Confirmation that the Live Team is going after SF this year

Numbers please!

Can of worms, Upier...Tread lightly!

It's this:
that makes me believe that DW is wrong.
I guess the big problem is that DW thinks that the GW population is much better than it really is.

Generally you only have to explain yourself to me because I'm the only one who makes you explain your crazy ideas.

But yes...this thread is really going nowhere.

Fine. Let us say your theory is true. It goes back to the old problem that has been going on for years with this game:

Yes while there are problems with the game, you obviously fix the biggest glaring shining gem of an issue that basically represents the entire problem with the game first. If Anet can't see and fix the simple problem in front of their eyes, they sure as hell aren't going to do the complex fixes that you are suggesting.

Not required.

Huh? I think we are talking about different things here.

They will not remove underworld, how would you get obby armor then? 80% of the ectos come from underworld.

Sigh, not another thread turned into a DW/Brant argument. This happens in like 25% of the threads on this forum.

Don't you guys get tired of this?

Eh...we mostly agree that the game has serious problems. We just disagree on how it should be fixed. Not like it really matters.

You are saying that A is bigger than B.
Yet you are unable to provide the exact number that A or B represent, nor can you present a source which should give us an rough estimate.
The only thing not required here is taking you serious.

See, here is the issue.
What you call breaking the game is A.Net's attempt to cater to a specific group.
What that link tells you is that there is a pretty darn big group of users that act in a fashion that is in contradiction with what you are arguing.
That's why I am telling you that you seem to think that the GW players are better than they really are. Those players that A.Net is catering now aren't good. At least not Guru-good. And those players won't rage when you give them something overpowered.
But they will rage if you take away their sweetest toy.

That's why I feel you statement is fundamentally wrong. And you can't provide anything that would prove otherwise.

Since we've come to a conclusion that UWSC/SF is strictly dominated by other methods of farming and comparable to any number of farms, your argument falls flat. How does UWSC affect the "other" player base more than any other farm? Because lots of people do it? (I'm sure you realize how illogical an argument that is). The only thing UWSC does is make certain weapon skins and a particular armor set more available to EVERYONE.

As Upier said, NUMBERS PLEASE, because that sounds entirely like a load of BS. Also, leaving because of imbalanced crap like... SF? It couldn't possibly be that a large number of these players needed a scapegoat for their own failings.

Furthermore, if you want to talk about "externalities," like not being able to find a group, you are entirely looking at the wrong scapegoat. I realize SF is easier to think about and cry "NERF! NERF!" but realistically, 600/smite affects WAY more areas and is more overpowered than SF.

Also, this is to everyone, let's QUIT with the dishonesty about SF being used only by a small group. Discounting "newbs," (e.g., people who still run things as bad as mending wammos) SF is probably used by a GREATER number of players than those who don't use it.

Let's assume it's true that 600 is more overpowered. Doesn't mean SF doesn't still need to be fixed.

And just because SF isn't used in half the areas of the game doesn't mean it can't be. It can curbstomp the vast majority of PvE (which is my personal reason for wanting it nerfed; it's so powerful there's no reason to use anything else!). Heck, Anet even pointed out in their interview that SF has begun to be used for vqs, of all things! And if it's widespread enough for Anet to mention it publically, then gg man; it's being used for it all over the place.

This is what I've been saying.

Nerfing SF is only taking the easy route. They do not pay attention to why SF is so effective in the first place: because AI is stupid, horrendously stupid at that.

If mobs had better composition and AI, things ANet disregarded years ago when farming first started (and where did the exact same thing: nerf the build. Look where it's got us), SF would be useless. If your team in GvG ran into a SF sin, what would you do? You'd ignore it and prot anyone he slightly pokes. He is not a threat at all.

Not the same for PvE. The mobs don't really seem to understand why their attacks and spells keep missing, but they shoot on anyways. And that's why SF wins.

It wins not only because the skill in itself is ridiculous, but because the AI is knee-deep-in-poo retarded. That's why it's effective above all else, why farming in general has been going on for so long. But that's complex, as you've stated, and will take too much work. Not only that but ANet seems to have fully endorsed farming anyways.

Things aren't fixed, just slightly less broken then they are now. That's why I no longer give two shits about SF.

No reason to use anything else...? Discordway can "curbstomp" 99% of PvE... nerf discordway? Also, SF is really, really bad for general PvE (i.e., HM missions + VQ title farming). I'm not sure where you're getting the impression it's used "everywhere."

I wouldn't say it's "all over the place." It's only used to a large extent in a certain few areas.
A.net mentioning it... couldn't be because of the massive QQ about it...?

Linsey Murdock said that its use is widespread in the PAX Q&A. I presume they have access to hard data in the server logs.

I would be so bold as to say, as far as HM missions and VQs, discordway is more widespread.

No, I'm saying a bigger number is larger than a smaller number. I really hate people who slam the "show me the evidence" to every single thing. I simply know a lot of people who have left due to inbalance, and nobody who has left due to a nerf.

If catering to a specific group contributes to the inbalance of your entire game, than you are stupid to continue.

Who cares? The toy shouldn't exist. If Anet gave us god mode and a skill that did 10 million damage, would people rage if that were removed too? This argument is completely idiotic.

Meh...I guess. In my opinion your idea wouldn't even work unless the game was rewound to pre nightfall anyways, but yes I see what you are saying. I suppose the existence of SF is nothing more than something for me to troll Anet with. Its just funny to me that they haven't changed at all.

here's how i would fix SF:

mob AI subroutine(pseudo code lulz) {
if(user.uses(shadowform) == true) {
self.useskill(/rank10emote)
self.moveawayhalfrange
}
}

hilarity ensues.

When I listened to this statement I have to wondering how many customers Arena Net lost because they listen to the people that whined about Ursan?

I have said this many times, when you nerf something the farmers will adapt (we have been doing it for four years), the cry babies will accomplish nothing, and the casual players will be the only ones that loose. It appears that Arena Net looses customers too.

I think you missed the part where Linsey pointed out that Ursan can still be used, because it's still powerful. You just need to put in 7 other skills to survive when Oh-noes-Ursan-down-what-to-do?

Problem is, Ursan PuGs were bad. 5 Ursans can keep an entire mob on the ground with Rage, and Roar can be maintained on the party at all times with 3 Ursans, but they all just mashed skills on recharge.

We don't know that. You'll have to show numbers to verify this:

Do you expect people to take this on faith? Numbers are required.

Your personal observations are also likely to be very small and it is foolish to extrapolate that to the entire GW population.



I do doubt that a SF nerf will cause large numbers of people to leave though.

I do not see why anet needs to fix SF. Why not skip the trouble by just removing SF from the game?

Back then, the game was fine without SF.

I think you missed the part where she said instead people running a more balanced team people just decided they were not going to do these areas. If Arena Net nerf shadow form do you think people will say, “Well we will just have to do underworld with a balance group.” or do you think people will say, “oh well no more underworld.” So Arena Net will lose a few more customers, farmers will adapt a new build for underworld, cry babies will accomplish nothing, and casual players will be the only loosers.

Again listen to the statement
Linsey Murdock mentions Ursan 6 times when talking about nerfing shadow. If you combine that with the above statement I begin to wonder.

I will take your word on this because the only experience I have with playing Ursan comes from playing “Blood Washes Blood”. I prefer solo play or with a group of close nit friends, so when a group of people are having fun playing their game, their way, in their instances, it has absolutely no affect upon my play style. But when a bunch of cry babies cause a company to lose customers because they want people to play their way that means the company looses money and if their comes a point that they are no longer making a profit on Guild Wars 1 they will pull the plug. Since I like playing Guild Wars 1 I want to see them stay as profitable for as long as possible. Truly it reminds me of a child crying, "They don't want to play with me!"

if people are so willing to quit if some overpowered build gets taken out, then i'd say those are the people we don't want in the game. and hey, anet already have their money, and they'll all come flocking back with GW2 anyway.

Discussing something is much easier and potentially also more productive if people look at what is being argued rather than take one sentence and create this massive shitstorm around a non-issue.

Wow after watching the GW live team on You-tube it's no wonder GW is in the shape it is in. I thought it was mature adults programming this game. Those are all kids barely out of college. I notice a couple on the GW2 table though are mature adults. The guy writing the Novels. But, the programmer is just a kid as well as these 4 on the GW live team. They just don't have Sid Meiers or Gary Grigsbys anymore I guess.

I'm not Anet. I can't give you numbers. If I was Anet I would give them to you. Seriously I make one comment based on years of experience, and people tell me I must have numbers that I can't possibly obtain. FINE. You win! That still doesn't take away from the fact that the game has been in a constant state of decline and inbalance for several years now, and the idea that more people leave games due to nerfs rather than total game inbalance is hilarious.

I didn't cause the problem. The issue is clearly hot without me.

My scenario is not too far off from what is going on here...a ridiculous thing that shouldn't be in the game...the only argument for keeping in the game is "omgz don't take my toy away". Why not just give everyone god mode? That is pretty much what SF is anyways just a little worse.

Remember that skill is a determinant of the time-per-unit-invested function. A money-motivated player farming UW is either bad (incapable of learning harder, more productive ways to make money), lazy (unwilling to learn) or both. The "I enjoy teamplay" argument falls flat because there are plenty of teamplay activities that will make you far, far more than UWSC can and that are more easily organized after a bit of learning.

What are SF's economic effects? It creates massive hyperinflation in limited item markets and devalues the subjective utility of farmable rare weapon skins, titles and accomplishments. If all you want to do is stick armor sets in your Hall and buy sweets/booze/alcohol from other players, and you don't care about the behavior of others, then of course you prefer an easy ecto regime. You can go trader/resell your ectos, buy your armor sets, get your GWAMM and stick stuff in the hall with minimal effort.

Lots of things affect your valuation for these accomplishments, though. If it's easy, you don't value it as much. If everyone in the game has GWAMM, you probably don't value having GWAMM much. I'm not going to get into detail here with this utilities argument, but giving the game an Easy Button is not necessarily a good thing for everyone's happiness...even if everyone accomplishes their goals as a result.

If you want limited minis and items, you care about the inflation SF creates. The issue is that these items are denominated in tradeable currencies (ecto/armbraces). Encourage more players to create more ecto, and the amount players have to farm/trade to keep up with inflation increases. The level of effort necessary to improve your relative wealth and be able to afford minis increases even though (because) ectos are easy to get.

(Note that high-end prices are not linked to the supply of in-game cash in existence. The ecto <-> cash exchange rates vary with shifts in gold production, as do markets that can be denominated in sub-100k prices. It turns out that you don't really need to worry about gold drops all that much. To put it another way, the system functioned fine before and after loot scaling. If anything, increasing incentives to farm ecto is at the root of many of our present problems.)

Executive summary of the following: You can't prove either side with data. Concluding that data on the Ursan nerf support your position is unwise.

You're inferring too much from the argument. Both DreamWind and I argued from an N of 1 and were not trying to generalize. "I know many more people that have left due to imbalanced crap..." is historical and non-generalizable. You can derive a hypothesis - people leave when games get boring, and the attrition rate over time from the imba probably dominates the attrition rate from nerfs. I get this idea from dozens of conversations I have had with friends that quit, returned and left again.

This resembles the disconnect beteen reality and people's perceptions of the likelihood of fatal auto crashes and fatal airplane crashes. The former happens all the time and isn't newsworthy. The latter is rare and therefore gets heavy media coverage. The former kills a lot more people, but if you ask people, "Do car crashes or airline crashes kill more people?" they're likely to select the latter despite how wrong they would be.

Doesn't mean that I can prove it, nor am I claiming that I can. It means that I can identify an alternative hypothesis. It is derived from the best evidence available to me from an unscientific, non-controlled survey of a cross-section of players with widely different interests and skill levels. The hypothesis is: players are adaptable. People usually leave because they get bored with playing and facing the same builds and areas. They don't often leave because they are upset their favorite play style was removed.

Can you measure this and get a conclusive answer? It would be difficult, because you would have to hunt down the former players lost to attrition and hope that they still remember the real reasons that they quit. Proving which effect is greater is therefore probably impossible.

You might think that a decrease in activity after the Ursan nerf proves your argument, but this would be very, very foolish. The observation "Wow, there's a massive spike in inactive accounts following the Ursan nerf" means that those people left because of the nerf, sure. But we can't ever know what would have happened in two unobservable counterfactuals - the results of nerfing Ursan earlier and the results of not nerfing it at all.

It's probable that nerfing Ursan quickly would have prevented that exodus, and it's also likely that many of those players would eventually have gotten bored with Ursan and left anyway had it never been nerfed. Further, we can't measure how many people became disillusioned and left because Ursan was left to run rampant.

The best evidence available to me suggests that living in denial that something is broken and then finally fixing it is a poor strategy. Creative people get ticked off and leave while the broken skill is in effect; uncreative, social people get ticked off and leave when their community gets fragmented once something is finally done about the skill. But the remedy to the problem is not to leave the skill broken; the community that springs up will ultimately bleed members faster than it replaces them AND you drove desirable players out of the game.

Stale metas and restrictive formats that aren't fun drive people out. If you choose to disbelieve this statement, there's nothing that I can say that will convince you. Note that I'm not claiming that this is ALWAYS the cause.

Not necessarily. The economic problems with SF are due to speed and the fact that it drives the creation of the game's true currency. If we're talking about why the dungeon content in EotN sucks, the fact that two and three player teams can crush it all with 605/smite has a lot to do with that. But this is far from the only problem.

It's what I've always said. If godmode is ok in the game, then everyone should have it, because it's not fair for only one profession to have it. If it's not ok for everyone to have, then it's not ok for anyone to have. There is just no middle ground on this.

That is if they haven't found something better to play.

Discordway cannot curbstomp 99% of PvE. You can go ahead and try. It can't be done. And there's a massive difference between Shadow Form and Discordway, as you should know very well; I do not want to repeat.

I'd rather QQ and get ANet to nerf Shadow Form than not QQ and leave SF the way it is.

I'm also waiting for your response to arguments based outside of UWSC.

If ANet weren't aware that making Shadow Form would unbalance the game, well, they do now. So even though the buff to Shadow Form might've been intentional, in light of new knowledge, they should revert Shadow Form.

This kind of thing happens all the time. A year ago, possibly more, ANet buffs Dark Pact, which leads to a renaissance in Bloodspike. ANet thinks that's not the direction they want the game to take, so they revert it. Other examples: Lightning Orb / Cracked Armor in PvP, which was reverted, and Order of Undeath, and (probably) the R/A template.

If you agree Shadow Form is badly designed, then I really don't see why you disagree to nerfing it.

Is SF bad for a good game?
Of course!
Is GW a good game?
No.

And that's the problem.
The game has other issues outside of SF. And actually, some of them are bigger than SF.
And to make matters worse, SF actually helps alleviate some of the bigger issues.
And killing it, without fixing the other issues (which we won't see a fix for because they are rooted so deep into the core of the game that it's much easier to just make a new game), has the potential of actually making the game worse.


I don't see why that is so hard to understand.



There.
That's what we wanted to hear.

And as hilarious as it may be - I know more people that left due to nerfs rather than the imbalance issues. They just felt that the fun was sucked out of this game.

Numbers please!

@upier - well I don't consider the game has "other issues" (which I presume is what you perceive as an unfairly large amount of grind that has to be done for GWAMM) that matter more than Shadow Form at the moment, whereupon the rest of your argument falls apart.

0 vs. 1.

But contrary to Dreamy, I didn't try to generalise this.
I was just showing him that by taking a different group, the people I know VS. the people he knows, you end up with a completely different result.

Listen to what Linsey says:
SF is used to negate some other issues.
And that's exactly what I am telling you.

We can agree there.

Your logic? You need to elaborate.

SF creates a lot of problems. If you want to argue that SF is good for the game, we'd better get the pluses and minuses out on the table in an organized fashion.

That's a UW argument.

Same question to traversc: any arguments for places OTHER than the UW (and also DoA)?

PS: AFAIK there's only one quest in the UW that's really hard, i.e. the Four Horsemen. Fix that quest and you can do the UW so much easier I'd expect you to be able to PuG (unless it's because the area takes 4 hours to clear - I don't know, I don't have much experience with the UW). After all, even if Shadow Form gets nerfed, you should still be able to get PuGs for Thommis HM especially during ZQs. Even though Shadow Form is the standard method of clearing Thommis HM right now, the place is not too hard to clear with other methods. This quest in the UW, and DoA, are different, requiring fantastically synchronized builds. I'd prefer fixing the UW and leaving DoA for the really elite players to do or whatever.

But either way: nerfing Shadow Form is the way to start.

Thank you Martin.
Your post was well thought out, and understandable.
Players won't leave in 'great numbers' just because SF is 'nerfed'...most players leave because they are bored!

That's not a UW argument.
If you look at the whole 4 minutes, the guys that KNOW what happened in the game after the Ursan nerf, will tell you that people didn't go back to playing balanced. They did solo farms, thus severely limiting the grouping options.
If you trash SF, grouping options in GW will be reduced.
A.Net is telling you that and the people that are now abusing SF are telling you that.

If on the other hand grouping will continue, that will ONLY happen with a new cookie. There won't be a BYOB to your HM area of choice. People are just too goal oriented to play that way.
If Thommy ZQuest won't be easy enough to do, people just won't do it. We are farming ZQuests, we aren't playing them.


On top of that:
as I have mentioned previously, certain end-game PvE content in completely out of touch with PvE. The grind required to achieve certain goals demands insane farming tools, making those goals actually achievable under reasonable conditions. And no, playing for multiple years in a dead game isn't reasonable at this point.
And SF, in all it's insanity, is one of those tools that is in touch with that.
Otherwise people just get bored because it appears as if they are wasting massive amounts on time on something, yet they aren't seeing any results.
And we all know what happens when people are bored with a game, right?

But as I've repeatedly argued, the "grind for years" objectives are made HARDER by SF-driven ecto farming, not easier. You don't get high-end minis by grinding for years on known farms. You get them by creating more efficient money-making systems than other players and outearning all the grinders running on the treadmill. An easy ecto regime just decreases the advantage that a clever player can gain on the field per unit of time invested.

Farming up a couple million gold to max titles with isn't a multi-year grind. I've farmed up that much in between 20 and 40 hours of gameplay several times during GW's run. If you're impatient, stubborn and unimaginative, then making that kind of in-game cash grinding at 10-20k per hour WILL take a while. But do players have anyone to blame but themselves in those circumstances?

Besides, once you have a decent nest egg it becomes stupid easy to create returns with little to no time investment. Aggressively buy desirable annual event consumables, wait a few months for the price to triple or quadruple, sell, rinse, repeat. A chimp could do this. All that is required is a bit of patience and the willingness to save up the initial capital rather than spend it on an immediate goal.

Yes, there are more efficient ways to trade. But this is an obvious, easy example of how to supplement your income with little work.

So we should "reward" the people that can't see better alternatives than SF ecto farming by giving them a gigantic treadmill to run on where they only feel they are making progress towards their end goals, when in reality they are just keeping up with the Joneses in the chase to have the nicest stuff?

I agree that tangible signals of progress are necessary to keep people around and keep them from getting bored. But if you're incorrectly measuring your progress in absolute terms (how many stacks of ecto) rather than relative terms (how many stacks of ecto do I still need relative to current market prices), then SF appears to be helping when in actuality it is not.

I don't think 99% is much of an exaggeration, if it all. Discordway does "curbstomp" ALL VQs. As far as dungeons, I'd say there are only 3 which are non-curbstomppable by discordway.

At any rate, I feel like you're taking my quotes way out of context again. I was responding to a post which stated that the ubiquity of SF, in general PvE (e.g. VQs and missions) was getting to be a problem. I responded by saying that discordway was FAR more ubiquitous in general PvE.

Obviously, the only point of contention against SF which has a grain of salt is SF's use in farming and high end areas.

Can you please clarify? I feel that any argument made about SF and UWSC can be generalized to any other high end area.

I thought you were joking when you first posited this argument.

You do realize how selfish and elitist you sound? You are basically arguing that want SF nerfed so that your phallic sword looks even bigger than it already is. You are basically arguing that the economic classes in GW should be even more stratified than they already are.

It's also pretty dubious, your claim that doing known farms won't make you rich. Yes, it true that it won't make you comparatively rich. But you're losing sight of the fact that PvE is primarily Co-op, not competitive. A full HOM is still full no matter how many other players have it. At the end of the day, it's unarguably only worth less if YOU deem it worth less. Whereas true currency is worth less if OTHER people deem it.

Again, STOP caring about how others play the game.!!!!

Lastly, you do realize how radically different your arguments are compared to others wanting SF nerfed, right? I could quote innumerably from this topic alone people implying that SF users are selfish elitist brats, whereas you seem to imply that SF users are ordinary treadmill lemmings.

In reference of the Ursan argument, about how the skill is still usable but just takes more skill now, this is why I proposed the following change to the PvE Shadow Form:

Energy Cost = 10
Casting Time = 1
Recharge Time = 30
Elite Enchantment Spell. For 5...18...21 seconds, all hostile Spells that target you fail and all attacks against you miss, but you deal 33% less damage. When Shadow Form ends, lose all but 5...41...50 Health. You cannot activate Shadow Form while enchanted with Shadow Form.


If you notice, I've actually reduced the recharge time on the skill, from 45 to 30. This buff would make Shadow Form much easier to maintain, and eliminate the need for some of the extra skills that are now required to get the recharge and duration to synchronize with each other. This in turn would make Shadow Forming easier on energy overall. And if that's not enough, I think the skill's duration could even be buffed to cap at around 26-30 seconds instead of 21, to make it potentially maintainable without any extra skills at all.

The additional qualification that I've added to the skill though, of it not being able to activate while enchanted with it, would force you to take the health cut after each time you use it. But additionally, and more importantly, this would give you a necessary ~1 second that you wouldn't have Shadow Form active each time in-between recasting it, requiring much more skill in using it. Specifically, you'd have to make sure you could survive for 1 second without it after each time you used it.

So overall, this change would actually make Shadow Form easier to maintain, but require more skill in using it, and also balance the skill out more. Seems like a win-win scenario to me.