram1) yet the options for setting up the amount of resistance monsters put up are very rudimentary.

Type 2 games (Diagram2) might be able to recycle content by dynamically generating new stats for monsters. Type 1 games (Diagram1), such as GW, have to be able to "mix up the rules". That can be intricate difficulty setting, that might also be user created content.

After four years we might reached the point where we consider all of that good ideas, but the GW Live team might be too small to implement changes of that magnitude. All we can hope is for GW2 to get that level of refinement when it comes to challenging the skill of the player and have the game driven by it.

Of course it is imbalanced, especially considering the 200 enemies in GW are stronger. They should win all the time, but they lose the big majority of the time.

Sorry to burst your bubble but that is GvG.


Yes it did. But that happened too because Mobs became stronger and regular skills became weaker due to PvP constrains.

Sincerely after beating the Veteran difficulty of CoD4, and now Veteran difficulty feel quite easy, I either do PvP or I leave the game. I left the game.

When I started GW, those level 6-8 axe charr were tough. Now if I start there in prophecies, without PvE-skills and consets, they are laughingstock.

So in GW, you either go to PvP once you feel HM is easy, you leave the game or you farm/collect stuff.

While I agree with you, I don't think you will like the solutions.



How hard is it really to choose earth shaker has the hammer elite for pve, dragon slash has the sword elite for pve? Choosing the axe elite is a bit more trickier.

So it isn't only PvE-only skills that have that problem.


Right, but that isn't exclusively Pve-skill problem.

The knowledge of which skill to pick and how to use it can get passed on to everyone, yet not everyone can do what the best do. The unconscious mind runs physical processes; some people have to relearn just to breathe properly while someone else has it done automatically.

Twitch interrupting, attack target selection, and pre-protting are distinctly not the same skill, nor are they related functions of intelligence. Obviously they all have some combination of anticipatory skill along with memorization and battlefield analysis. But the best warrior is not the best monk is not the best mesmer. Only if someone separately commits oneself to learning that many skills would make that true. At that point, that person deserves to be earning a living off it.

However, the best warrior already has an advantage playing monk, in that he understands how the best attacker is thinking. Over an extended duration of time, it's possible that the very best player becomes the best at everything given an ability to demonstrate near limitless brain capacity. Even given purposeful skill imbalancing, you won't be able to challenge this person. He'll always come out on top.

My comment is that it's not really a game to a person under the circumstances we would be discussing. But I do believe a generalist can display superiority over any specialist, confirming what you are describing.

Oh just needed to add. When this theoretical game expert exists, he will master skills at a much faster rate than a monthly skill balance. Near his peak his tool selection will be done in hours, trimmed down to minutes. If the game were just balanced alone, his rapid acceleration of skill mastery would not be impeded. I think I would also say, the skill balances have more of an effect on shaping the general populace than they would on an expert; they can cripple an ordinary person but only slow an expert.

Won't have a chance to analyze what 4thVariety said right now, but my greater point in what I said was that with all this focus on impeding the top player, it might just mess with the development of everyone else and prevent them from reaching their own peak.

I think most players' attitude is: "I'm a good player, so if I lose, it's because of class, gear, lag, or the game is imbalanced."

If we impose on removing PVE from discussion, we can further move onto which skill falls under the different categories 4th brought up. Relating to higher tiered complexity and skill level regarding the game and PvP. Overall you really can't dip into much, in detail otherwise. The easiest way to see things clearly is in 4th's post with the graph and PvP being that endgame that so much of the GW community hasn't even found the paint can yet, and is extremely behind on touching a paint brush let alone attempting to splatter a wall.

Edited my original post from the afternoon.

Forget my comments on those design constraints if anyone saw them: I couldn’t really follow where those went to meet the discussion at the point where I was thinking about it. Actual design is quite a bit ahead of where I had been thinking. But I don’t know how six distinctions would work; social pressures encourage people to jump in over their head, first time players might even choose to stretch their capabilities based on the reward increases. All that effort might just go unused compared to the minimalist approach of normal mode/hard mode.

As far as console achievement goes, it works better because the achievements are a variation of distinctly skill based (beat x level hardest difficulty once) or grind (kill 1000 monsters). But the title systems are so new in gaming; I can’t decide whether players like them as much as designers do. It’s good for players in that it’s an achievement kind of thing that doesn’t increase their power levels.

The only thing I could currently follow was the comments on PuGs. To discuss the PuG mentality; the PuG is optimized to automate the task for any number of reasons. At any time there may be people in a PuG with two distinctly different goals: either to get the objective achieved or to present some social opportunity.

Actual complaints about PuGs resemble complaints about people more than they resemble comments about difficulty related failures. There are comments about max level characters not knowing what to do, misbehaving, not listening; and most failures are related to this. Even when people have access to the right skills, it’s the human element that makes the largest contribution to the failure. You could have vastly powerful skills and a person might not have studied the game mechanics enough to use them. One of the most common things I see out of a poorly played damage or healing class is that a player isn’t using the powerful skills as often as they should be, but I can’t explain why aside from guessing they are not truly engaged in the activity alone.

When people are of the same performance level, no one seems to question whether someone is there for reward or to talk. Even at an easy difficulty people still do not reach the same performance level. These kinds of disruptions make people aware of all their differences and flaws.

However, the separate pieces of the typical PuG are all essential to game life. The person who puts forth the organizational effort to form the group would not do so if he was not reliant on other people. Certain other people would not join if they could not confirm with social proof that the run would not be a disaster. That’s where typical MMO uses both gear, levels, and titles: social proof of likely success from someone new.

As far as important design constraints, all I can think of right now are: ways to keep team activity alive (because farming doesn’t really need boosts, people do it anyway), ways to filter people to be amongst the people they want to be around, and ways to grow the people no one wants to be around so that they aren’t disruptive. To do that, a bit of a difficulty curve is needed to produce both the reliance on team and growth opportunity.

Speaking of PUGs, can you look back at previous PUG experiences in MMOs and find any good experiences? Could new games duplicate this?

For my example, I had a lot of fun in EQ2 when I played it for about 4 months or so in early 2006. I was on the PvP server (Nagafen), but had a lot of fun playing a tank and doing dungeon crawls (they are non-instanced in EQ2) with PUGs. I found the community extremely friendly. It was amazing how different the attitude of players was from Guild Wars PUGs.

For whatever reason, GW's community seems to be the worst out of any game I've played. WoW players in early retail, when servers had a real community, were also much more polite than GW players --that completely changed when they added server-transfers, character renames, and cross-server battlegrounds.

You just need to make the community small enough that people care about their actions and their reputation. However, since in GW2 you will be able to transfer servers at whim, I have my doubts that it's going to get any better.

Wow.....tl;dr doesn't even get close to covering how I feel about this......

no, an 8 man team can be balanced to fight a 200 man team, i.e. the 8 people having relative power to that of the 200 people. it works very similar to a boss fight, where it becomes 8 humans vs 1 huge ass boss; you give the 1 boss relative power to that of 8 people.
pve skills and consets i believe tried to achieve this, but failed due to poor implementation.
hard mode is pretty broken and imbalanced without pve skills and consets, but with them it is still very much broken and imbalanced. not to mention that now normal mode is greatly imbalanced.

i agree, proper builds would help a lot. however i disagree that pve skills are needed, theres no reason that it cant be done based on the balancing of standard skills. pve skills imo were just the so-called "easy fix".

your right. in my first post in this thread, i mentioned skills in general. the thread eventually lead into pve skills, because those ones are the most obviously broken.

thats the problem...pvp isn't the next step. you've went down a totally different path. in order to get into pvp, you'd have to backtrack and start almost all over again. gw has pretty much boiled down to grinding/farming.

Another update that once again hit the skill viability and variability in PvE due to PvP concerns, and now they have PvE/PvP split...

I guess they only split it when they are going to hit skills that are actually used like wow. All the tactics skills that are pretty much crap in pve already were nerfed even more due to PvP...


The thing is GW is now 2 games: a PvE game and a PvP game. If you removed all the titles/grind and whatnot, the size of the PvE community would just dwindle, not affecting at all the PvP community.

Players interested in PvP already play PvP, except for those that want a PvP guild and can't find one - I know of a few cases.

And that is due to poor design of PvP - you have basically crappy PvP like HB, Arena and AB, where due to the team size limitations you can't expect to encompass all the aspects of GW; than you have HA that due to its nature its prone to elitism and FOTM builds; and finally you have GvG, where if you want to be serious about competition you need to find other 7 similar minded persons, that want/can spend the time required.

There is no middle ground. Pitty nobody commented on a random GvG format I suggested, where 2 teams would be using builds pre made by Anet (information about those builds could be shown in the site) and people would be randomly distributed by each team, pretty much like that festival game where you use disguises or whatever its called.

Players that are grinding titles aren't going to play PvP regardless.

I love the passion for the game I've seen in this thread. I haven't witnessed this kind of passion for GW in a few years. It sucks that balance at this point is out of the question but I love seeing a new GW base meshing with an old GW base and hoping for the best...and hopefully we'll get it in GW2. You've all made wonderful points in your arguments(some right some completely wrong) but argued well and with due respect. I hope I see you all in GW2

You are looking in the wrong places. The guilds are still there, fansite pugging still somewhat works.

Of course if you go to the farmspots, such as UW, DoA, etc, you will find people there who are mainly interested in the pursuit of wealth. Which is not the crowd of highly skilled players really. I used to farm some money at least, now I kick back and do Xunlai betting, very relaxing alternative to casual grinding I have to say. Gives me more money than I really need.

PuGs in certain places (i.e. where the build counts) are more than ever motivated to go there in the pursuit of money. Greed and inexperience are a violent combination people should stay away from.

You can still have a "fun factor" (which is an insanely subjective term, btw) without eradicating the integrity and depth of the game.

...Except their thinking capabilities are greatly limited.

That's why CoD4 never pitted you against a single opponent (because that would be fair, right?) rather several upon several waves of baddies.

Results from underpowered skills are far more different than results from overpowered skills.

Which is why I wouldn't mind if skill was the only determining factor in how much wealth people have. Maybe then we would have a lot more people trying to be skilled. This grind/farm mentality is the complete opposite of skill.

Also Improvavel you didn't respond to my last post. How many people here would be fine if a 10 billion damage skill and god mode was in Guild Wars?

They wouldn't mind, because it's exactly like in RL: if I ask you to solve a Maths problem (not an artificial one, one directly in line with your job, see this video at 0:35 for an example of what I'm talking about), you're very likely to take your calculator (how many times have I seen that in my tutorials?) and try to calculate the solution with it. This is your 10billion damage skill and there are so many more examples from RL where the tool removes the need to get the "skill".

My point is: "player skill" is a very relative/subjective thing, if you mean "time to beat the game" you're going into the farming/pure performance aspect (meaningful big numbers where you master the art of controlling particular game mechanics), if it's "overcoming difficulties" you wouldn't beat the people that have crazy "skill ideas" (play without armor and weapons, or with only 4 skills), and so on, PvE and PvP player skills are even somewhat different (I guess if you only play against players, you're unlikely to play well agains AI, although I agree it won't take you long to adapt if you want to).

If you're not narrowminded, you can even jump one "level" up in terms of skill: how well do you know the GW universe storyline? Its inhabitants (characters and their stories)? Visual landscapes, scenery and sounds? There are more than one facet to games, and you should know it from your gaming experience, but most people who consider themselves "serious gamers" will only see the first side of "player skill".

Going back to the example I know best, Maths skills are not taught anymore, we have imba tools (yes, I know perfectly well that GW is a game and this is very different from a RL job, I'm only borrowing the core idea, not the reason why people do it) that make people "stupid" (from a Maths point of view!). The majority decided that it should be like that (because most people don't like Maths, and a significant number hate it), despite the need for it. So, now going back to the (off)topic you were discussing: you (and other people like Bryant Again) consider one facet only of a very rich game (I bet that less than half of Anet employees are devs, more than half are artists, story writers, world builders, etc.). You simply can't make it important in the absolute while ignoring the fact that the majority has a different view, you have to try to go from their viewpoint towards yours.

Hence the OP (which is far off the current discussion): how do we teach them? Yes individually, good, no collective progress is made here (or shall the vets have a "duty" to help newbies, but not noobs?). Collectively, as a GW community, how do we change the situation? Wiki, not really very pedagogic (but useful). PvP tutorials? Not a good transition from the average low skill to the PvP entry point. We need more of the "basic tutorials" you can get here on Guru, from time to time. Other ideas?

@fril
i like your analogy very much.
people use calculators to get the answer because they hate math = people use pve skills to get the rewards because they hate guild wars

people want the answer to a math problem, but they use the answer for more things, i.e. figuring out your budget.
now i must ask, what is so important about gw rewards? can its importance be justified by using a tool to get straight to the answer?


i agree. i do think it has a lot to do with mentality. people care more bout titles/rewards than gameplay. but i do not think players are the only ones to blame--anet promoted this type of mentality.

I admire your attempt to to bring the topic to your original premise. I think before any teaching can be done the students must want to be taught.

I think it is important looking for the possible too. If we hope for the best, and that best is too much, we will be disappointed.

For example, a balance where every group of mobs in the game has a 50% chance to win and is always challenging is a bit impossible.

Look at a place with 300 mobs, so call it between 35-40 groups, leading to 35-40 confrontations.

40 battles where you have 50% of losing, means the statistical chance of beating all the mobs in the area is 0.5^40=9.09E-13 or 9.09E-11%. I've a better chance of winning the damn jackpot of 100 million euros this friday.

In a game where are saves, quick-saves, check points, levels, there is no problem, since you can reload and each fight will start at 50% chance.

But on GW, it would take loads of time (read months if not years) to vanquish a single area!

Of course, once you find a build that wins once, it will again and again, getting very close to 100% chance of winning. You can still mess up but its harder and harder. Consumables, for example, decrease the chance of losing because of mistakes.

Even between humans, the chance isn't obviously 50% in every match, Some teams are just better than others. The bigger the differences, the more it deviates to 50%.

Then there is the argument that people just use unskillful overpowered builds and those skills should be nerfed to promote build variety and player skill.

But look at it. When a GvG guild, skillful undoubtedly, finish DoA using a tank-and-spank build (obsidian flesh and Searing Flames Eles, and they failed to use cry of pain?!?), its agreat display of skill and achievement. If a random PuG does the same, using the same tactics they are noobs.

Some 18 moths - 2 years ago, Avarre made a very nice post about how duality, based on paragons and most precisely Save yourselves paragons, is such a must better concept that the holy trinity tank and spank builds. Today Imbagons are considered cheese builds.

So what changed?

Basically, there were very few people using both those builds in the beginning. As time passed, more and more people, either learned those builds from other people, learned about them in the internet or even rediscovered them.

As more and more people use them, those builds stop being seen as elite and start to been as gimmick, noobie, no skill builds and should be nerferd and AI should be remade to counter them.

Ok, researching a build takes time and needs knowledge, but either the build required skill to run or it didn't. Mobs always react the same, they don't distinguish between skillful and unskillful player.

In GvG, 2 sides using the same build won't mean a draw - the most skillful side wins (unless exceptional circumstances). So a PuG finishing DoA using the exact same build as a top GvG team, means they can at least mimic it with enough precision to beat the AI.

You can't hide a build forever. Even if you hide it, someone else sooner or later will (re)discover it, because they are already in the game. No one is creating something new.

But just because something becomes common knowledge, that doesn't mean it has to be removed from the game.

Have you ever though, how did people discover the bridge trick in urgoz? Was it some Anet worker? Or someone had to have a loo break and stopped there and then people noticed no mobs would spawn, since the rest of the team kept on going? Or by some other mean?

Should that trick be removed now because loads of people know about it?

It would be as if I couldn't talk about Darwin evolution theory because I didn't thought about it in the first place! And I know shit loads more about it than Darwin ever knew!

Some complain that now people take much less time to do stuff and they don't even know as much as they did. They just mindless use them.

Well, that is supposed to happen. The veterans were the explorers. They had to learn everything from the beginning. When other people start, they drink on the pool of knowledge available.

In real life, there are Patents, to give an edge to reward the ingenuity. But those patents have an end of life too. Just make no sense keeping the knowledge forever locked in a secret vault.

But this is a game. It isn't real. While you were playing you were having fun. That is what you paid for.

So, a 50%-50% win-lose against numerous AI opponents in a game without saves, forever challenging with GW2?

Keep dreaming. It won't happen.

Nerfing the builds that work once to keep players discovering new builds and challenged for loads of time?

It wont work either. One day you will just see they are just cheating by destroying your builds. Most likely it wont even matter, because AI is dumbass and will always fight the same. You will just be using different named skills to exploit the same weakness again and again.

Random spawns?

Might keep the challenge a bit, but if it creates a 50-50 win-lose chance in areas with 40+ battles, just forget it.

The people that aren't idiots, know this isn't real life, can achieve fun for themselves only needing themselves and/or their friends.

You can use that god mode 10 million (or billion if you prefer it), farm all, get all the items all the titles have more money that you need 3 accounts to store it, dance in front of me, shouting "Look look I'm so good" and I will just pick my GF, my friends and go play and have a laugh ot TS, then make some meeting dinner (real life, already did some) and have FUN!

You would be there, alone or surrounded by other pathetic kids, that think success and wealth in a game against AI means anything in real life.

If it was a game involving real money it would be different. But it isn't.

(DISCLAIMER: The "you" in this post is post is no one in particular. My view about those "you" that think like that though, is that they are pathetic children that suck at life.)


While I know what you mean, that is ridiculous degree level students being unable to do either mental mathematical operations (and these aren't trained nowadays. My grandfather that had poor education was very good at doing real complex additions/multiplications/divisions mentally) or even paper and pencil ones, the fact is sometimes you just need to use maths as a tool without knowing it how it works precisely.

And us humans, as a species, aren't very good at abstract thought. It's a sub product of our evolution in median sized world, moving at median speeds, with somewhat short life spans, and for most of the time, the ability to read other people emotions and relate with them and "motivating them" to do our bidding, was our most important skill.

It isn't uncommon, to see high emotional intelligent persons, some with very low studies, creating quite large companies, hiring much higher educated people. Emotional intelligence is something that isn't very well focused on school either.

Basically as a species, humans are generalists, capable of doing loads of stuff, but as individuals we are specialists. There is too much too know, too many fields of knowledge. In some you will just have the slightest idea, and in your field of choice you will excel. And I'm not just talking about sciences. Concierges, farmers, whatever, if they are specialized they will know more and have more experience than someone else.

How many here can build from scratch a PC? I'm not talking about assembling the pieces, but probably some in here can't even do that, just creating one from scratch.

I bet a very small minority. Some will know the basics of the theories needed.

But hey you are using it. And you don't know how to build one.

We rely on other people, to have more, achieve more as a society.

I don't think you can compare this to a calculator. You can compare it to a computer program that does all the work for you so you don't even have to do any math.

That begs the question...what kind of basic tutorial are you talking about if player skill is subjective.

Interesting thought. Maybe people hate Guild Wars more than they realize...well at least they hate what it was meant to be.

EDIT TO INCLUDE PREVIOUS POST

The problem here is you are completely ignoring why other people paid for the game or play the game. I personally don't give a damn about the game economy, but there are a TON of people who do, and your views would completely destroy the game for them. Your ideas of balance and skill that have been added in Guild Wars has destroyed the game for many who paid for a skill game as well (which is even worse because the game was advertised to be this). You are disregarding other people and that is the whole problem here.

@improvavel
i think you take the 50-50 too literally. yes it is 50-50 in terms of pen and paper, but when a player has acquired knowledge and skill he will be able to overcome those situations in his favour more than 90% of the time. overpowered skills can make it 90-10 already on paper, so there is no need to acquire any further knowledge or skill to beat the area consistently.

i really don't understand this mentality that you should be able to beat every area on your first try. while this is important for starting and earlier levels, it should not be the case for end-game levels and more difficult areas. i know new players that fail a hard mode mission for the first time and quit, as if they're supposed to be expected to beat it on their very first try. learning from your mistakes helps you become better. things like overpowered skills hinder the desire to learn from mistakes because they become unimportant to your success.


and to answer your question on what has changed: i think again its about mentality. at first it was perceived as great success because they overcame a challenge. but now, as i said earlier, it has all dwindled down to farming/grinding. its not about beating it once, its bout beating it multiple times as fast and easy as possible so you can get your reward/title.

regarding save yourselves:
its not like when sy was first introduced it was more brokenly powerful than it is now. it was just that we did not have the wisdom to see it at the time. if one could foresee all broken skills from the getgo, then they would not have been created at all--but this is not the case, it takes much time for people to come to these realizations. which is why we have skill balance updates.


and one last thing. i think your on the right track that titles etc. should be meaningless, but in fact, they are not to be perceived as so. i don't think we're arguing so much that we want to make the game harder persay, but just to put the emphasis back in 'challenge' instead of 'rewards'. i do not want the game to be insanely difficult, but i do want the game to be about how good the gameplay actually is, not how good the rewards are when i beat it.

Did you beat every area at the first try? Does everyone beats every area at the first try?

How do you know? Or you are just basing your assumptions on your perceptions?

I know some people that are so bad (at the game, so not a mortal sin ) they can't do it even with consumables. I know it is hard to believe, but that happens. So just because you think people will do it first try, by using consumables, I think you are wrong.

So balance is if only a minority can do all?

If more than just a minority start doing it, even if using the same skills the previous minority was using to beat that area, it becomes a problem?


I didn't know economics was skillful guild wars playing. I though you were saying game success was about skill? Now you include economics and titles?

(The following you aren't you DreamWind, but general you's)

Look, you want economics to play a big part in your dream (not using it as irony) guild wars.

In my dream guild wars, economy wouldn't exist at all.

You just can't call me selfish because I don't want to compete with other people in PvE, don't care about economy, just because what you want is some items to great value.

If I'm selfish, you are selfish too. It swing both ways.

And while it is a multiplayer game, it also says in that box I can play alone or with friends, and I will receive my own copy of the world, and I will only combat other people if that is my wish.

Sincerely I wished every single material and rune had a fixed price.

I choose to play with whoever I want, I choose to ignore whoever I want (There is an ignore list in game, so I can disregard people at my will).

And not you or anyone can force me otherwise. And if they try I'm out. And if Anet tries I won't buy Anet games. And that is why I'm playing GW and I'm not playing WoW instead. I knew very well what GW was when I bought the game (factions was out at the time). I knew it was a game I could play alone and interaction with other people was at my choice.

Anet knows that too. Heroes. Scrolls to UW/FOW, DEEP/Urgoz, henchies, Heroes allowed in elite areas.

All signs that Anet allows their player to play it solo, in a small community or as MMORPG.

If I don't want you in my game, you wont be and you can't do shit about it.

It is my copy of the game.

That is why GW isn't an MMORPG.

You missed the point: you can't really use maths correctly without understanding how it works basically (I never mentioned "precisely"). It's the same with GW, you can't work "properly" (double quote intended) if you don't understand the basics of game engine (not the details) and the UI.

Emotional intelligence is totally off-topic here and with respect to the internet, because there are no physical cues.

The two are almost exactly the same, at different levels (if I understood you you're talking about software like Mathematica?) I've seen to my students many different stupid use of calculators, because calculators, like programs, just do what they're told and if the humans using them don't know the basics, they'll make mistakes.

There are many, many types and I'm not interested in discussing them, the point is they exist. I mentioned one above about AB, I've seen many other here on Guru, but all on specific topics and without overall any organisation between them. Even in the game-engine kind of "player skill", there's much to "teach".

Complement to the "multifaceted player skill" aspect I was mentioning before: GW economy, some people are extremely good at it (power trading).

I beg to differ. You don't have to demonstrate a theorem to know how to use its corollary. You don't have to know the equation about critical hits or the equation about caster spell damage to see its effects.

Sorry if we are just saying the same thing.

Everything in Guild Wars should be about skill. And I don't care about the economy but I am not saying it can be destroyed like you are saying. You misread my post. The problem here is that you are DISREGARDING how everybody else plays the game using "I don't have to interact with anyone" as your excuse.

I disagree...I think only your view is selfish because you act as if you are the only one playing the game. Just because you can play by yourself has no bearing on the fact that you are in a WORLD with other players. It goes right back to my Africa example. You can live on Earth all by yourself not interacting with anyone if you want, but there are other people in your world. You can not simply say we should add a 10 billion damage skill and god mode to the game even though it would negatively affect a lot of people even if it doesn't affect you.

You don't receive your own copy of the world. You receive the ability to play in a world with many other players just by yourself if you want.

Again, you are wrong. Anet allows players to play solo everybody knows that, but there will ALWAYS be other people in your game. Just because you choose to ignore them doesn't mean they aren't in the game still. Guild Wars is an MMO and always will be, and if you have a problem with that then I suppose you don't have to buy Anet games.

I'm not convinced a good guide can be made if we can't even decide why the game is being played and what type of skill should matter.

There are only a few things that requires interaction:

- rune price;
- material price;
- favor;
- factions borders;
- celestial sigil price;
- scrolls
- dye price.

Other than that it's completely possible to shutdown from the world.

Runes, materials, dyes and scrolls prices can also be ignored if you only play with what you get from drops.

I can have 600 armbraces appear by magic in my inventory. If I don't trade with other people, nobody will know about it, no effect in the economy.

If I don't buy runes, dyes and materials; and don't trade with other people, I can be completely invisible in this game and cause no effect in other people game.

Other than people making material, runes, scrolls and dyes more expensive, they won't affect my game at all.

If I only play with what I get, I'm invisible. Period.

If you also never, ever, appear in a town where any other people are (so that they could see the armor you bought with your infinite gold, or your titles), then yes the above would be true.

But if you add 10 billion damage and god mode it affects the entire world. If you change the skill level or balance it affects the entire world. Making changes to the world affects everybody even if it doesn't affect you and even if what you do doesn't affect others.

I can be naked (or starting armor) and display no titles.

But if it is only for me, no problem. And it is only a problem otherwise if you care about others. Which I don't see why you should?

Yeah especially when they annouce it out.There are those in GW that are married as well it may not say it on thier hero panel but they are.

To the rest of the thread It might help if more exprienced players showed those who play bad if they were to earn triple or quad XP from missions.This includes one like The Great Northern Wall.

Actually that would be an even bigger problem. If only you had god mode there would be the problem of fairness.

Because others affect the world I am in. Remember when the duping bug came about it affected the entire game even though I wasn't involved in it.

Getting back on topic though...we are talking about changes to the game world. You are only interested in this thread because it would affect your game and not because it would be better for the game if the changes were made.

Didn't noticed it.

No. I just don't want changes based on epenis and status quo maintenance.

GW is the same as any other game, You get alot of idiots and a small percentage of players that are actually decent. It just takes time to find them decent players but once you've found them the community spirit grows pretty fast.

But many people did.

Why would it affect you?

Depends on the changes.

Consumables wouldn't.

PvE skills would. Since I play 2p+6heroes, and I use PvE only skills to cover heroes AI weakness.

But would you just change the way people play and have fun for nothing better than status quo and epenis?

If you are changing stuff make sure it is to make the game more interesting and enjoyable, not to frustrate people to prevent them from getting titles and skins.

@improvavel
so your saying that if a tree falls down in the middle of a forest, it wont make a sound because you didn't hear it?
or perhaps the good 'ol, "i don't believe it exists, therefore it doesn't exist"?

i don't think selfish is the proper word here. its more like narrow-minded.

thats not what im saying at all. im saying that balanced can (and should) consist of both easy and hard. it is important to include both. however gw is very imbalanced in that it doesnt really demonstrate this.


one last thing, most top mmorpg's can be played solo (wow included).


edit:
thats the whole reason--to create a more in-depth gameplay experience. why must you emphasize titles/rewards so much? as if it doesn't matter how crappy your experience was to get them, as long as you got them, that calls for a good game?


one more last thing, if you want to play a single-player game so badly, why don't you play a single-player game then? gw is a multi-player game, end of story.

the keyword in "you can play gw solo" is the word, can--as in, "you can play gw solo, but it is meant to be played with others."

heroes were added as the option of: "if you can't find real players, then use this option as a last resort."
what really happened was: "why bother to find real players when i can use heroes"