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

Subpar relative to what level of skill? Compared to your average PUG level skill, are they still subpar or the same?

Yes but they took a hell of a long time to nerf it after persistent complaints.

That is certainly arguable. It must be important to ANet to have continuity otherwise they wouldn't invest in the Live team. If people leave GW1 for years before GW2 is released, then they would tend to view GW2 more as a totally new game, competing with the rest of the newly released games at that time. However, if they view GW2 as carrying on the investments/achievements that players have already made in GW1, that gives GW2 an edge over the other games.

I bet just before GW2 beta is released, there will be new quests and content for GW1 to link the two stories together. And those who have not bought EOTN for the HoM to transfer their achievements to GW2 would still be able to do that through that new content. It serves GW2 well if ANet encourages all GW players to move from GW1 to GW2, regardless of whether they bought EOTN or not. However, if that is the plan they wouldn't disclose that now until they have to, because that would impact EOTN sales for the time being.

I know what you are saying and I agree that the game is dumbed down, but I have already stated my reasons as to why they needed to do that.

I honestly could reply to the majority of the post but it's already starting to trail off too much from the thread (which I apologize in assisting with) and turning into a shitty post war (hence why I asked you to stop chopping my posts). Fortunately you provided this:

How many successful games do you know that cater hugely to the impatient and inexperienced? Quite a few.
Now how many successful games do you know that don't? Quite a lot.

I would be more sympathetic towards ANet's decision if there wasn't an easy and apparent history showing how many games reward only the experienced players and that also require quite a lot of commitment and understanding. Guild Wars could've been one of those games.

A new campaign would be needed, everytrhing gets boring with time.

pve still looks pretty damn alive to me. Sure some places like Hod and Amnoon are ghost towns, but that;s because there isn't much to offer there.

Guild wars is dying dude and when GW2 comes out it will be nothing more than a graveyard of diehard fans who think it should last forever. It's soon to be a hasbeen and nothing more. There's too many other great games out there now to spend time just grinding for some silly titles which is all that is left in GW after you finish all the stories. PVP is a joke anymore because they have ruined all the great skills and builds. Might as well call it PVP for romper room kiddies.

There was a time when this game was fabulous. When it was fresh and new man those were the days. They actually ruined it when they put out Nightfall and those powerful player made heroes. I can go through just about all of Prophecies now with just my 3 heroes. I remember when I couldn't get through it with 7 henchies hardly. lol

So, yep say goodbye to GW as it's now the romper room of online gaming and most especially when GW2 comes out. Hopefully Anet will have learned their lesson and put more item rewards in the game greater than 15^50 and +30hp.

It's kinda fun watching all you PvP:ers in this thread. You whine about the pvp/pve split, making it harder for pve:ers to pvp (according to you!) you whine about gaining stuff in pve that cant be gained through titles in pvp (so what? you're hard core pvp:ers, you dont need buffs right?) you whine whine whine.

Seriously, stop it. I help pvp:ers all the time when they finally leave the arenas and tries to make it in the pve world. - Its not the pve players that has a hard time to adjust when they shift enviroment, it's the pvp players! - They dont understand the fact that you dont have to be 100% coordinated to enjoy casual pve. They dont understand the fact that some skills are "overpowered" in pve since they dont ruin the pve balance as such. They're overpowered comparing to your playstyle in pvp, nothing else. In the rest of the gw world, they make absolutely sence.
And most of them have such a hard time in pve they simply close the book and enters these forums to whine whine whine some more, cause there aren't enough people who wants to endure the drama most pvp players wants to have around them.

Understand that pvp helps a lot if you want to know game mechanics, but it wont help you at all to understand the differene between a team arena group and a PuG in Gate of Madness.

To whine about the difference between pvp and pve will NOT help us improve pve gameplay.

For someone who talked a lot about whiners you sure did WHINE a lot WHINE BOY!! lol

EXCUSE MEEEEEEEEEEEEE

i only run with balanced h/h teams in PvE

and i was happy vanquishing and everything on my ranger and paragon without PvE only skills and PvE versions of skills...
they are not needed in PvE

lets all just blame Sab with the damn conversion of the PvP teambuild into the PvE sab build - problem solved :P

Red Sonya, check out contructive criticism, you might learn a thing or two. :-)

You missed my point and focused soley on the fact that FF12 is a single player game. So here's a multiplayer challenge for you. On diablo2 LOD, player's can opt to take the magic item challenge. This is when you only use blue items. No uniques, no runics, no rares and no crafted items. You start the game in hell and try to beat it all the way through. This is not easy. But players do it all the time.

There is also a no charm challenge. We have other challenges in other mulitplayer games, like no final tier challenges in rts games, or the pistol challenge in fps games, where you defeat your foes with only a pistol or the cqc/knife challenge in mgs4. You can do the no flying unit challenge in wc3 where you must defeat your foe with just ground troops. You also have the 1 hero challenge in wc3 where everyone only uses 1 hero which is very hard as you can either attack or defend but not both.

When people want to achieve something special and challenge themselves, they can do so without requiring the game provider to fix everything so they have no choice. This is why I say that MMO player's are the most spoiled bunch of all. They seem to have forgotten what gaming is all about.

When you pay a monthly fee, then yes you have a right to complain if something is actually wrong. But with free to play games, you really don't have much to complain about, especially when the game has changed so much on purpose.


If thats true then nerfing a few things here and there won't do any good at all because
we will simply find a new godmode and a new one after that. In order to truely balance
pve skill you first have to balance pve, which means monster skills, mob sizes, item drop
rate and gold frequency income.


I'm inbetween casual and hardcore myself and I notice. When they change skills I enjoy its
annoying because I enjoy them. I use different builds for different things but I generally have
and overall build I use most of the time.

As for warriors endurance. Yes the reduction to gained energy was bothersome at first
but with the extended overall duration of the skill and the fact it isn't a stance made the
skill better. Now I can run WE forever and never run out of energy when coupled with
counter attack. The fact that WE isn't a stance (like it is in pvp) means I can run
stances with it, like flail. So they actually buffed WE.


I agree with you, the majority of the people who find the game broken or dead are those who spend far to much time on it. They act like guildwar mad scientists and break down builds and
then rebuild them to see exactly what makes them work and how best to exploit every skill. I
do not have that kind of time or that kind of dedication to this game or any game.

Basically what I am finding out from this topic is that people are unwilling to do things on their
own when they can exploit something and they have a problem with people making more money
than them. They also want people to either dedicate the same amount of time they do to the game
or quit. Which is not right in the least.

This is why I think anet should add in a godmode for every profession and make PvE a crazy
overly powered aspect of the game and then balance pvp. Set buy prices at the merchant for
every item skin, mod and inscription so prices stay the same since the market is never going
to be fixed anyways. Increase drop rates and reduce Hero drops, remove henchie drop steals
completely. Make heroes overpowered in normal mode but make them nearly useless in hard
mode. Grant benefits to guild and alliance members and make mission benefits depend on
the number of real players in the group.

If they did all of that, it would fix things a little. People would still complain but atleast everyone
could make the money they want and play how they want. Let people choose for themselves.
Then announce they are no longer going to touch PvE but will continue to monitor PvP and
work towards a complete balance of that aspect of the game. (which will never happen)


[QUOTE=Bryant Again;4734032]Snip for space.[/I]QUOTE]

I don't agree with the first part. A game can be very challenging in the beginning but as time
goes on and player's play the game more and more they know how to bypass the difficult parts.
That doesn't mean the game isn't challenging, it just means the players are experienced and
have evolved passed the basic's. That doesn't call for a complete overhaul of the game, thats
not fair to the players who have not reached the same level of skill.

When it comes the intergrity of guildwars I fail to see how nerfing skills fixes anything. The game
has already changed beyond its original concept and nothing will return it to the days of prophecies (pre-sorrows furnace). For example, you can't nerf PvE only skills because they were
included in the game to BE overpowered, this is the whole reason for having them in the first place. Many people were sick of the same old same and the idea of getting a set of skills that
would allow them to walk through the game they had been playing for years as gods had great
appeal. People had to work to get those skills as powerful as they could be before the book exploits. So nerfing all that hard work is the wrong thing to do.

So the integrity of the game is not gone, but it has changed. We now have heroes and titles
and a feature of the game that promotes the ultimate grind. the HoM. The game will never be
what it used to be and we need to accept that and find a new way to see it. PvE should not
be held to the same balancing standards of PvP. PvP is for serious play with other people. PvE
is for the relaxing fun and lol's.
And again, you can't balance skills without balancing the environment in which they are used.
Which requires a total overhaul of pve. Something that will never happen.

To the second part, if the majority doesn't care and are perfectly happy with the state of the game
as is, then why should anet change the game to accomodate the smaller group of hardcore
gamers who spend massive amounts of time on the game? Why should those perfectly happy
with how things are now be subject to the consequences of the nitpickers actions?

If the nitpickers have been playing the game for 4 years and are unhappy with how it is now, shouldn't they find something a bit newer with a more aligned focus and gameplay to what they
like instead of kicking the dead horse over and over again while they wait for the next horse (gw2)
to die?


But see this isn't right or fair. You can not compare skill level when one group spends thousands and thousands of hours on the game and the other group only spend hundreds. You can't punish people for not playing as much or learning as fast as you. If people did not get rewarded they would not play.

That is the wrong attitude and is one reason why people are anti social. Playing games online isn't about fun, as it should be. Instead its about proving your superior over everyone else. If this is the case then none of you are any good at the game because you require anet to fix the problem because you have failed to find a way to overcome it.

Oh i completely understand, but i dont agree.
The point being missed here is that "Balance" is relative.
Why is the game supposed to be set up with your view of balanced?

Do you think the developers are dumb and didnt know what effect hero's would have?
Do you think they didnt know full well what would happen if they buffed a load of necro skills?
Nonsense. they knew exactly what they were doing. And with good reason.

Lets look at this from a /reality/game point of view.
Lots a gw players are casual gamers who cannot devote thousands of hours to the game. They want to be able to play for an hour, two at the most, before they have to go to work, or take their kids somewhere etc.
They cannot dedicate days on end over a weekend to playing a game.

But if you had your way, and they take away all of the team builds, buffs etc, then the casual player will now have to dedicate hours just trying to clear one area or mission.
No thank you.
If that happens, ill move on to a game that i can play for an hour or so and get satisfaction from.
The developers know this, believe me.
This is why I think the game as a whole is fine.

The reality is, no matter what anet does, players such as yourself will never be happy.
This is simply because you feel that players such as myself should not be able to clear a hard area in 30 minutes, when it took you 4 hours and 10 attempts 3 years ago, before the triple necro build or permasin.
You feel like there is some great injustice being done to you, when you cant sell some super leet item for a ridiculous amount of money now, because its over farmed.
Oh well.
life sucks, get a helmet.

Most good PvP players completed all aspects of PvE before progressing to PvP because it was more interesting and challenging.

Most good PvE players have extensive PvP experience.

Your entire post is full of self-supporting generalizations, which is pretty much par for the course for a new poster. Insert some quality control.

Very true - if there was no power creep of skills, consets, PvE skills or title bonuses.

As the game aged it got easier. Not because we as players got better but because more and more additions made the game more and more simple. This isn't acceptable.

When something is overpowered you nerf it. If a certain build is soooo much better than any other build you have to balance it out, otherwise the game loses variety and it decays.

The whole point of PvE skills may to be overpowered, sure, or it might be the first wave of testing things that aren't affected by PvP. One thing *MANY* players were vocal about were apparently some of their builds being runined due to PvP balance. And no, you no longer have to "work" to become powerful, raising your rank equal to the PvE skill will only have a marginal effect - which is better since previously you became more powerful the more you grinded, turning GW into the one thing it set not to become: time>skill! Do you really want GW to be the shitfest that is other MMO's??




Good question. So why did they?

Why did they do a 360 on so much of their philosophy for a minority that is just as vocal and whiny but wants the compete opposite? Why did ANet cater to people who wanted imbalance, who wanted grind, who wanted to *benefit* from that grind, and who wanted a mindless game?

The bigger question is: why are you trying to defend this??

Best. Quote. Ever.

A "good game" is one that caters to many spectrums of players: those who want something serious, and those who want something loltastic. Look at TF2: It provides casual and button-mashing public server play and has a pretty decent tournament crowd. Look at WoW: you can either mess around solo or actually get serious and raid, you can do some casual BG's or get serious with Arena.

If you wanted to just mess around in PvE, that's what NM should've been for. Instead for some reason ANet sought to make HM as easy as NM via PvE skills and other stupid crap.

So what we're left with is a game with a VERY easily reached skill level and no depth. Sure there may be thousands of skills and builds you could master but it's pointless to do so when there's one or two builds on PvXwiki that trump every single one of them. As I said earlier: so much wasted potential.

^This. end of thread.
and removing PvE skills is bull.
That'll only kill PvE even more.

Anet did the best they could with Nicholas and Z-quests. Those were great ideas to keep people playing. It'll get old after a while too, but at least it'll keep people busy for a while (untill everyone has achieved their goals, such as 20 slot bags / GWAMM / full HoM / Obsi armors etc.).

Actually, I did read what he said. He said he wants to sell the low req BDS to buy a high-req BDS and some other stuff.

If the price drops on the low-req BDS, it only follows it will also drop on the high req bds. And the point about there being more of them dropping the price also goes to the other skins he mentioned.

So optional skills, cons, and heros ruined the game.

OPTIONAL

If you don't like it don't use it. If you don't like it don't team with people who use it. Form a Super Uber Duber Guild no cons, PVE skills or Heroes allowed.

If others are so stupid or noobish then why do you want to team up with them? If they have to have these things and you don't then why are you trying to force them to play how you think it should be played.

That is what it comes down to. I play this way so every one else should have to.

You guys whine about something that is completely optional.

You think by taking things away it will somehow bring us back to how things were 3 years ago. WRONG!

The game is 4 years old PVE cons, heroes, and skills didn't make the game boring old age did.

New content will revive it for a short time but all new content will be is the same old thing in a shinny new wrapper.

Those who scream to take things away from the rest because you want things to go back to how they were are delusional. Nothing will change the game back to how it was. Because what made it how it was, was that it was new and different, and now hat has worn off over time and you guys think if only we could get rid of all this new stuff the game would go back to how it was when it was new. It will never, can never happen, sorry.

How can the game not get easier you guys have been playing it 8-12 hours a day for 4 years. I would hope given that type of experience it wouldn't offer much of a challenge, because if it did then you have learned nothing.

What you guys want is for the game to be changed to match you idea of challenge, well we pay no subscription fees, pay a one time purchasing fee and how exactly does that equate that Anet should continue to rewrite the game to meet your idea of challenge. I am shocked they do as much as they do now.

Anet has spoiled us and in doing so like spoiled children you rant and rave about how you want this and you want that, and any one who disagrees with you is a noob.

Squall, that guy over there can use PvE skills, heroes and cons, while I refuse to because I think they ruin the game, take them away.

The game is 4 years old, don't think it is challenging then use your imagination. If it is so easy then beat it with starter weapons and armor, don't use cons, heroes, or PVE skills. Only use 100 of the 200 attribute points. The reward you get from the game should be based on your own accomplishments. Don't worry about what others have done or are doing worry about what you are doing and have done.

I enjoy this game and I enjoy every little thing Anet has created and given to us to use in the game. I am amazed at how some of you guys can do some of the things you do, but the satisfaction I get from playing is based on my own accomplishments and I could care less about how someone else plays the game. Because it is just that a game. It is for enjoyment and to break the rhythm of every day life for a few hours a day. When I'm at my death bed I will not ponder what I have done in this game, nor will I have engraved in my tombstone here lies a man who beat Guild Wars with out using cons, heroes, or noobish PVE skills.

It is just a game guys enjoy it how you enjoy it and let others do so how they enjoy it. Don't like things you feel make the game too easy then don't use them. Think the game has become to easy then find ways to make it challenging. Like any game the challenge comes from what you make of it, the reward comes from achieving goals you have set for your self.

I think what would make you guys happy would be for Anet to create a hell mode. No rez shrines you get party wiped you go back to the town/outpost your party started from. Only LA, KC and Kamadon are open the rest of the map is recovered by the fog of war and the rest of the towns/outpost are hidden until you find them again. Area effects -50 health, -10 energy, -10 reduction in speed, -10 reduction in attack speed, -10 armor, -5 damage for weapons, - 1 health and energy degeneration, +1 sec increase in skill activation, all skills are the PVP versions and all foes are level 50, have elemental resistance as well as 25% reduction in hex and condition duration. When you die in Hell mode you lose 1 plat and 1 skill point, if you donot have 1 plat or 1 skill point you may not be resurrected by team members. To enter missions in Hell mode you must pay 10 gold zcoins. No PVE only skills, cons, heroes or henchmen can be used in Hell Mode. Only copper zcoins drops in Hell Mode, there is a player loot scale of 24 for 8, 18 for 6, 12 for 4, and 36 for 12 player areas in Hellmode as well. After all it is about challenge and nothing else.

No one is whining , just reflecting reality dude. If someone has the chance to do X thing in less time with ppl that use cons , gimmick builds and Overp PvE skills ...... 80% or more of them is going to refuse to make a "balanced" party , its just reality , go out and check it out.

Taking away those things arent going to bring back nothing , if you take the cookie you gave someone before , that someone is gonna get mad and leave. What ppl is saying is that if those boosts never existed or werent so overpowered things will be different ..... probably better.

Ofc they didnt kill the game but for god sake dont think all that those things did was for the best , also did damage . Damage to a dying game is quite dangerous , even is little.

Even with the inclusion of super powered pve skills I still find the game challenging, then again I do not use the gimmick builds. I myself have just started using w/mo solo builds and so far, only in two areas of the game. I have never used consumables, but I wouldn't mind giving them a try.

I doubt I am alone in this and its why the game is still challenging for those of us who do not "live" guildwars. Plus some of us have a slower learning process, so we are still playing around with older builds in older areas and have not moved on to the new and improved builds, Like perma.

I can understand that. But its still the players personal choice whether to use over powered (little to no weakness) builds. Using builds that are not over powered don't make them useless, it just means they have a bigger weakness to exploit so it proves more challenging to run those builds. So players can still get a challenge out of the game if they want it or the can opt for the easier route.

As for being handicapped due to additions, lets say those additions were never added. After four years, don't you think people would still find the game too easy with having discovered every way to bypass the hardest parts by now? Granted, I doubt we would have as many speedclears. But besides that the game would still be viewed much the same. Those overpowered additions didn't really change anything, they just made it much more evident on what could be used to "exploit" a games weakness.


I agree with this to a certain point. Change is not always bad, but where do we draw the line? If anything and everything that is good gets nerfed, what are we left with? At the same time, if it just runs in a never ending cycle and these skills are nerfed while others are buffed, what difference does it really make? Yes we have new and refreshing tactics, but in the end its always overpowered. So we end up right where we started and eventually we are backed into a corner with no other options, no new changes and very few choices.


To the first part, I say this. PvP and PvE need to remain seperate. PvE is about cooperation and storyline. PvP is about cooperation and competition. Skill balance and a sense of fair play is a must in PvP and I fully support nerfing any and all unfair builds and skills. But in PvE, when the only downfall to "godmode" is personal opinion (who makes more money, who finishes first and so on) "Balance" is different. There is no competition in PvE outside self created ego. We want to have more money, nicer items and better skills than anyone else, even at the cost of other peoples enjoyment. This is not right.

I do not agree with not requiring to work to become powerful. I work my booty off for the little bit of reward I get and I am ok with that. But I'm far from all powerful even considering the amount of time and work I'v invested. So it does require work to get a stronger character, be it farming gold or practicing with skills.

As for the last part, Guildwars has already changed and theres nothing we can do. Guildwars is a grind heavy game because of lack of new content. Without the grind, hardly anyone would play because there would be nothing to do. Whats the point of getting the new item if you have nothing to use it on? This is one reason for the new Zmissions and Bounties and Zcombat. Which I love.

As for GW becoming just another "cloned" mmo. thats impossible, even with more and more "standard mmo" additions. GW has enough unique content that it will never be like the other games. Although the game has always been Time>skill. If you think about it, it takes time to develope skill. It doesn't really take skill to fail hundreds of times at something until you discover the winning method (build) and because of forums, wiki and youtube, it had nothing to do with skill after the first month prophecies was out. It takes no skill what so ever to take from those three resources and apply what works to our personal gaming routine. Atleast in pve. PvP is still Skill>Time in a sense, although every single game you will ever play is Time>Skill because as I said, it takes time to develope skill.



Anet changed the game because after prophecies it started to tank. Factions, as successful as it was, was not popular with the masses and GW was losing players by the dozens. In an act of desperation they made the needed changes to bring those players back while at the same time keeping enough of the original concept to keep the "core" playerbase interested, if slightly unhappy. Factions wasn't the first to introduce grinding to GW, but it was the biggest until titles and nightfall, which answered the prayers of the "solo" player. Heroes.

Guildwars was always meant to have the option to "Solo" the game, but it was misleading since for the longest time you could not "Solo" anything with most professions and the areas that anyone could solo had no real benefit.

I'm not defending the demands to change the game or the selfish reasons why people wanted the game changed in the first place. I enjoyed the original concept until the community as a whole went into the drain and had nothing to do with lack of talent, but instead bad behavior. I'm simply defending a player's right to play his/her way and enjoy the game how she/he wants. The game has already been changed whether you or I like it or not. But now that it is changed forever, why not give the PvE and PvP players what they want.

The game is aging and we need ways to keep players logging on. Trying to correct the game and return it to the original vision of what guildwars was all about in the tyrian days would not work because we have too many people who did not join until after tyria. The nightfall generation if you will. Those who did not enjoy tyria or cantha but fell inlove with the game during their adventures in elona. Yes they could be labeled many different things, but they are guildwar fans and players and deserve an equal voice.

If this was 3 years ago, I would be here saying no to titles and heroes. But those days are gone, so I'm here saying yes to new and creative builds that may or may not be overpowered. Balance pvp, please! But make pve's focus centered around insane fun and completely crazy possibilities.

I agree completely. This is why we have PvP and PvE, GvG, Alliance Battles and Hero Battles. They should all be different, with different guidelines on how to balance it and different benefits so everyone wants to participate in each.

The problem is, NM is practice, HM has become the true PvE environment because it offers the best XP and the best drops. Its also what the player's want to play. HM is still hard outside the godmode builds and even then if you make a mistake, you suffer. It takes skill to learn how to use overpowered builds because you have to get the correct gear and the correct skills and learn how to use the build itself.

It would be nice if we didn't need godmode, but GW is suppose to be a "Solo" friendly game, as it says on the box. This means that we get heroes and henchmen and run through the game. But since using H/H removes almost any chance of getting drops, a true "Solo" option is required, hence godmode.
So either allow godmode, or change the drop system.

Even though there are overpowered builds, people still use what they like. This has been a problem in the community for a long time. Some people want godmode, others want to use their own, self made builds inspite of whats considered the best. As for the skill level, I wouldn't say its easily reached because it takes work to get there. We don't want an unrealistically hard skill cap to work towards because then the game would not be for anyone other than those willing to "live" guildwars.

Again the problem is that people need to not gauage their personal enjoyment on the ease of others. It bothers people that you can speedclear vanquishes or elite areas or solo ecto farm. This is because they either can't or they don't want to run those builds/professions but still want to make more money than they are currently capable of making.

That boils down to two things. Jealousy which is ego, or greed. Neither of which has anything to do with fair play (balance) or the funfactor.

It's like nobody reads posts around here.

Stop looking from a micro perspective. Yes, imbalances do not affect the single character/player in GW. However, not using them does not change the fact that the development goals for the game have clearly shifted. Nor does it refute the idea that such ridiculously imbalanced additions are the sign of poor development - the same development that is working on GW2.

People don't complain because they feel envious, or greedy. They complain because these kind of changes are stupid.

I think this all boils down to greed. Some people just want to QQ because their uber weapons are no longer worth what they once were. They want skills nerfed to shit to make their ecto worth more.

Others want to QQ because they can.

LoL So much hate for 1 person , someone with money screwed you hard or something. Rage posts with no sense ftl

PvE needs new content otherwise it's fine, only a small minority of individuals see faults while the majority play and enjoy the game.

Minority=Build haters, QQing losers.

Majority=Real gamers.

Bugger Christ that is a HUGE wall of text that just crit me for over 9mil. I'd rather kowtow and admit that PvE skills are awesome and that GW right now is flawless rather than fully reply to that mess.

Besides that most of it would be me repeating myself from what I've said with Daesu so you can probably spare us a bit of time by going over those posts and what I've said. But to reply in a sense to your post here's a few questions:

1. Would you rather have only a few things be overpowered allowing for a very limited selection of powerful builds, or a more balanced spectrum of skills allowing and very well encouraging more build diversity amongst the playerbase?

2. Why do you feel that your character should be more powerful for doing a mundane and repeatable task i.e. grinding?

3. Do you feel that regardless of the player's skill that he should be able to complete any and all content regardless of difficulty setting?

4. Would the majority "casual" player benefit more from learning more about his profession and all the build combinations - under the assumption that ANet nerfed and balanced the currently overpowered facets - or would he benefit more from 1 or 2 insanely powerful builds, which is GW's current situation?

5. If PvE skills and all the other silly stuff was nerfed and a bit more balance was introduced, what do you think players would do? Would they get up and QQ never to play the game again, or would they adapt and be encouraged to become a better player?

6. Can a strong and in-depth learning curve also bring forth a lot of playability?

To end things I'll just point up to Avarre's post up there.

That makes sense to me too.

Balancing PvE is very complicated. Partly also because of the need to reward time invested in the game. In some other games, the more you play, the higher level you achieve and the more powerful you get. You can be a really bad gamer, over aggro most of the time, and still level up (and rewarded with more power) because you persisted, not because of your skill level.

GW has only a max level of 20, but titles take on the role of artificially increasing the character level beyond that, by granting you more power the more you play this game, which is mutually exclusive from a gamer's skill level.

I believe I kept it to a reasonable amount and structured it so its easily readable. But if its too much for you, I understand.

lol.

I would rather have what works. We don't need hundreds of different builds, most of which wouldn't work as well as the few. Which is the case right now and has always been the case since this game came out. We've never had a completely balanced spectrum of skills and we probably never will.

Instead of having what works, we nerf what works and then take even more time to discover what works with the new updates. As I said before, we just end up right back where we started. With overpowered skills and people chosing to use whatever they want regardless of what works. (common pug problem)

Because after years of playing, I'd like to get what I want, faster. If a repeatable goal takes an hour when it could take less time, it will grow boring quick. But if we can do these things faster, it will keep it fun, longer and even when the "act" does get boring, it will still be fun because of the rewards if it can be done quickly. This is one reason diablo 2 LOD has been so successful for so long. Because it doesn't take you days to do what you want and its all repeatable, just like gw. More time doesn not equal better or more enjoyable. But it does get boring and people quit doing it.

Remember how often people played elite areas before speedclears became popular? Not many, simply because of the time required. Faster is motivating. Stronger builds mean more success which equals more playtime.

Most people don't even play in pugs, so build balance and diversity doesn't mean a whole lot since heroes require certain builds. So in the end, nothing really changes by nerfing successful builds or popular areas except less people do them which drives up the prices of items.


Yes, to a certain point. I believe that the game should be player friendly and that it should have a simple enough learning curve to be easily learned yet the higher tier's of play (HM) should require more work.

Harder = less successful builds in the situation which means less build diversity. So in the end we end up right back where we started. With a few successful builds which get over used and complained about.


Well is it easier to learn something when the rules keep changing? Nope. People have been playing this game for years. I think they've learned and the newer players have trouble because there is no consistency with guildwars.

Did anet balance anything in the last update? I know they buffed rits and now we have super powerful rits running around and some people are already complaining about them. So would it benefit players to have a solid set of rules that don't change base on popular or unpopular opinion or would they benefit more from X becoming Y and then being changed to Z.

How can you learn how to use every build if it keeps changing all the time? You can't expect people to sink 4-8 hours of their time every single day in learning the skills of the game. People have lives. We log on to have fun and make some loot. Not to study up on the latest GW mechanic meta.


That depends on the changes themselves and how fun it is for the individual playing. I think people are looking for a reason to keep playing and a good portion are looking for a reason to hate the game and quit.

For some players, it makes no sense to take the time to learn the skills when they will just be changed again and again. Why get adjusted to their favorite builds when someone will cry foul and it gets nerfed? Anet knew what it was doing when they updated the assassin but that didn't matter when a small group of people lost tons of money on their items. So now anet will nerf the sin and buff something else and soon people will complain about that. As I'v said, its a never ending cycle with the illusion of balance yet no real long term fix.

Sure, prophecies proved that. But when you talk to people about prophecies now they don't like to play those areas and always say how wonderful it was when factions and nightfall gave us new skills. But if you have to spend 3-8 hours in a game 3-5 days a week, then its going to far. Thats the problem with other MMO games. Yet some people seem to want that for gw, which alienates a larger group of players, labeled casual.

Also how deep does the tactics have to be? I think people expect too much. Look at how many builds are on PvX, look at how many of those are used daily. Look at how many are added every update. A few overpowered builds have not ruined anything because people still play different things, but no one focuses on those people and only focuses on the people using the "overpowered" builds.



He's got a good point in his post if it had not already been determined that people for the most part only have a problem with overpowered builds because they lost profit and now have to work harder to get what they want. Which is a contradiction. They want others to have to work harder so they don't have to. They want items to be harder to get so they are worth more. This applies to any farm but mostly focused on high end items like elite area drops and ecto's.

In otherwords, with all respect to Avarre's opinion, Its a cop-out. They don't care half as much about an idea being stupid or unneeded as they do about the profit they are losing. They just use a legit issue to mask their true problem, which is "I should be able to sell this for more than I currently can."



Now here's a question for all of you. If a game is about skill over time and only 500,000 players are "good" at the game and the other 4,500,000 players can't get anywhere at all without help (godmode) then what happens? You get a game played by 500,000 players and the rest move on to something more player friendly. Then what happens? The skill over time game loses money and no new content comes out.

So you have a game populated by a small group of superior players who end up fighting with each other and asking on forums how to bring people back to the game world, so they have more people to lord over/game with/fight against/sell their loot to.

Making a game harder does not make it better. Make a game better before you make it harder.

(emphasis mine)
Very well said.

Microcosmically, this is already demonstrated by the PvP community wrt the GW community as a whole.

A bit off topic, but you aparently haven't played D2 as much as you claim to have, because unless you are buying a bunch of duped crap off a website or trading things in forum gold, it takes an insane amount of time to get the better end gear and equipment in order to make a character viable in that game, let alone the endless baal/mf runs...

Very welll said, HuntMaster Avatar!

A lot of people's logic on the concept of "fun" and making a game "alive" is incredibly flawed. And they're the moaners who wonder why anet won't listen?

Personally, when I play guild wars, I wanna blow shit up. I don't care if something is unbalanced or not, I just want to blow things up.
What they really need is a quest where we get to fight an army of low level enemies. God, that will be fun!

I never said it was quick or easy to get a desired item. I said the act itself is quick and repeatable, Just like in gw. You can do high end areas with a permasin in gw but that doesn't mean you will get the drop you want. This is why we "grind". Same as d2.

I personally played d2lod for 6 years, I know all about mfing for drops, then selling those drops for pgems/low/mid runes and then trading all that for the single high end item/rune. Then doing it all again so you can mute the runes incase they are dupes so they get a new id code and won't poof.

More quotes = less readable = quote wars = turns into threads like this = no one giving a shit about the quote war

It's bad because they're huge, *huge* walls of texts. I could read yours just fine, but no one else is going to. That's why if we're gonna want to keep these humongous posts going on it should be kept in PM's to spare the other posters and the thread.

You don't need diversity??? Well I suppose that's true, but why would you want things kept so linear?

Anyways, can't say I agree with that. Granted there is a shitton of skills for ANet to balance - which is why they would need more external sources (i.e. community help) to get a better grasp at things. It's a tough job for sure.

It's different when you have something that's slightly better than others as opposed to greatly better than others. The latter is where Guild Wars is now: your experience of an area will be much, *much* more easier with consets and Save Yourselves! going on in the group, not to mention the other 23 (!!!) PvE skills going amonst the group. The difference is almost staggering.

In regards to heroes: well obviously that's where you fix heroes (and Necroes too please, since that's what's making heroes so attractive at this point).

Then you should become a better player. If you're good then you should be breezing through areas. You shouldn't need an artificial stat-boost assisting you.

It's true that HM requires "more work", but that work involves getting the proper skills and copy/pasting from PvXwiki. That's not much work.

Harder only = much more less successful builds if the enemies are built towards it. When DoA came out people just tanked and spanked (another thing that needs fixing) their way through it. In general it's pretty rough to determine how things are going to turn out before the area is fine-tuned and made less stupid.

You learn the basics: you learn how skill A works and how skill B works and how they work in such-in-such build. Then skill A gets changed, then you approximate how this affects the performance of build such-and-such and try to figure out if it can be built better.

*That's* what being a good player is about. It's just understanding how things work. Sure there may be a lot to study but that's the payoff: being able to configure something awesome no matter how many changes there are.

You keep saying "it'll just always end-up in the same spot". That's true, because it's how you do balance. Think about it: the last true balanced computer game was Starcraft. Given how many games have relied heavily on it you can see how much of a pain in the ass it is.

It's not easy, it's not always fun, but the effort towards it and becoming closer and closer to that peak is all worth it. If you just say "%@*# it" then your game is screwed, and this is a big reason why the high-end PvP community disappeared: ANet said "forget it".

3-8 hours for what?

If players just want to dick around in the easiest setting they should be able to do that in all of the game's areas. If they want to be able to just run IDDQD and rofflestomp everything that should be allowed to. But ANet should also be saying "hay we know you're having fun but it's not the standard mkay?" Just like how Rock Band 2 locks you from getting achievements if you turn No Fail Mode on, or how Starcraft doesn't give you a score and instead yells "CHEATER!" at you if you used a code. Players need at least some reminder that there is a path to follow that will reward them.

And I'm 100% sure that people would still be playing "different things" if there was a build that included a skill that gave you invulnerability. Doesn't mean that it's okay, though. Even if nobody used that skill it still should not be within the game.

On a similar note, couldn't you just be posting about all this so you can preserve the simplicity of the farming of the lewtz?

Joking aside, some people actually do care about the game, believe it or not. Don't bring bias into this.

You fix the learning curve.

If players are simply refusing to learn then they can just be happy in "the easy settings". That's what WoW's done for years and look at how successful it's been.

Not all players are going to be upset that they can't access the "leet" areas. There are players who acknowledge they're not good at the game and don't have a problem with it, because they know they can still have fun being a "newbie".

And some of those players? Well they're not happy about being a newb - so they get better, and then they can enjoy the non-newb content.

We're not asking to make it harder.

We're asking to make it less stupid, less retarded, more balanced, require more thought, planning, strategy, tactics. The byproduct should be harder, however, because that's what happens when you nerf something overpowered!

Sorry Guru for the horrendous wall of text. I will only be replying to PM's at this point if things are gonna be huge.

I get what you're saying and instead of quoting all that, I'll make it simple and short. I personally have no problem with the way the game is today aside from the drop system. I expect anet to nerf/buff and change everything that people find unfair, even when its not.

The games getting older but isn't old yet. They should be more focused on PvP and less on PvE balance. Stop wasting time balancing PvE when you can make things better in PvP and add new content to PvE.

When you balance PvE, it gives everyone a one week reset time period and after that the newest powerbuild will be on pvx and 10 videos or more will be on youtube detailing how to use it. You do no good.

Instead make PvP balanced and start supporting tournaments again. Add in more content to PvE like the zmissions and the traveler. Atleast I really liked those additions and it gives me something to do every day. We need one or two more daily things to do, another weekly event like the traveler and maybe a monthly event. Keep it consistant. Fix the predictions and balance the skills correctly. Fix the AI and do something about the drop system (H/H claim more drops than human players do) Add more missions/bosses to the zcycle.

Thats all, anything else would just be a repeat of what I'v said earlier.

That's the same for many games concerning their PvP as well, but still they keep making more and more changes and yet players still keep playing them.

Some of the reasons for this are 1. the more frequently they change things the better they get at keeping more things in tune, and 2. it keeps the game fresh. It's like playing Magic except you don't have to keep paying for cards. You buy one deck and it Magic-ally ("boooo!") keeps rotating and changing for you.

What we have for PvE is just like WotC releasing one final set and it being superior to all the others and not making anything else.

Both sides of the game need to be livened up in order to be interesting. Granted going through new areas in the gameworld is always fun, but so is having new ways to explore and battle through those areas.

Of course, and I agree fully with this, providing new content is gonna be more of incentive to playing the game more since as we've already nailed it: most players don't care about balance.

Personally, though i disagree with both your diagnosis and treatment about GW PvE i would opt game to change along to your proposal only for the sake of ending this repeating discussions, being 100 % certain that it won't bring any magical revival of Gw pve, the best thing that could happen (and very likely imo) we will be at the same situation as we are now.

ps. and i don't really find bring Starcraft into comparison viabale, game itself maybe perfectly balnced both in mulitplayer and singleplayer, still i dont know or heard of anyone playing single player campagins SC and SC:BW on daily basis for four years.

It's just one step to making the PvE in this game actually decent and in-depth. It may be fun, but that doesn't showcase quality or how deep it is. I may have tons and tons of fun running people over in GTA but that really doesn't show much besides the fact that it's pretty damn funny.

I'm starting to see the "it alone won't change anything" argument popping up quite a bit lately, and it's true: just nerfing PvE skills won't do shit. It's the follow-up that is the entire picture.

It was more to show how hard it is to maintain and create balanced game. It was showcasing the point that it's been nearly 11 years since we've seen something even come close to SC in terms of balance.

Ways to improve Guild Wars PvE:

1. Un-Nerf Ursan and any other PvE skills

2. Un-Nerf or reinvent all rarely used regular and elite skills

3. Un-Nerf UW and other areas.

4. Un-Nerf SF and 55

5. Un-Nerf Minions and Soul Reaping

6. Buff Rangers/Pets for PvE (bring back IWAY and trapping at least)

7. Allow 7 heros (12 in Urgoz,etc)

8. Remove anti-farming code

9. Buff Warrior Tactics Skills and Stances

10. Improve A.I.

11. Add some Large scale public quests or dungeons that can't be done with heroes or henchies and take multiple players to complete.

TLDR Bring back all the fun stuff.

/signed

Put down the nerf bat and step away from the keyboard. Bring back the PVE insane fun, If we like it we will use it, if not well.....

It sounds like people want the GW equivilent of playing an offline game and enter "god" into the console D:

Welcome to the Guild Wars PvE community.

Yeah, and while they're at it, why don't they just get rid of the ban on bots? Then you won't even have to do all that pesky work of pushing buttons, and can focus on the "fun" of... wait, what exactly is fun about those things?

That my friend, is why I PvP. No one except the ignorant blood spammers are like that.