So we all like to discuss why PvE is dead...

Nerf Shadow Form, and you have people playing guild wars in areas that players are looking to farm.

Remove /report, and you have players socializing and playing with each other instead of being unreasonably fearful that an overly sensitive pansy will get them unfairly banned.

"God mode is not Just one build it is any number of overpowered Skills (90% of the "PvE version" of standard skills and PvE only Skills

...it's not even like it takes that long to do normally, but nevermind.

Frankly, I don't think it's 'fixable', and I think people are overly nostalgic about 'the good ol' PUGging days' and things like that. Having implemented PvE-only skills, they can't afford to take them out anymore because people will start screaming, and screaming loudly.

PUGging died because people got sick of having to cover the resident idiot's ass, and because - quite frankly - with so much content in GW, the chance of finding someone who wants to do the exact same thing as you is rather low, unless it's the ZQuest of the Day. Those are not things you can fix; those are community issues rather than build issues.

PvE is dead for me because there is no new content. Shadow form didn't kill pve, it just made people grind more.

Casual gamers tend to not care, nor notice when the builds they use get touched. You wouldn't believe how many people still ran the exact same cookie cutter Warrior's Endurance build after it was meganerfed for the next couple weeks.

Where did i say the game is blanaced?
Dont read what you wish, read what i wrote.
For that matter, what the hell does "Balanced" mean in regards to a game?
The game is plenty challenging enough for me as it is.

Saying something is "the dumbest thing you ever heard" is well ... kinda dumb.
It's an opinion. Nothing more.
Will it effect my gameplay? It might, but it wont bother me. Ill work with whatever they change, or decide to add/remove.
Why? because the game is still fun to me.

But your attitude is the opposite. If they dont "Fix" the game, it's a huge injustice to you.
If they dont "fix" the game, why does it bother you?
Why not just play on, and enjoy the game for what it is?
Entertainment.

One other poster mentioned this:
Au contraire. I still get plenty of satisfaction beating a mission in HM using Sabway and a D-slash W/.
I think its awesome that i can complete an elite area in 30 minutes with my mornming coffee, then go outside and play with my daughter!

As to the op's topic, i dont think PvE is dying. I think it has fallen off what it used to be, sure. But i know folks that are just playing the game for the first time, and think its great.

The real argument here is between the people who have been hardcore players for too long, and the people like myself who play when they can.

The hardcore player is bored. (this has been said in a few of the posts).
The casual player is still working their way through things, and getting pleasure from doing so.

Your bored, so you want change.
Im not, and i say why change anything?

Will the developers do anything about it?
Who knows ... not me.
Why go on and on for 3,000 posts about it?
Because you hope that the developers will read the topic and all of a sudden say "whoa! we have some unhappy players! we need to fix it!"

Mayhap, they'll read my post and think, well ... most folks are content. Let's leave well enough alone.

You cant make all the people happy all of the time.

Some of you people need to let go of your keyboard and go outside. Taking GW PvE way too seriously. The amount of time you people spend number crunching, spending countless hours fine-tuning your builds etc.. could've been spent elsewhere. The fact we do these things and constantly post in fan forums is already a step above 90% of the community. We're all GEEKS. (myself included and I'm not proud of it) Time to take a step back and let the other 90% just do their thing. You cannot possibly win by taking things away from people. Go ahead scream, cry, bitch, moan, and whine for your nerfs. You won't fix a damn thing and you'll just create a bigger mess. Has GW's 4 year history not taught anyone anything? Nerf after nerf has done nothing. WE THE COMMUNITY KEEP BREAKING THE GAME. You can blame Anet all day long but aside from the obvious stuff like Ursan and SF we are the ones constantly breaking the game.

Anet puts in Incubus to stop runs in EoTN dungeons. WE BROKE THAT.

Anet reduces SF's dmg output. WE GOT AROUND IT.

Anet nerfs CoP/Fixes RoJ. WE GOT AROUND THAT and last I checked our completion times are the same if not faster with Manlyway (what a dumb name) in certain areas despite the nerf.

Dying Nightmares were added to UW to slow farming down. That failed miserably I would say.

Keg farming. Although it was nerfed. Who do you think came up with the concept?

Time after time we the community keep breaking the game on our own. When it becomes apart of the meta we blame Anet for introducing said skill(s). Oh the hypocrisy. It took months after Nightfall was released and the subsequent nerf to Ursan before a single thread about CoP being imbalanced was introduced. Why is that?

Don't be surprised. People spend countless hours in front of their monitor re-reading and proofing read posts/threads just so they can brainstorm/gather enough info to form a seemingly legitimate sugar coated argument on why they think the game should be the way they see it. You see it all the time. Quote wars back and forth. A lot of individuals don't really have any solid arguments of their own. They think it up as they go or as they are reading. Certain things never get mentioned until 1 person QQ's about it on a fan forum. I can name instances where certain things were problematic for months and not a single soul ever mentioned it or even knew it was a problem. In other words it wasn't a problem at all. Took 1 dumbass to start a thread and suddenly like a flock of Geese we hear from the vocal minority who were otherwise quiet and content. People are like sheep. Quick to jump on the bandwagon. I expect to be quoted, misinterpreted, spelling Nazi'ed, told I'm wrong, told I must be joking and perhaps chastised because that's just how we GEEKS do things.

GW's is/was/always will be strictly for entertainment and a past time. Some of you treat it like a second job. You know who you are and it sucks to be you...

The only thing I see dead round here is attention span.

You say that to you, the game is not broken, aka balanced.

But what is fun to others? If Anet includes my fun type of fun, will it wreck yours? No, because as you claim, you're a casual gamer who doesn't care about changes. But if Anet works towards your type of fun, will it wreck mine? Yes.

Understand?

It is. The game is supposed to be balanced. It's not. To many people, that matters. To you, it doesn't. However fixing the game doesn't affect you either way, in which case, making it the better alternative when it comes to making the choice of whether or not to implement balances.

I would agree provided:

1. Take out all PvE versions of attack skills/hexes etc. from monsters
2. Take out all PvE attack skills/hexes from monsters
3. Make all monsters level 20 max.
4. Each monster group is far apart enough so we wont over aggro
5. Each monster group would only contain max party size
6. Improve monster AI
7. Either remove the environmental effects or make them affect monsters also.
8. Remove the health and energy regen advantage from monsters.
9. Remove armor advantage from monsters to be equivalent to humans.

Then PvE would be more like PvP and fights would be more fair. If a monster dares to use an overpowered PvE skill against me, it is only fair turn that I use a PvE skill against it. I dont see why we should give special concessions to Shiro that overpowered cheater of an "assassin" that doesnt even use assassin skills.

Conversely, if you DON'T come across one in your regular balanced team, the lower price works FOR you, not against you, since you can afford it more easily.

PvE is dead, because the players became a more convincing enemy than anything the designers had previously created.

There's a whole lot of gray area in what is good MMO design and what makes bad behavior. These are the common motivations for killing in a game scenario: kill something that drops good loot, kill to increase ones reputation with a faction, or kill because it makes you more powerful. If you applied this reasoning to an action you took in the real world, you would be labeled greedy, evil, a monster, etc.

What's typically needed for a fantasy game to last are constraints that provide a reward system skewed slightly in favor of being a good person, instead of the monster. When it comes down to it, a monster is just a thing that ‘harms people’ when it utilizes its own determination of personal reward system. Meanwhile, a good person is someone who ‘saves people’ when it utilizes its own determination of a personal reward system. These are definitions that society recognizes, I'm still trying to figure if it is possible to ignore the personal reward system (in hopes of producing a better behaving human), but that is a strong component of human programming.

They really need a far better understanding of how the reward systems of surviving social structures get people to act. To describe how the real world continues to last while game worlds die; the typical behavior of a farmer (motivation to kill infant raptors and their mother based on acquiring wealth) would be punished. This behavior would actually stir up animals to recognize human beings as a threat and attack them more often.

I really don't know what the playing base has the power to do besides push for the structural reward system to be altered, something a small fragment has been doing for a long time. I think that a good number of people who play this game are intelligent enough to realize something superficial like 'more content' will not fix deep rooted social problems.

But to describe what reducing the effectiveness of Shadow Form would do, it would make solo farming immediately less rewarding. People who solo farm a bit too much are acting out greed. I would hope to see these skills weakened so that higher levels of greed could not survive to present a greater threat to the community as a whole. Most of the theories I have seen describe communities as improving when greed is reduced, just as I have seen this fact demonstrated through things I have witnessed.

Ya but now he can't get a BDS sell it for a sick amount of money, buy the items he said he wanted (possibly resell those too) and still have money/ecto left over from the sale of his BDS. He ain't after the skin. Not picking on Fenix but at least he came out and was honest about it. Others I'm not so sure about. All I ever read is "Me Me Me Me Me". I have a hard time believing some of the things people say because I feel some people have their own agenda as opposed to the "for the better of the community" crap they keep preaching about.

I'll point out that Square-Enix DID that (and won't stop milking FF7, for that matter)...

When it's up to the players to challenge themselves that means the game in itself isn't challenging. It also depends on how much they have to limit themselves.

But challenge isn't precisely what so many are hoping to maintain, rather the general integrity of the game. I feel that when two people can solo an area in 30 mins, when players can deny massive amounts of damage by one person bringing a single PvE skill, when the strength of PvE skills is determined by the *time* you put into the game, when players can boost their success and survival rate via gold and materials, I definitely feel that we've gone off the tracks somewhere down the road.

Removing everything is stupid, I agree. Balancing it, however, is not. When things become balanced in PvE we'll know we're just one step closer to actually having a solid game.

What standards do you use to determine when something is "broken" or not?

And yes, most players are indeed content - that's because most players are casual. They're in the earlier areas hitting things and enjoying it. They're joining RA on occassion and having fun whether they win or lose.

They are *not* in the UW with a buddy and kicking way too much ass, they're *not* going on speed runs and getting mad loots.

All this OP jargon and other facets of the game do not concern the majority player. If you made everything even more imbalanced they wouldn't care, because they just killed a dragon and are pretty damn pleased about it.

ArenaNet's confirmation of lack of GW1 content is what killed PvE.

However if you read what fenix said, you would see that he is after the low req BDS to sell it. Not to keep. Your point is pointless.

It's not just about getting valuable drops to sell though. I mean, my view is that I'd want it to sell, but for other players I imagine the reward of being able to get a 300e+ item in a dungeon is great.

Being able to perma the dungeon in 5 minutes, and the result being an overfarmed 20e skin, makes the game a LOT less fun/rewarding.

I think this is what PvE is about. If you look at it from the other angle, monsters like Shiro has many really unfair skills too that we dont have access to. It is basically overpowered skills against more overpowered skills. I would gladly trade SY for Battle Scars or Impossible Odds.

If "balanced" to you means fighting fair, then you should look at the pvp paradigm not pve.

Daesu, perish the thought but I agree with you.

For the rest of you. After 4 years everyone should realize by now balance in PvE is an oxymoron. Everyone has their own definition of balance. What one person finds balanced another person would likely disagree. Get over it. Nothing is about to change "for the better". You'd be hard pressed to convince the community as a whole let alone Anet's devs that your lil righteous crusades are the answer to everyone's problems within the game.

There's two major set-backs for the monsters that always need to be taken into account when talking about "enemy imbalances": 1. Humans will always know their builds ahead of time, and be able to prepare and specialize for that. 2. The AI in this game is, well, an AI, and not a terribly great one (then again there's not a whole lot of play involved in GW as compared to others).

What we had before was monsters being a bit on the unfair side on numerous fronts yet still players were able to continually succeed. What we have now is the players also have all those imbalanced facets and the skill threshold is now far lower.

Computer limitations is why Doom pits you up against hordes of monsters as opposed to a single competent marine enemy. Even FEAR, with it's supposedly "top of the line" enemy AI, pitted you against squads and patrols of baddies. But that's why this is so largely difficult: it's really hard to define the line of when something is balanced/imba in a player vs. monsters game.

PvE died as soon as it was announced no new content would be released. They should have milked PvP until 2 came out. Oh well.

And that is why PvE would NEVER EVER be like PvP. ANet has to compensate for their AI inadequacies with unfair monster levels, unfair armor, unfair health and energy regen, unfair numbers, and unfair monster PvE skills. The entire PvE landscape is already built on being unfair from the beginning.

It is difficult to argue that all PvE skills are bad because they are overpowered when they are designed to be overpowered in the first place since they only work in an imbalanced environment. Heck, so many people completed the campaigns and beat the same monsters over and over that in itself is unfair to the monsters right? But ANet has to allow this to happen, in pve, so they can sell a game that makes you feel like a hero at the end. Therefore, human players would always have the advantage over game AI.

Correct. And that is why an elite PvEer would always have problems convincing PvPers of his skills just by conquering AI enemies. It will always be viewed as unfair one way or another. Even without PvE skills or cons, fighting a much more limited computer AI can still be perceived as an unfair match even when outnumbered. The best way to demonstrate superior gamer skill would always be pvp, not pve.

Careful about chopping up posts, they start to lose point and quote wars rarely remain relevant to the thread. Plus no one wants to read them.

...And still players beat it *without* consumables, PvE skills, or title bonuses.

That's part of what PvE games are all about: going against unfair odds and returning triumphant. WoW does this, Half Life does this, many a game does this. It's about giving a formidable foe, then pitting you against more of them, then pitting you against the same amount except this time their armor and weapons are better, then pitting you against the previous guys *and* a really big bad one.

When you ace it you get a good and proper difficulty curve. If it's too hard for some they just lower the difficulty setting. If it's too easy for others they just up it. Part of the point of player skill progression is starting in Easy, moving onto Normal, then they can move into Hard setting territory. What happened to Guild Wars is ANet made it so players barely have to step a foot into Normal and still beat the game's hardest challenges on the hardest settings.

Advocating for universal balance is one thing, but advocating for tools we don't need is another.

The rest of the post was true but not terribly relevant to what I was saying, hence left out.

I actually find PvE quite difficult sometimes.

Personally most of the things that they could/would do would not really incentivise me to PUG again.

The zaishen quests and nicholas have been a great addition and it has given me something extra to do with my friends on the game, so other new initiatives would or may have a similar effect.

I also think that zaishen quests will be effective for a while yet, as long as they sort out the repetitiveness.

From this stance I'd find it unfair if they gave benefits for people PUG'ing, as opposed to just playing with any number of other players... but similarly people who h/h may find that unfair too.

I feel that either people have found what they want to do within pve after 4 years (titles, farm, play just with friends or wait for gw2 etc) or they've just started out and still have tonnes left to do.

Qft, i want new things added, need more variety
and capblye is right, some of you are taking this game way to seriously and by dissecting it down to utter fragments, and forgetting this is a video game

I haven't played PvE GW for around a year, not because its "dead" but rather simply because after 3 years and 5000hrs even the best game gets old. I've moved on to other MMO's (Flybys of WoW, CoX and that rolling action cube one whose name escapes me before settling on WAR) and none of them have PvE anywhere near as good as GW, which I've found amusing considering that GW is supposed to be the game that is PvP focused .

• No silly "hate" mechanics that make the ai act like morons
• Balanced groups of enemies that operate as a team
• Enemies that use the same skills as players
• AI that is as human-like as practical

Unfortunately the PvE experience has been in a decline Nightfall thanks to latest releases of GW moving away from this winning formula with more an more special monster skills and the introduction of pve skills which is a shame. Even the introduction of HM could have been done better if they had changed the AI to be smarter rather than just giving them brute force.

Think it's too late to "save" PvE

Hmmmm, I think pretty much the only thing that could save PvE is new content. It's the only thing that can bring something compeletely new to the table.

You can balance all the skills out; add new weapons/armors, get rid of the consumables/PvE skills/OPed build; delete all the henchmen and heroes from the game to presumably force PuGging back; etc., but even with A New Way of Doing It, you'd still be fighting the same mobs, running through the same maps, farming the same ectoes and gold, and repeating the same storyline over and over and over again. At some point in time, even the New Way of Doing It will lose its charm, and ultimately people would just get bored of replaying the same thing over and over again.

Guild Wars PvE wasn't meant to be played on forever. You were supposed to beat the game. Yay. Now go to PvP or get out. But people liked PvE so much that it just never happened (I'm one of them, lol). So it's only completely natural that, with a game that was only supposed to be played through a few times or so, PvErs would get bored with what they had and leave. It's like rereading your favourite book over and over again, expecting something different, but it never comes. It's not supposed, dude. It's written; it's over. Get a new book or do something else.

I think what GW needs to save PvE is a constant stream of new content, like how serial authors release more books to keep their readers buying. Sadly, I must admit, the stream of grind they keep releasing, like expensive Z-coin items, the Pokemon Center, books, the traveler, and the HoM, is probably some of the only things still keeping this game on its feet. Players bob after the carrot long after they should've stopped with the game. They're cheap gimmicks, but they work.

I know it's pretty much impossible (or so they say at this point), but I think something that would bring in a heap of players back in this game is releasing something big, like a new section of map, quests, etc., whether it be something as big as "the area North of the Maguuma Jungle has been discovered and there's trouble afoot" (opening way to new quests, outposts, missions, etc.) or something a little smaller like, "Bonus Mission Pack 2" and play as Viktor during the Harvest Festival or maybe as Sogolon the Protector during the Scarab Plague (or whenever he was alive). But even then, after a while, the game would die back down again... Its PvE just wasn't meant to be played for that long.

I wonder how they will go with keeping PvE alive in GW2? I never had the opprotunity to immerse myself in another MMO, so I don't know how they keep their players hooked aside from some downright disgusting grind.

Those were the past campaigns. EOTN was released with a certain level of difficulty that has cons and pve skills designed into it. They just allow them to be brought to the other campaigns also.

Besides, you have to look at the competency level of your typical casual player or the typical PUG player in GW. If they make PvE too difficult, then most players are going to eat dirt and not going to feel like "heroes" when they play the game now would they? PvP, however, does not have this restriction so you should play PvP if you want such an environment.

Although I agree that PvE should have a certain level of challenge, balancing that challenge can be a lot more difficult than balancing pvp, because of the varied environments and at the end of the day, they have to let most people succeed to an extend, otherwise people would QQ and quit the game. If you want more challenges, go find an effective 6-heroes build for HM foundry.

On a personal level of challenge, you dont have to use cons or PvE skills if you dont want to.

Agree. New content would be the most effective way to revitalize pve as it is now.

If something's too difficult then yes, it needs to be toned down - that's what Normal Mode is for: if you're finding something to hard on Hard Mode then stick in Normal Mode and find means to improve. HM variants of the areas should be difficult.

This is what difficulty settings permit. They allow a wide spectrum of players access to the game while at the same time providing more experienced players something to bite on. This is what ANet could've accomplished with HM, but with the addition of PvE skills it voided most of the point. Implementing HM also gave them the chance to tone down the more difficult areas in Normal Mode so they could be more easily viewed by people who just want to persue the content, much like they did with DoA.

My point with past campaigns was showing that even in the midst of "unfairness" were people able to conquer these areas. Largely I don't see a single "good" thing coming out of all of these overpowered abilities and items, unless ANet really wants a horrendously dumbed-down game - in which case, we're screwed.

Just because I don't use them doesn't mean they don't exist, nor does it spice up the game for me. Having to implement my own set-backs is proving that I've reached the peak of what the developers have handed me. In this case I find a new game to play.

The thing with Guild Wars is I reached this peak artificially with the help of ANet through PvE skills and consumables, and that's the problem.

How to prepare for Wurm Bile... o men hate that skill.

But we all know what will keep PvE alive.


First what they could do to make it just cost a litle time for them is.

A: Increase droprate and than especially when peeps walking with hench or hero's.. men come on ! some times you are killing around 20 foe's till getting your first drop. That isn't what you say ..motivating.
B: Make drops more divers. there are numerous consumables or other fun things that may be implanted as a drop. And make it as rated as a rare drop.
C:Make pets much more valuable to use them as companions. (That would take some time to do)
D:Alow us to use more hero's.
E:Alow to use summonstones after creature died.

Second, that I wouldnt mind to pay for ( if it is kept at a fair price)

A: More content to explore, jungle/forrest/dungeon type.
B: Guild Area's implanted in the world (like factions)


oki by

1/ delete Factions
2/ delete Nightfall
3/ remove heroes
4/ make more expantions like EotN
5/ put more dungeons on Tyria

But that's just me being nostalgic. Last time I played was in '05.

Oh and make some decent threat/aggro mechanism so thath tanking is actually possible. I know, it's 'possible' now, but not really managable.

You have to recall the quality of PUG players doing HM nowadays. ANet can't just make the game too difficult for them or most of them wont even pass THK HM. Why are these people doing HM? It is because of the title-chase, spurred on by zquests. GW is a game where the max level is achieved quickly and the campaigns are short. Therefore they need to push people towards titles and HM to extend the life of this game until GW2 is ready.

Having said that, DoA HM is still considered difficult if you dont belong to certain professions. The other elite areas HM are getting to be easy due to pve skills, cons, and SC builds.

If you have cleared all the elite missions in HM, you have already reached the peak. Many have already reached the peak. And that is the main problem with pve, it is getting old. We need new content.

For those who are really good at this game or have the perfect build that they can use with ruthless efficiency this game must be a real bore.
Don't know why you bother turning up day after day to play it.

Sadly not everyone is a gold medal winner so altering the game so only those people can compete seems a little unfair on the rest of us.

Just make hard mode harder set it up so that in HM there are no consumables and no henchmen or heroes in fact no advantages of any kind.
If that's not enough then handicap yourself use a class you think is inferior try new elites and builds you wouldnt usually use.

The only way to really revive PvE is new content. My suggestion is similar to the Zmissions, except all new missions. There should be five missions on a random rotation. For the first two use FoW and UW, make new quests for them, put in different enemies, and in general give it a good polish. The other 3 will be Lyssa's Realm, Melandru's Forest, and the Haven of Dwayna. GtoB will be the outpost to start the mission from, PvP chars cannot enter of course.

Have at least 10 new mission objectives per realm. Put signet of disenchant on enough enemies to keep perma sins out (or just nerf SF for gods sake). No ecto or shards will drop in the UW/FoW missions. Put new bosses that drop new green weps in each mission and an end chest that drops a godly remnant for each person once all objectives are complete and the zone vanquished.

You can attach a godly remnant to any piece of armor you have to give it the chaos effect. It can be removed from the armor anytime and is customized to your char after being attached once, but not tradable/sellable.

If the players are not good, they should not be rewarded. If they can prove their skill then they deserve the credit. Simple as that. Why should they be rewarded for being subpar?

And besides, it's not like ANet haven't done something like this before. Remember when they nerfed Ursan?

But this is just a first-step of many. There's still quite a lot ANet would have to do to make their PvE game have even half the integrity it used to.

Also, ANet's decision to try to "extend the life of PvE" was another bad idea. Not only is Guild Wars just not built for it (no fee = no endgame) it's all unnecessary. You don't need to keep players in your game world for them to buy your next game, your games just have to be good. How do you think game developers stay in business?

You missed what I was saying there.

Because of PvE skills the road to becoming a "successful player" is now very, very short. I.e. We now have a dumb-downed game, a *really* dumbed-down game.

There are so many build combinations I can learn, fine-tune, and perfect. Tons of team synergies I can develop with me and my heroes. But it's all pretty frivolous when the best thing for me to run is a Dragonslash/SY! War and Sabway.

So much potential, so much waste.

...wait, you mean you want people walking around with glowy armour?

I'm wondering. Is it that the players all really suck that bad or is it that they're trying to pull characters that aren't ready for HM into HM? I mean, you can be perfectly capable of getting a full HoM on your ele, but that doesn't necessarily apply to the ranger mule you suddenly dragged out of storage, and people can and do overestimate their abilities.