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

CS is a team based game (like GW) and also the most competitive outside of Korea...

Not only that, but we have no reason to learn from them (no benefit).

A sport need public. GWs failed to provide an easy way to see replays.

More - GWs action is most of the time dull.

You still haven't answered my question about why PvE skills + consumables exist in the first place. If all people wanted to do was "BEAT DAH GAME", why couldn't they before without all of those PvE skills?

If all I have to do is limit myself to make the game challenging, why couldn't those finding it too hard simply do the opposite by staying in NM? If it's supposed that some NM areas were too hard then you tone down those areas, *not* the entire game through PvE skills.

You may put me at a bad angle for wanting to change the game for my "own selfish reasons", but the exact same thing has happened for this who didn't want to improve: they *also* wanted to change the game for their own reasons, but they got what they wanted. The only thing PvE skills really help with is in making HM easy and making NM mindless, greatly hindering potential longevity by horribly lowering the skill threshold.

The chief problem about having to "gimp yourself" is that it's proving that the game isn't challenging, and if it was such a preferred method of play we wouldn't be seeing difficulty settings in games all these years.

On the professional gaming topic, here is a very nice link that explains most of the cons to why it doesn't work.
http://archive.gamespy.com/top10/april03/progaming/

Point number 7 is my biggest beef.

^lol @ an article from 2003

it scurrs me that its still pretty relevant o__o

my biggest gripe is that its fairly inaccessible even to an average gamer, let alone the average person
especially when u have ppl (for example a certain somebody in this thread) who r very closed-minded bout even the idea of it

Because the creators of the game decided that them should exist. Creators of the game have quite a liberty to decide what is in the game and what isn't

So the developer's just "felt like it"? Spotaneously introducing completly unbalanced skills, i.e. bad game design?

Good to see we're now on the same page.

The designers are in the same page too, hence GWs 2.

But to be fair its not only the pve skills and consumables that are broken... environmental effects, hm bonus to mobs and monster skills are ridiculous too...

That seems rhetorical to me.

PvE skills and consumables have very little to do with beating the game imo.They have everything to do with repeating content as quickly and efficiently as possible directly because that is GW for the majority who have been playing more than a year.

It's the result of both end-game rewards based around grind and a static game world hence skill or self-imposed challenge goes right out the window as you are not rewarded for how "skillfully" you repeat a task but how quickly.

Realistically the games are all a cake-walk to beat in either NM or HM, tbh I've never seen consumables used in anything other than vanqs or farms and PvE skills just make it faster and easier.

Releasing these "imba" options in the last installment of new content makes sense to me as the majority finished the whole game multiple times previously and now they are methodically going for GWAMM.

Whats left, other than maybe PvP, but to repeat content as efficiently and quickly as possible and rack up the titles or add to your HoM?

The new players want to have access to all areas as quickly as possible.

Two birds, one stone from what I can see.

It seems obvious Anet don't give two hoots about their original skill>time philosophy anymore, they just want to keep veterans plugging away at titles and new players interested enough to keep at it and not feel inferior.

Again it's the fact the path of least resistance is rewarded more than skill and I honestly don't think Anet care that this is the case as GW2 is priority.

Change the core requirements for reward, accomplishments and game desirables to be based on skill as apposed to simplistic repetitiveness, like other MMO's have, and the whole game would be different.

A reward/title for successful use of [skill]Bull's strike[/skill], the amount of successful interrupts you have used, how much you have healed allies, etc, etc with restrictions and mechanics set up to make these skills unfarmable or exploitable as other games have done.

Obviously it's to late for that but I accept that the fact the way in which GW rewards it's player directly represents the path they wanted the game to take.

Skill ain't it.

Uh...I just have to post and say that is the worst and least accurate article I have read in years.

It doesn't take skill to land bull strike. it just takes someone to not be a complete retard. how hard is it to bait an opponent to run? heres a protip, wait until after they cast or shortly after an adrenaline spike.

I was generalizing in order to demonstrate reward structure.

Sorry you missed that.

It still makes little sense, Fireflyry.

If they wanted the rewards to take less time...they would've made the rewards take less time. Make the amount of areas you have to vanquish smaller for the title, make the % you have to cover for cartographer shorter, could increase drop rates, gold acquired - ANY number of things...but nope.

If they wanted things to take less time, then they very well could have. But for things to take less skill? Bad no matter which way you put it.

Unless it serves a purpose.

See we agree on the point a good game = skill.

I'm really not sure that applies to GW anymore and if not, it's an endlessly circular debate.

You'd have to have a *really* good reason to make your game worse, especially considering that you have two separate difficulty levels.

Bank.

Define "worse" when considering individual player perspective.

It currently sells product and pleases the masses.

Seriously...why make it harder or more skill based?

What will that actually garner other than minority respect and enjoyment from vets counter mass qq and complaint from the masses?

PvE skills and consumables have specifically been put in place in place for title grind by vets that care that much and the new players that joined post EotN...period in my mind.

It keeps vets grinding and "noobs" playing.

The subsequent ramifications of such options had to be largely ignored or deemed irrelevant by the devs as surely they aren't that stupid.

In conclusion the reason imo is accessibility to content for late arrivals to the game and making the end game title and reward grind easier for vets.Sorry to say that outweighs, in both opinion and player numbers, our call for a return to skill based play.

To be honest "skill* is a non-issue outside PvP and has been for a long time...PvP which largely died over a year ago anyway.

The game has changed and we need to move past what it was.

I 100% agree with you Bryant but it's a choice to bang your head against a wall in frustration or just move on imo.

I'd find ANet's current situation much more understandable if there hadn't been hundreds of games that have been hugely successful that didn't dumb all the content down to such an inane state. It's different when you have only one set level of difficulty/accessiblity, but this is a problem ANet has made much easier to overcome.

Love this.

I remember Sardelac having some good ideas about rewarding skill instead of time spent. It really is a shame the devs payed no heed to them. Then again, maybe they've decided to implement them in GW2. Would be nice of them to honor that old marketing for Prophecies: "skill > time".

Let's look at this from a slightly different point of view.

Three days ago several of my guildies decided to do Frostmaw HM.
So asking in guild who's available, 5 players total.
Asking in AC, 3 more. Full team.
Well, yes, but with some limitations. 3 warriors, 1 monk (me), 1 mesmer, a ranger and 2 ele (not sure if it was one or two ele).
So one of my guildies decides to switch to monk, a profession he hardly plays.
In the end it took ages and we failed on level 4.
Partly my bad, I tried fitting everyone in an almost impossible team.

Two days ago me and 5 guildies enter the same area. Warrior, 2 ele, necro, ranger and me on monk.
Added a hero monk, hero mm and we are off.
Played the area easily and only used 2 cons (forgot which) to speed things up on level 4.
And our warrior disconnected at the start of level 3.

Everything is easy in GW when people have access to and are willing to play any role/profession. If they are somewhat decent playing that role.
But since A-net introduced titles single-profession play was encouraged.
Not only that, time spend on doing A a second time means they can't do B which they didn't do yet.

It might sound stupid but adding more humans to a team could make things less efficient because of this.
And this is where cons do come in usefull. To be able to play with a sub-optimal team in areas where mainly optimal teams succeed.

Take my guildie who switched warrior to monk for example.
He has one, has the basic builds but lacks experience.
After the failed run he stated he'd never monk in a dungeon again.
Fine, but we don't have that many people who play monk in our guild.
So it's basically me and this guildies wife who will play monk. And she's playing dungeons on her Ele for HM book atm. So I can't play with a full human team because we lack monks. Now I could ask her to play a E/Mo Ether Infuser, but that's something completely different.

These are situations where consumables are very usefull to make sure everyone can play together as much as possible.
Because it's my point of view that I'd rather play with a full group of human players instead of leaving someone alone because his/her profession doesn't fit in the team. We'll work around it as much as possible, but in some situations consumables assist in this.

But in general you are right, I hardly ever see consumables used (not even in vanquishes and I've done my share of those).

You're stating that PvE-only skills and consumables dumb all the content.

You don't like dumb games. So if the consumables and PvE-only skills were removed the game wouldn't be dumb anymore.

Since you can play without them, when you do the game isn't dumb.

So what you're saying is that you don't like the option other people have to make their game dumb.

Right?

This is very true. That is why I hated ursan blessing and I dislike all those titles, although the grind has been reduced a bit and hopefully when that announced update to the hall of monuments happen, there will be less of an incentive to stick to a single profession.

I like what this guy has to say.

Seriously, quit bitching about how PvE skills and Cons need to be removed from the game. If you do that, you're going to be the only 10 or so HARDCORE ELITE players left giving a damn about the game.

I cringe every time I see this argument still being used. Don't people understand how horrible the "don't like it don't use it" argument is? Please somebody explain it, because I am tired of constantly having to do so on these forums.

Let me just put it simply....ignoring the problem doesn't mean the problem isn't there or goes away.

Tell me why I should quit bitching. Until then I'll tell you to quit bitching about us bitching about a problem trying to do something about said problem while you just pull others away from the task.

PvE skills and cons aren't a problem. They are a option , use it or don't if you want.

The problem with people being bad is because they don't experience many things good players did , mostly failure. And when they do fail they don't want to know why did they fail. Another problem is that new players don't understand how and why something works. Most people who use sabway don't know why sabway is so powerful. And IMO that's the biggest problem and biggest obstacle to pass.

What problem?

Game being too easy for you because of PvE-only skills and consumables?

But hey you can solve that problem by yourself!

You are saying:

"It is raining. I've an umbrella. I can open the umbrella to stop being wet. But I wont. We need to stop the rain instead so no one gets wet. I don't care if they want to get wet! They can't get wet cause I say so!"

Stop trying to solve other people problems. Other people can make their own choices too.

I'm sorry but you aren't a GOD to make decisions for other people.

If other people want to be good at the game they will do it. If they don't want they won't.

And you cant do shit about it!

Yes...they are a problem. Was Ursan not a problem because I had the choice to not use it? You guys have ridiculous arguments claiming that not using the problem is going to make the problem go away. People need to get over this selfish way of thinking. People like me and others who think the crap shouldn't exist are looking at the game as a whole.

No, I'm attempting to solve the games problems, not people's problems. Using your analogy, it would be like a constant rain coming down and the inbalanced crap is the umbrella. There are some people that have to use a crutch (the umbrella) to go through the rain, but people like me who don't use umbrellas realize that somebody is capable of making the rain go away altogether. Now which is better?

No ursan wasn't a problem because everyone was finishing elite areas. Ursan caused grind, caused rank discrimination, made all other professions irrelevant. That was why it was a problem.

Did it affect my game in any way? No.


Then say: "Gws need a major revision. Loads of areas need to be remade, mobs need to be balanced, environmental effects and monster only skills need to be looked at, areas like doa and some dungeons are just bad designed."

If you say that while saying PvE-only skills and consumables are bad for the game, then I will applaud you and say the same at your side.

But you aren't saying that. And you know that at this time it won't happen.

So saying Pve-only skills and consumables should be removed is the same as saying you don't want other people to obtain skins and titles because they will make yours less worthy.

Ursan caused grind? LoL. Ursan was a problem because it was completely inbalanced and allowed people to do things they shouldn't normally be able to do, which is exactly what we have with PvE skills/consumables. I think the whole point and the reason this was brought up in the first place is because the difficulty balance of this game is out of whack.

I am saying that, but we have to start where we can. We should fix what we can fix easily. Saying "well since the major problems that need to be fixed won't be fixed we might as well leave in the minor problems since the game is broken anyways" is not a good way to look at things.

Wrong.

I don't see a single acceptable reason for making the hardest difficulty into the easy difficulty make any sense when people already have the easy difficulty. Would you see any good reason for a player advocating the 100% difficulty (hardest) in Oblivion to be as simple as the 0%?

Agreed but is'nt that what GW is all about?

Make it relatively easy to get to maximum potency/level, unlike other games where it takes a few months to get to level cap and a few months more to get the uber gear you need to compete or be even remotely relevant end-game?

Kind of hard to have easy access and progression for new players or title farmers on one hand while trying to force skill based play with the other.

Not saying it's not possible, just that it's way to late.

Yes but that is a minority use, unfortunately.

It may well have been the original intent, though I doubt it, but if you give such tools and options to the community the first thing they will do is exploit it for their gain especially in a game where repetition of content is rewarded above all else.

I think you missed the point that was, I thought, put to bed a long time ago.

Stating such choices are optional adds nothing of merit to the discussion as people are talking about the actual mechanics and the effect on the game as a whole, not the fact these mechanics are optional.

Seems to go right over a lot of heads.

Regardless of that would you take a knife to a gunfight?

Players shouldn't have to gimp themselves to make the game a challenge.Silliest thing I've ever heard of.

Every area is over a year old , even more. There is no chance a veteran or even a decent player can find challenge now unless ANet gives us more new and never seen before content. In a game where you fight AI mastering something new and unique is the ultimate challenge and not killing the same shi*t with just more HP, armor and damage. When the game is so old gimping yourself intentionally or not is the only challenge if you don't count titles.

But if Anet gimp everyone it's ok.

I got you.

OK, so you are telling me that if Anet removed those skills and forbid consumable from HM you would be happy, but must be Anet doing it because you can't do it.

That is indeed the whole point of Guild Wars, further showing that the addition of PvE skills and the like was the *wrong* way to go. If they wanted to stay truer to their premise they could've simply reduced the time required to get to that peak. But as I've stated already, PvE skills were the completely wrong way to solve the problem.

And what's going to cause more trouble: having to cater to two separate game settings, or to one?

@directly above me: wot?

Edit: I think I kind of get what you're saying - but no, I still wouldn't be happy.

They were already there PvE and PvP.
So from that I infer that you don't want more challenge for you per se if it isn't accompanied from an increase in difficulty to everyone else.

What you want is a pyramid structure of players, where only the top can do the elite areas.

Then hey, I'll rephrase:

I'm not sure what the 2nd part means, but I can reply to the first part.

As I said above, no I wouldn't be happy if they simply removed their use from HM. It would make the transition for players from NM to HM that much more difficult.

Yes, that is exactly what the game needs. Only the most skilled should be able to do elite areas, hence the reason they are called elite. The more experienced players should do hard mode and the newer or less experienced should do normal mode. This idea that everybody should be able to do whatever they want and people should have to gimp themselves for a challenge is ludicrious.

We can't have that can we?

I guess what we need is a pre-buy exam to evaluate people IQ and ability with a mouse.

Then sell different packages accordingly.

Or provide different difficulty levels.

Those who are inexperienced can play in normal mode. Those who are a bit more adept can stay in hard mode. The people still saying "hard mode is too hard" are those who want a bite at the rewards without the proper effort and skill, don't listen to them.

Actually that's incorrect: *do* listen to them, but not just their pleas, their arguments.

Fix'd.


If you guys guys think HM is not challenging enough, why don't you stay true to the original game design and come PvP? The meta is stale and competition is dead: we could sure use some new blood to liven things up. If you don't find challenging (which I doubt), seek me out and I'll try to make it so for you.

You think they want challenge?

They want admiration, not challenge.