GW2: How2Ballance without making PvE people whine.

Bad game: Only catering to the majority.
Good game: Catering to the inexperienced *and* skilled.

It's *entirely* understandable when a developer wants to sell a lot of copies, but if that's all they're trying to do then it's not a well-developed game and more of a sell-out.

And DE, Arcanemacabre was agreeing with me, he was just being sarcastic.

Sarcasm doesn't translate well over the internet, though I, of all people, should have recognized it.

Regardless, I think people overuse the term 'elitist' and stick by what I said.

=^____^=

The word 'elitist' is basically what people throw around everytime they feel threatened by someone who is genuinely better than them. Therefore, if you wanted a nerf to Ursan, you're elitist. If you point out that a build won't work, you're elitist. If you kick a guy out of your group because his bar just plain sucked, you're elitist. In other words, if you want anything but the easiest possible method (and even that one's dubious), you're elitist. What a wonderful elitist world we live in!

And stop lumping us into a generic community, thank you.

Yeah, what Bryant said. I had the little and everything! It was a shot at this previous post by Avarre in response to Bryant:

PvP = catering to skilled.
PvE = catering to inexperienced.

Perfect!

PvP doesn't have to cater purely to the skilled. Every competitive game (WC, SC, CS etc) has a huge uncompetitive following that just want to mess around in a casual setting. That gives new players a place to start and attracts noncompetitive players to the game. The importance is that the casual field is not allowed to determine changes in the competitive one.

Guild Wars wasn't too strong at catering to all players: you had to get 8 people to play most modes (a task in itself for new players), and then it was straight into the single official ladder. Part of the problem is the game structure - compared to competitive team games like CS where every player is equal (and hence random teams can be fairly formed), GW relies on builds and team roles which massively inhibits random teams. There's no real equivalent to SC's fastest/bgh which give a casual but even introduction to the competitive game.

The problem isn't so much that people don't want to adapt to the changes.
The main reasons I can think of are:
- players don't want to get used to new builds. It makes them (feel) less efficient.
- players are too stupid/lazy to make their own efficient builds. Many can think of a single player builds (though I've also seen a lot of fail there), but thinking in team composition is a lot harder.
- players don't see that certain skills or skill combinations are overpowered because they don't know how to abuse them. They see a change to a skill they use and think: "why did they change that, it was ok?"

Having played with a relatively close group of people for a long time I can tell that on PvE side 95% isn't so much about skills as it is on planning and coordination. Only in a few very specific situations you need a certain skill to succeed or to make life a lot easier. The main exceptions here are solo-farming or speed clears.
The rest is just making sure you have the utility you need in your team. It might not be the most efficient but it will do the job.

I also don't like massive changes.
I played a certain monk build a lot for a long time and all of a sudden had to switch to another monk build (not because of a skill change though).
It took me a while to get used to the new build and the way it's played.
But most skill changes ain't Smiter's Boon (PvP) or Aegis (PvP) changes.
It doesn't put them out of the game, it just makes them somewhat less efficient.