PvE Mot du Jour - "FUN"!

No, but assassins have, arguably, the most or one of the most versatile farming options right now. Just look at the number of viable SF farming builds out there and the vast number of farming spots an SF assassin can farm.

.....This thread is full of trolling and of stupid....
Just quit GW if you hate it so much. It's not a perfect game and nothing is going to change the fact. But it's still there for the huge majority who enjoy it.

@Bryant: I see you have the avatar of the Kommando Nob

Just want to say that DoW2 'pvp' is way more fun than GW pvp will ever be, even if it isn't well balanced yet. I had the game for one day and was already downloading replays of TS +30. GW pvp is too dull and doesn't require the same type of skill.

There is one class in GW that requires some skill imo which is monk. I don't see a turret ranger or a warrior chasing monks as really skillfull play. Timing a spike or fake spike requires some coordination (counting secs in the head), but the monks on the other team will save the day or not. Hence you often hear that good monks are rare to find in this game.

GW PvP in short: kill monks = win game. I watched Sabre Wolf's shoutcast (the final between KMD vs DP) and you see it there too. The best thing about the whole match was the shoutcast.

PvP Elitists, cyou in DoW2 or Starcracft2 if you dare

As for Anet's view on fun... never mind.

I like to add that this game was a real fresh wind in the gaming industry when it was released and it's worth every penny. But like Aapo pointed out, it's mostly a pve game with a large pve playerbase, even if they wanted it and made it to be a pvp game.

You know what was fun? Spirit forests.

Give 'em back, anet.

Also, LOL DOW2 COMPETITIVE. DCPro or SSPro would be a far better choice, due to, you know. Balance.

People comment because they care about the game and would like to see improvements. Don't say silly stuff like this.

The game is only released recently, give it some time. Even Blizzard games like SC and WC3 were not balanced when they hit the shelves. It's part of the process.

netrek pvp anyone?

....gimmeitam

Yeah Orks in general are fun to use but the units scale like shit. Their whole army needs a review. Given how long it took them to finally balance DoW1 (i.e. never), things ain't looking to bright. I haven't played DoW2 for a long time since RA abuse is everywhere now, too imbalanced and crappy. I'd just play it for kicks and giggles, but I'm honestly getting more of that out of DoW1 sadly. Dawn of War 2 has thus far been a huge let down for me.

Balancing in general, though, is a total bitch to do. Not even Capcom is able to "completely" balance things with Street Fighter. Even moreso in MMO's and strategy games, where you have *soooooooooooo* many variables to keep track of that it's not even funny. ANet was able to keep up with what they originally had, but they added too much and now look what we have.

And no, this just isn't in regards to PvP, either. Player vs. Environment balancing is just as vital as any competitive format. The only difference is that the computer doesn't complain or speak up when something is OP. The other problem is figuring out when it *is* balanced, and that's where the hard part starts.

What more developers need to do is keep it simple. This is something Anet has acknowledged (and something I hope they stick to) in regards to GW2 and something Blizz may be onto in SC2 (i.e. only still sticking with the three races).

Hm. Just noticed a little something:

Eh? You're gonna have to go a bit more into such a synopsis because that's why so many got hyped about WoW in the first place: killing the opposing faction. In other words, it wasn't just expected, it was highly and insanely demanded.

For me PvE Balance that I need is to get rid of 25% activation time reduction.This is what really kill ranger and mesmer in hardmode.

Or just god mode for everyone!
*thumbs up*




But seriously, I do not understand the guys how they can in one moment decide that Castigation Siggy is broken with a 15 sec recharge in PvE and NEEDS a longer one - yet at the same time +20 damage in SoH is good for the game.
It's completely obvious why many players throw the mothers of hissy fits when something gets fixed (as in nerfed). Because A.Net is actually teaching us that there is nothing wrong if something is insanely overpowered. I really don't see how they can think that giving us god mode and then taking it away will not piss off an insane number of people.

It was called Ursanway, and sure enough there was bitching about that too.

This.

Here's a scenario for you whiners: ANet nerfs SF into unmaintainability. Some pugs and some runs temporarily cease while guilds figure out what's the new most efficient way to do said areas. Eventually someone posts it on PvXwiki and everyone starts copying the new builds.

And your preferred class (especially if you're an assassin now) is still useless in pve. Something will always be the best, pugs will always run it, and your class will likely not be a part of it (unless you're a monk).

As for people soloing, who cares? If they want to hoard e-gold, let them. It's not like their newly-found assassin-induced shininess will somehow make them more powerful.

I am a fun hater.

PvE "balancing" should focus more on adjusting monster builds and AI to deal with idiotic player tactics that would never work against real people. If this had been Anet's original strategy, they would never have had to resort to monsters with superpowered stats, 50% faster everything, and effectively unlimited energy. Any computer opponent already has the greatest advantage of all: omniscience. The CPU can not only read player inputs, but knows the state of every single variable in the game simultaneously. "Teams" of monsters are in fact a single entity controlled with perfect micro; the CPU doesn't have to worry about communication or coordination, the way a human team would.

Make the computer use those advantages. Give all monster teams monks that can actually heal and pre-prot effectively (after all, the computer knows what the players are targetting). Fill areas with spike teams that have literally uninfusable spikes. Have monsters spread out preemptively (you know, the way players do) so AoE is never effective on its own. Give monster teams more shutdown and interrupts (that never miss).

There's also no reason why monsters should stay the same over time; change their builds to counter what players run. The appropriate response to SF farming is to put touch/signet skills on the monsters ... or just have them ignore/run from the player. There is absolutely no reason monsters should be balling around a player that they can't actually damage - the same goes for any kind of AoE farming build, really. Instead of nerfing Ursan, they could have had monsters run lots of armor-ignoring damage and edenial; alternatively, shut down the HB backline with interrupts, sig of hum, enchantment removal, etc.

The point is, monsters should be credible opponents, not just glorified pinatas with buffed stats.

You don't play much, do you? Let's consider the following: a balanced 8 player PvE mob vs. a balanced 8 man PvE team. The PvE team has two choices: pressure or spike, essentially. Pressure is basically negated in that the computer will prioritize pressuring skills and shut them down with 100% clarity. Plus, a mob vs. pressure setup will take the time of a PvP match to wear down the AI's energy, health, and break down positioning, and fifty 10 minute showdowns when going through a dungeon is not very fun. Spike is out, because if they see the target, they can pre-prot and nullify any anti-prots like Rend or Gaze of Contempt through perfectly timed interrupts and literally instant reaction so that even if an anti-prot lands, another prot has replaced it before a human can hit the spike. Even a fake spike won't matter. If it takes .3 seconds for a human team to switch targets and respike, it only takes .25 seconds for a Spirit Bond from the AI which reacts perfectly to the target swap.

Interrupts that never miss, uninfusable spikes? Um, they already have that. I got hit for a Lightning Orb for 678 damage the other day. From full health, with max armor and all of the best runes you can buy, it was instant death. Though this was due to overstatting monsters, the principle is the same. Unstoppable beatdowns are no fun. Since there's no clue who a spike would land on, and since the computer could perfectly time a spike, as in, perfectly, there's no way to stop this. That's not fun at all, it's just suicide every time you zone.

This I agree with. Dynamic monsters and regular stats with better team composition would take more strategy and skill to overcome.

In general, I really hope you were kidding about the first half of your post.

Leadership, Command, and Spear Mastery are all excellent attributes. The paragon is a warrior-matching DPS machine with party support capabilities. The only reason other para builds look so bad is because the imbagon is so damn good. Sin attack chains don't really suck, they just look pretty crappy against DB+MS or SF builds in PvE.

No, but a ridiculous 10v1 final boss fight with Impossible Odds sure is!

The idea has merit. You wouldn't have full balanced group for every encounter, just some mobs that have a bit of synergy and decent skillbars. I would completely prefer a pvp-esque even battle over the pveskill final battles that have been par for the course.

I was half-kidding; or, more to the point, I simply outlined the ultimate conclusion of the overall concept.

The point is, you want your monsters to play real builds with player-like ability. Monster groups with 6 units of the same class just don't make any sense in the mechanics framework of GW. Heck, the majority of monsters having only a single profession and fewer than 8 skills doesn't make any sense. It's particularly curious when you consider the emphasis on PvP as the "endgame" of GW - if that's really the case, why doesn't PvE play anything like PvP? Why don't monsters play and react in ways that would actually make sense? PvE tactics like pulling, tank-n-spank, etc. should never have worked in the first place. Creating a Hard Mode where monsters are just obscenely strong and fast completely misses the point of GW.

You actually took my idea further in your rebuttal than I had originally suggested. It's not necessary (or desirable, for reasons that you stated) that every enemy team exploit every advantage simultaneously. There are some things that monsters should never do (e.g., ball up in AoE), but stuff like 100% interrupting or perfect spiking can be sprinkled throughout various monster teams - and be mutually exclusive characteristics. Spike teams are still just spike teams - the fact that they have an uninfusable spike still doesn't make them unstoppable, because you just have to prevent one or two of the monsters from being able to spike on time. Balanced teams would be hard to kill, sure - but you know exactly what build they're running before you enter the area; being able to build against them with perfect foresight is a big advantage even if the CPU's reaction speed and targetting is superior to yours. The time issue can be solved by lowering monster density substantially, increasing aggro radius to sight range (like players), and increasing drop rates/quality.

Naturally, the AI can also be adjusted on a sliding scale based on difficulty. In normal mode, add a built-in skill-use delay to simulate decision-making. Have the computer randomly miss 50% of its interrupts against skills with 3/4s activation times or faster. Warrior monsters can screw up their attack skill combo once in a while. Monks heal or prot the wrong target 15% of the time, or prot late 50% of the time. Use your imagination.

The Stone Summit teams in Slaver's and the Charr teams in the Homelands are already a step in the right direction - the units have better builds than 90% of GW monsters, the teams tend to have monks and fast-cast hard res, they tend to have shutdown, hex pressure, etc. The AI is still dumb as bricks, but just changing the builds was enough to place those guys among the hardest PvE enemies in the game. If the AI was altered just to prevent tanking and nuking from working, I think that would be enough to get players to re-think how they approach the game.

One overpowered skill =/= versatility.

With the newly buffed SoH - do you really want to give up 25 extra damage per hit by taking a ranged swordsman? Even with the Imba being to good for anything else to measure up - the guy is losing out.

I think this is the point, Bryant.

People always want PvP. They ask for PvP. Better PvP. Meaningful PvP. But there must be PvP.

It just never worked out so far. And it often is problematic for all other kinds of MMO interaction. Plus, people like to kill but not so much to get killed while doing something else.

See what happens in WoW, WORLD PVP is even frowned upon on PvP servers. Who bothers with it, it is sometimes even considered bad style to annoy others while questing.

In fact people hate PvP - case in point, Stranglethorn Vale: The design of the area makes sure you have to compete with your own faction for drops and mobs and even more so with the opponent faction. People hated the zone for the danger. How comes, I thought harder PvE mobs and PvP are fun.
It ended with organized mass pvp in battlegrounds, before that Hillsbrad Foothills became the inofficial pvp zone.


PvP complaints by carebears ended in separating Ultima Online in two "facets", a PvE and a PvP part. Must I tell you which part was almost entirely deserted and empty?
Guild Wars is similar. The more organized the PvP mode is, the less people play it.

Even EVE as a supposedly very harsh pvp game where you can lose virtual goods has serious restrictions. Free pvp is only possible in systems with a certain lower security rating so that NPC police does not interfere or in corporation wars.

And now take a look where the bulk of the population resides. The inner part of the galaxy is the safe zone where players are protected:

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/2944/...ace2005oct.jpg
October 2005
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/950...ace2009mar.jpg
March 2009

I am no longer playing EVE, the 2009 pic was taken by a friend.



In Guild Wars we have two games sharing the same skillset, the PvP modes and PvE.
There are differences in the PvP modes as well, Hero Battles and CM/AB are vastly different and more accessible than HA or GvG.

ArenaNet did not really support PvP. It needs more than just skill balances to thrive. All new content was fed to PvE.
GW2 seems to pick up the AB/CM concepts of GW:Factions that seem to reach more people than GvG.


It all depends what people GW want to be. There were not too many people who really loved the GvG + Fantasy MMO aspect of the game.
In this regard ANet totally failed, they are lucky that GW still attracted enough players for a multitude of reasons.
Many just wanted a fee free WoW, and some even embrace the concept of grind. Some like the graphics. Some really thought this is a roleplaying game with a great community.


Maybe Mount & Blade's expansion will be my kind of medieval setting PvP on horseback.
The best system so far was still DAOC, it created a mix of undisturbed pve world and pvp that did not feel as disconnected as battlegrounds or arenas.


@aapo: you summed it up nicely. I just hope that MMO design gets away from the constant progression through items and levels model, it has some serious drawbacks. It might also explain why ANet gives a shit about making pve skills overpowering without end, while it is actually very destructive for a game that does not has us progressing endlessly and without limits. We grow stronger, while the mobs don't. This does not make PvE more entertaining, there needs to be a modicum of challenge and fight for the fun.

I'm going to go ahead and cite again this overly-cited article: http://www.brokentoys.org/2009/02/03...-mmos-is-hard/

Particularly, see point 5. It doesn't just apply to monster enemies - it applies to player enemies too. Most people don't play games to lose, but they also aren't willing to take games seriously enough to think, practice, or in any way develop the skills necessary to win. So, how do you win while being incompetent? Avoid difficulty as much as possible, of course.

This kind of mentality, and the kind of game design it promotes, is the province of the casual gamer. You'll notice that smaller communities (particularly MUDs), manage to do well with very brutal PvP systems (full world, unrestricted PvP, usually with corpse-looting); there aren't any carebears around to whine about losing and "no fun", because they can't stand to stick around for very long.

If you want real competition, I'd suggest sticking to games that are intrinsically PvP: fighting games, FPS, RTS, etc. RPGs and MMOs tend to attract far too many undesirables, with the exception of dedicated PvP leagues (which tend to have far too many undesirables of a different type).

If you consider it "bad style" then you shouldn't be on a PvP server.

That said, that's one of the main things that really attracted me to WoW: Faction vs. Faction combat and kicking the Alliance in tha nuts with my huge shoulderpads (and vice versa :3).

But that wasn't the focus. It was PvE: Instances and Raids. I wanted to be raiding Stormwind and actually being held in high regard for doing so. But instead I had to go through an annoying grind to get Warlord gear. That's not what I had signed up for. At least the PvE was fun.

Quick sidenote in regards to Warhammer Online: I didn't invest into leveling on a PvP server because of how the pairings are organized: Straight down the middle. Sure there are some instances where a pairing criss-crosses, but other than that opposing factions will rarely see each other, and in order to really experience that you *really* have to go out of your way and abandon leveling for a moment. Not good implementation, at least imo.

This isn't a problem with PvP. This is a problem with access, and it happens to both sides. The same thing happens to PvE: How many people do you think raid as opposed to just grind dailies/instances/dicking around?

Same thing happens with PvP. The more easy to access areas are ALWAYS going to be more popular than what's more prestigious or difficult. You're never going to break that, ever. Granted you could indeed get a bit more people to play GvG and whatnot, but the activity will always be outnumbered by the more accessible arenas.

Is this a bad thing?
Not really. It's hard to break the fact that most people just want to play the game with little effort. You'll see this in every game.
So what is a bad thing?
I'm pretty (i.e. 100%) sure most people will tell you that what GW has evolved into is a pretty good definition of a "bad thing". Sure it still sees a lot of activity, but the appeal to the more in-depth players is gone.

You *can* appeal to only the lowest common denominator and become a "successful". Or you can go the extra mile and appeal to more crowds, both casual and hardcore and become what would actually be a *good* game.

Yes, compared to Warhammer Online, GW's pvp is far superior imo. A bunch of players trying to ram the gate while a larger bunch of high dps mages on the walls above kill them. Those guys really have a (class) balance problem. GW's PvE is absolutely better imo, the 'war everywhere' design of the game gets boring quite fast. Like DoW2 was a disapointment to you, so was Warhammer Online to me. Those are the times when I think I shouldn't critisize Anet that much, but hey it's constructive critical feedback.

WAR suffers from a ton of problems: poorly optimized (considering how "good" it looks), lackluster endgame, bad bad balance, boring endgame, etc.

At first MDPS were having a really hard time going against RDPS. Now the tables might turn entirely with the coming patch and solve nothing.

Warhammer was absolutely horrible, played up to 40 on a marauder and played various other classes to lower levels. It feels like they started by making a big list of all the best features from other MMOs, and then threw that entire feature list together with a Warhammer flavor and kicked it out the door. Unfortunately the result was not at all cohesive, as the endgame really lacked any sort of direction or incentive for players to play in a particular way.

The implementation was also awful, with high poly characters and a low poly environment. Most other companies have figured out that better textures are the way to go, not cranking up poly counts to ludicrous levels.

They also didn't even start to address the skill lag for years into its development -- in fact until one month before the game released. Every other MMO starts playing the skill animation when you press the key, and then cancels it if the server comes back with "no, you can't do that", giving an appearance of fluidity. Warhammer put the server roundtrip in first, so that everything you cast had that roundtrip lag. It's almost as if they only ever tested it on their internal company LAN, and totally forgot that people outside the LAN don't have 0 ms latency.

Their first attempt at fixing this was a joke, as initially it would play the animation even if your client could not possibly even use that skill at the time, or was on global cooldown, so you could tap the key three times and your character would spazz out playing the animation. I don't know if all their DAOC programmers left years ago or what, this is basic stuff.

The final cockpunch was the fact that it takes 2 minutes to enter the game. The game took a while to load, you had various logo screens to get through, 2 EULAs you had to scroll down and click accept on (later changed to 1), and then finally a long time to login. Guild Wars it takes about 8 seconds from the time I double click the icon on my desktop until I'm moving my character in game.

Sure, you could have mobs dogpile on the weakest player targets, prot everything, and interrupt the important player skills, but then the majority of players would avoid that content like the plague (and your game entirely if everything was like that). Despite proclaims to the contrary, players don't actually want a challenge. What they want is the illusion of challenge.

I'm well aware of this. See post #61 above.

There's a lot I could say about this topic, but it's hardly worth the effort anymore. Suffice to say, the problem of casual gamers has severely damaged my opinion of game design in general, and killed my hopes of ever seeing any truly great games in the future.

Can't the elitists just play GvG and stop whining? The only problem i see is that the hardcore want the intire game to be über hard and the casuals want everything to be easy and practically free. A bit of both for all isn't good enough.

Personally, i wished there where twenty places like Aspenwood and JQ but you won't hear me complain about it. Hell! I even would welcome random HA.

- No offense intended, but game is a game. It's completely artificial and the only real-life skill needed is simple arithmetic. If this was about learning to play great musical pieces on piano, learning proper language or something like that, your view would be reasonable. But to devote time to learn a computer game is just silly. Some stance-looking skills are actually "skill"s and not "stances". Some rocks block arrows and some rocks don't. You can climb up some mountains, but can't jump one feet high ledge. Place trap on walkway under the bridge and foes on the bridge will trigger it and vice versa. Bodyblock stairs and type /stuck to have server update your true location. Does any of this make any sense if you hadn't compromised your logic to learn how the game works? This game like any other game is a race to find and abuse flaws and bugs. To make things easier you can usually just read the patch notes to figure out next flaw.

So, clearly, Chess isn't worth learning either. Trying to be good at that would just be silly! It's a game, after all. And hey, so is Street Fighter. Or Counterstrike. Or Starcraft. And lets not talk about all of those sports that people play.

All games are exercises - you are presented with a set of artificial rules and an artificial goal that you have to achieve within the framework of those rules. You don't have to "compromise your logic" to learn how to play within artificial rules (in point of fact, social norms and even black-letter laws are artificial rules). And the fact that they're artificial doesn't make them any less rewarding to learn, as any Chess player or athlete will tell you.

I'm not really sure where people came up with the idea that any leisure activity necessarily forecloses expending any effort or thought, but that attitude is frankly frightening, and its ubiquity is depressing. We honestly don't need more people who approach games (or anything else, for that matter) like they're taking a dump.

- Real life games allow certain degree of variety. Take soccer for instance: objective is to get the ball to opponent's goal without using hands. Only somewhat artificial rule is the offside rule, but its purpose is only to prevent giving unfair advantage to attacker. These formalities aside, the game offers myriad of different strategies and feats of ability.

Then there are games which are about rules and nothing but. Most computer games are like this. It doesn't mean they couldn't be fun games, but to consider them "sport" worth "learning" requires quite a bit work not just on PR department. Most successful games in the history have been those which have embraced simplicity and intuitiveness. Guild Wars' skill Physical Resistance offers protection against physical damage, but what when the Warrior attacking you just switches to similar looking blade that deals earth damage? Players shrug their shoulders and say that the skill is just "bad", but it's not the culprit. The design which introduces different damage types and makes their existance irrelevant is flawed. Under no cirsumstances should developers disregard common sense!

- Games are leisure activity for me. Receiving enough enjoyment from the game usually means learning how to play it properly. As soon as the game ceases to be fun, most players including me will just stop playing. This is why any attempts to create "elite" areas in Guild Wars has failed. In all honesty: what is the point of creating something where welcoming sign says

"This is not for everyone. Go grind 10k faction and finish the game first. If you're still here, leech your way ferrying party in order to have the privilige to stand in the mission outpost."?

Perfect analogy would be going to chess club for first time and getting humiliated by stronger players time after time, never receiving help or guidance (GW really offers very little of that). Guess would they get new members in the club?

Constantly growing "challenge" and difficulty, plus a learning experience on the way was some 10+ years ago the design goal of level designers. And it was good.


We indeed have this "fun must be easy" attitude today paired with a sense of entitlement. At the same time people by now strangely enough seem to become more resistant to the ennui caused by extremely repetitive grinding.

This notion caused games to be dumbed down extremely. We currently experience this phase, just take a look at WoW raiding and GW.
(EDIT: People claim Ulduar is hard - yes, compared to the new Naxxramas, that non guild PUGs cleared within weeks after release... the old Naxxramas is then probably the equivalent to a virtual hell, keke)

It did not make games better or more exciting, it is more like a strawfire. Quick satisfaction, but no more learning experience or sense of accomplishment when you did something.

Hows it flawed? having to adapt to situations is pretty standard mechanic.
If that makes the game too difficult for you maybe you'l find bashing your head against the keyboard would suit you better.

- What color are black crows?

i rolled laughing when i saw that

Mindless entertainment sells. Easiest-solution sells. If repetitive grinding is an easy solution, people will do it, because then they can finish something and tell themselves they're good, which... justifies the grinding. I guess. After a while it hits the point where they're convinced that you need to grind in order to achieve what they did.

Back in the Ursan era I met people who ragequit groups because they felt that one guy in the group wasn't high-ranked enough to handle Duncan HM. He was Norn r6. I remember trying to defend his presence in the group.

After enough of this, people get even more convinced that if they can't do it, it's because something is too hard, and not because they aren't doing well enough. Nope. It's the developers' fault for setting something that's too difficult, not because we brought the wrong build, or made a stupid mistake, or overaggroed...

I personally had a lot more fun (and satisfaction) doing HM missions for Zquests on my necro, who has SS r6, no LB to speak of, no Vanguard title, no Norn title, no Asuran title because the only place in GWEN she's entered is Eye of the North (so I could take a look at her in the accountwide armour HoM) than my main. Not that I don't spoil my main excessively, but still.