Will nerfing SF really help anything to do with the game?

If that new build allows for balanced groups I'm all for it.

And I doubt any of those players would quit. If anything more people will try out UW.

i don't have a perma sin i probably would've made one if i didn't want to delete my chars. anywho it'd be good to nerf SF, keep it as a skill that deserves an elite status but cannot be made permanent, the community would come up with something new and thene veryone would probably switch to that, might even make GW more exciting than just farming for a while, with everyone riding the ecto markets. i'd hope that instead of everyone using the same invincible build people would use different ones ( doubt anyone will go back to balanced teams)

I'm using SF alot, and I'm loving it. But I would have lots and lots of more fun when I have to try really hard to complete certain area's and such. I may just be one of the very few UWSCers that wouldn't mind SF nerfed...

-Jens

You'll all just use Obs Flesh and Nicholas consumable movement speed buffs. Obs Flesh worked fine for everything but Chamber back in the day (without rock candies). You'll have to re-engineer the Vale and Chamber teams a bit, but we got that done easily enough without SF.

It'll slow you down a bit. It won't stop you. It may make alternative uses of your time more efficient.

i just dont get one thing.
IF so many ppl want to SF to be nerfed.. how come i dont see them in GW?
i did read trought this tread abit, and it looked like alot of u wanna do UW/FoW and other stuff ''balanced'' (lol). which is fine be me, every1 has his playstyle.

but what i hear here is that SF affects alot of ppl there playstyle (bugger -_-), there are alot of ppl here on guru that hate sf, want sf to die, smitersbooned or w/e. But just so u know.. i dont even think 5% of gw is on guru, because they cba, and enjoy there time in gw. (my idea)
but on the sf haters again. so u guys prefere "balanced".. shame i cant see ''those ppl you're all talking about'' in ToA. and if i have to believe all i've read inhere.. that would be alot..
some1 will prolly answer: ''yeh, they are on there sin doing uwsc because thats the only way they can get it''.
^if u rly hate sf/blablabla, and u see some1 forming for ''balanced'' u would jump on your dervish, ranger, w/e class thats not sin to get in.. no? doesnt happen..

hmm, and discrimination, i think the only proffession that cant get into fowsc is a dervish, and who plays that anyways. and uwsc, ok why do uw if fow gives around the same?

also saying about those ''noobs'' that run around in Obsi Armors. why would u care what they are wearing? why would u care how much cash they have? why would u care about what weps they have?
and they make the price drop, which is a good thing for you too ye? unless u bought that wep when it did cost way more.. but wth? u bought it because it was a cool skin or because it was ''for pro's only''? if u choose for that last option.. own fault, if u choose for the first.. your weapon skin isnt gone change because it drops in price...

What i think about SF would be killed?
nothing special, some ppl might quit, some ppl might find there heroes back (lets remove heroes for PvE.. srsly, they make it impossible to team up with strangers /endsarcasm), some ppl will get richer and then at the end something else will be found, and ''balanced'' groups will be nowhere to find. those ppl that wanna go balanced will still be doing the new way (''because its the only way they can get in excuse").. so it will be exactly the same as now. with slightly higher ecto/shard prices. Also, balanced will always be slower then a farming team.. its true, srsly. otherwise they will call it a farm team ;p.
ps: we'll still be able to do The Deep (best mission ever) <16mins with sf nerf.. so. ok

A SF nerf is not going to really change stuff anyway. Most people are doing FoW>UW now anyways. Sure the prices will jump but there's plenty of ways to make money without a perma.

So there's this thing called a selection effect.

The people that are in ToA are there because they want to UWSC/FoWSC. Alternative approaches have been crowded out due to inefficiency. A comparatively small group of people that replays the same content over and over looks like a lot of people, even when it isn't.

A group of people repeating content naturally wants to be efficient about completion. They're outcome-oriented, and they're there because they want in-game cash and UWSC is the most efficient large-group way to do it. It pales in comparison to more efficient approaches, but your typical UWSC player is either a grinding sucker or places a very high value on doing things socially in-game.

Some subset of those people are less money-motivated than others; the social types that just like UW would still be willing to play if UWSC got nerfed into the ground. They don't play slower methods like balanced because they don't have to, and because there are always plenty of UWSC players.

The people they would prospectively play balanced with don't hang out in ToA. If you look for them there, you won't find them. They distribute elsewhere in the game, but if you look for them on forums and guild vents you'll find them.

That's a selection effect - the people in ToA don't represent the preferences of everybody in the game. They represent a certain set of preferences, because that set of preferences causes them to choose to be there.


As for "why do other people care what other people have/wear/etc." I would hope that is obvious. If I put in a lot of effort to get FoW armor, and then suddenly any twit in GW can easily get it, that waters down the value of having FoW armor. The point of having rare items often isn't because they're intrinsically pretty. It's because they act as a signal that connotes accomplishment. Water down that accomplishment, and people get mad.

If the government decides to write a stimulus package tomorrow that involves providing large subsidies for people to buy Ferraris, don't you think that existing Ferrari owners would get ticked off about the plan? That's what's going on here, and explains part of the passion certain posters have.

You can argue the demagogic "everybody should be able to have the stuff that's for pro's" position all you want, but all watering down accomplishments does is compel people to find alternative signals of accomplishment and substitute to them. People want to be able to signal ability. If you prevent them from doing that entirely, they'll move elsewhere to a system that permits them to be recognized (in their own minds, at least).

If you want to be surrounded by idiots, taking the position that "it's your own fault for trying to signal accomplishment" is an excellent way to achieve that outcome.

you dont get it do you....
SF makes the runs sooooooooooooooooooooo much quicker
ya sure other builds are around and will pop up...
Please Name another one skill that makes UWSC under 10 minutes......
got one? didnt think so

Martin Alveto is the only competant person i've read this page. Just to re-establish the fact, UWSC affects the global market of GW as ectos are used in buying/selling of high end items. Ectos will not be farmed as quickly after a nerf of SF, so the price will rise and the ecto trading will be greatly affected. So yes, a nerf on SF will change the game substancionally.

My Main is a dervish and it can do almost anything dude.

I can heal, Melee, Cry, Nuke, the list goes on. It is one of the most versatile professions in the game behind monk. I can use my derv in uwsc for gods sake.

I have a 2 man build that involves 6 derv heroes, we use it for HM, Vanquishes, Missions and even fow/uw and it did fine.

As to who plays dervish...A LOT OF PEOPLE. In my old guild i know of at least 10 dervish mains who are VERY GOOD PLAYERS.

/rant

then there is no problem, is there?

I appreciate the compliment, Fabio, but I'm not sure that I agree with your conclusions. There are a couple of things at work that will keep a lid on any long-term ecto price rise:

1) Quality substitutes. The original UWSCs were done by splitting Eles with Obs Flesh. Those can solo all the currently soloed areas except Chamber (and perhaps Wastes post-change). Throw up enough consumables and there isn't any drawback to using Obs Flesh, and you kill faster due to 16 in Earth.

2) Tons of ectos already out there - a lot of ectos would have to be tradered before you would run out of players that hammer price rises back down.

Long story short, I expect you'll see bubbles like the one a week ago, but you won't see a major long-term shift unless some very fundamental changes are made to UW and a number of solo farming skills. That's not likely to happen.

The main advantage of nerfing SF would be forcing the community to learn new tricks.

Assassins can nuke too. Doesn't make them good at it. You forget, almost anything can work in PvE. What's "good" is determined by what is better, not simply by what works.

It is true that the dervish is a popular class, but it's not because it's a good one. In fact, it's arguably the least powerful class in the game, outclassed in just about every aspect of what it can do. The reason the dervish is popular is because it looks cool and many people aren't aware of it's shortcomings. In fact, this may even be seen as an explanation for why there are so many good dervish players: their lack of power has forced them to compensate with skill.

People still wasting their time defending invincibility in a corpg.


Video games in the future will be no more than movies that people watch, smile and drool a little, those that say it isn't effecting them in game, you can kindly shut the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up as you buy wal mart priced ecto and elite items.

Single player material.

The basic problem is that you have two groups of people trying to coexist. One wants to play the style of single-player, 1990's CRPGs that Internet FAQs blasted wide open. Some of these people prefer to play socially, but they basically want the sort of easy, sequential gameplay those games provided. They don't like negative signals (like dying) that send negations rather than validations to them.

There's also a more competitive strain of GW player that wants to do things faster, get the most stuff, have the most minis, and so forth. This group also doesn't like those negations, but uses them as motivation to push harder rather than taking them personally.

When you make the game stupid easy to sell copies to that first group, you impact the second group. As you make the game very easy to play, you shift the competitive dynamic away from rewarding skill (doing the impossible has substantial market value) and towards rewarding time and grind.

The first group asserts, "We have a right to be in this playground." The second group asserts, "You're ruining the playground for us, so GTFO." The only way that you can make both groups happy is to somehow make some end content easy to play without breaking other content where the competitive types can be happy (and profit).

PvP turned out to be an inadequate solution to the problem; it pays the most successful very well, but others poorly. So you still get a competitive (and vocal) strain of people that want GW PvE to be challenging.

Hello Kitty costume is more than defendable. We have Gwen-doll tonics, for crying out loud.

God Mode much less so, because it would probably result in a serious bleed-off in player base, which, in fact, does hurt your ability to play the game.

The question you should ask about your preferences is "Does this hurt the game, help the game, or change nothing". If anything but the former, then there is no reason not to include it (save for work requirements).

Things like running and farming help the game in general, because they provide alternatives without eclipsing "regular" gameplay.

Most speed clear builds out there are "well-rounded, well thought out team builds". The only issue is that because they're optimal, they become the only ones used.

And if you make an area too hard, then you end up with the opposite of what you want. Running and farming may be removed, but the area is so difficult that few people want to play through the area without using the optimal build.
Keeping rarity at the expense of alienating players?

Alternative playstyles helps the game community. That should be obvious, really. If everyone wanted to play the way you prefer, then everyone would already be doing it.

If the cost of making the game more palatable for a wider range of users is something as arbitrary as "item rarity", then to hell with rarity.

rare skins should be kept rare, thats why they're rare skins... its not alienating anyone either, theres other ways of farming nerfing uwsc doesnt take away from any of the other farms out there, granted they are not as efficient but deal with it, they did before uwsc and tombs were abused, do it now. oh... also what i actually got on here to say ..... ty anet.

Personally, I kinda feel that implementing a full-on Hello Kitty suit would have much more success at killing the playerbase than a God Mode button could ever hope to achieve, but that's just me, and it's also beside the point.

The point is, the more playstyles you encourage, the more you fade the focus of your game (deja vu?). If you have a shooter and starting implementing more and more racing game elements, you're going to come to a crossroads: who's going to be more profitable to cater the most for, the racers or the shooters? Would it have been better to just stick as a shooter and/or release an actual separate game for the people who do like racing?

Obviously that example is WAY over the top, but it still applies nicely to what we have with Guild Wars. Many players pursued GW's PvE for the hopes that it would require a lot out of them, they were looking forward to having to know a lot about the game, to be faced with numerous challenging encounters, and to figure out what to build to tackle all of them.

The fact that every monster is still to this day stupid enough to waste all their energy and cooldowns on a person with this on them is testament that Guild Wars is far away from that

Keyword I forgot to mention was "balanced". When an optimal and successful team build calls for a huge amount of one profession, then that's poor balance. It's a bit similar - but not as widely applicable - to what we had with Ursanway in that it discouraged actually configuring diversified team builds. There's no point in having so many options when there's a couple that trumps them all. And as I said in my previous post to you: this isn't just an SF or farming related issue.

In regards to the second part: That's why I've repeatedly said to either implement an even more accessible mode (easier than Normal mode) or to tone down the Normal mode variants while still keeping Hard Mode for those who want a high chance of getting their face ripped off.

That's what multiple classes are supposed to provide: alternative playstyles while still remaining in the scope of the game. If you don't stay in the scope, your game becomes incredibly messy. That's what we're left with now.

Catering to "farming" really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If you're to design an area for 8 that can be completed by far less than that, then you have a broken game.

Most if not all of it is the product not of farming builds themselves but with poor maintenance of the game. Poor AI and horrendously balanced groups of monsters is what allows farming to work instead of encouraging thoughtful and diverse gameplay. Of course, things like consumables, PvE skills, and other outrageously powerful tools only worsened the issue.

Players should be allowed to have mindless fun in a game, but they should also be encouraged to be better players. A good example of this is Rock Band 2, in which it locks you from earning achievements if you turn "no fail mode" on. It's also why cheat codes got their name: the devs are saying "hey, you're cheating when you're using this, by the way". It's little messages and hints like these that can go a long way to encourage players to get become good.

Gaming is evolving, from the passion of a few to the casual use by many. MMOs are these strange new games where you tend to mix a lot of features found in traditional games and push them to a new horizon. Sure, from a pure gaming experience, it's less interesting (I've been playing a few "offline" games lately), but from a wider perspective it's really up to you.

I guess the core of what you're trying to say is that Anet pushed to the extreme the "juggling of objectives" with top-level gamers in PvP and super-easy mode PvE. I think this is clear to everyone indeed. Yet GW is still enjoyable to a few people, the rest has moved on as they should have according to the original vision of "play it for a while, leave it, then come back to it".

I understand the side of top PvPers which have "seen" what awesome "gamer game" GW could have been if, say, proper balance was ensured and renewed content offered (well, CB is here). IMHO if the community would have been better at improving the quality of the less able players, this could have happened.

There are many ways to look at SF, for example see it as a free ride (e.g. Nicholas the Traveller weekly gifts via SF? btw I don't own an SF sin) from the designers. No one forces you to use it, but I agree that it's a too big temptation to the majority. But since the quality players all left the game, what do you think the other players (not to say there aren't any quality players still) will naturaly do? Seek to improve... because it's a universal aim of life, and thus virtual life? Even among top players, people seek the path of least resistance, whether this point is stupidly low as for SF or not.

I hope that Linsey's update to UW, and possibly more, will lead us, collectively, to rethink our approach to GW. If not, it's the same old problem of a broken (enjoyable) game which will leave many players discussing the game on Guru rather than playing it.

First off, you know that I'm personally a PvE player, mostly PvE advocate. I do vastly appreciate and enjoy the PvP that Guild Wars has, but my personal preference has always been and slicing through monster after monster.

That said, no, I'm not talking about ANet attempting to cater to both PvE and PvP, but that was a major issue in and of itself. What I've been discussing has been dealing with the crowds within the PvE playstyle itself, ANet's decision to greatly lower the skill curve, and the general neglect and dismay it's seen over the years. For me personally, I got the message immediately when I saw that they removed scattering from AoE. From just that I knew where they wanted to take the game, and it's rather unfortunate.

It is good to see MMO's taking in more players these days, at least attempting to, but GW is a good sign of how not to do it. You don't appeal to casuals by making the latter portion of the game more accessible. You appease both crowds by keeping a satisfying and challenging endgame while having content more on the entry level remain accessible. The difficulty curve shouldn't spike, it shouldn't be straight, but it should start out simple enough for everyone. Keeping that road well maintained is possibly the most difficult part.

It is very true that ANet from the start wanted most of the longevity to come in it's PvP, but that statement doesn't excuse a poorly designed game. Not only that but that statement is especially invalid with all their mock "endgame" (grind) they've introduced over the years for PvE.

If the "free ride" gets you the exact same results as the rough ride, that's poor design. No if's, and's or but's. It does not encourage in-depth play at all. In WoW players can see the latest content in a much more toned down fashion, while those who want increased rewards for harder work can play on the harder difficulties.

With the widespread use of an achievement-like system, developers are now able to properly acknowledge those who invest a lot of time and effort into their game. Both Rock Bands have modes that unlock every song for you or allow you to play through the whole song even if you're always in the red, but doing so locks you from achievements. This is *good*. The devs want to give a "pat on the back" for players being good at their game while also giving everyone the chance to get that "free ride".

Straight up? They'd quit. They'd be pissed. They'd feel just like the previous quality players that came before them, and we'd have twice as many people upset with the game than we do now. In my posts I've used "should have" and "could have" here and there, and that's the main thing with Guild Wars: It could have been a much more different - perhaps better - game. While it would be cool to see ANet attempt to go back to maintaining an admirable skill curve, the game has catered far too much to the "racers".

To change it right now, as is, would be suicide. It would be like ANet going from a shooter to a racer - and back to a shooter. They would've successfully backstabbed two groups of players instead of one. While yes, I would love a more properly maintained GW, ANet does not need more people pissed off at them. All we can do right now is high-light what went wrong with GW1 in the hopes that they nail it for GW2.

Bryant, I think at the heart of the argument we agree, but with slight differences:

Some people do not have the time in GW to go in-depth. On what principle would you ban design decisions that allows them to go there? (or rather: design decisions whose consequences are to allow them, i.e. uber modes).

You know as much as I do that comparisons between GW and WoW are quite limited. WoW appeals to the masses indeed in a very different manner. I do appreciate as an "average" player the ability to have completed Slavers NM because of some game mechanics loopholes, and I certainly won't feel bad if designers were to indeed create a smoother curve towards skill, which (as you know) requires that teams work, and I think Anet realised that somewhat the community as a whole doesn't work exactly like that (well it works great if you're in a non-dead guild).

You can argue on principles, but we're way beyond that. GW is trying to be a fantastic/awesome game despite a community that has changed so much that it's difficult to argue that "skill over time" should be the dominant model for the whole game, and not only for PvP. I'm NOT arguing in favor of that (I'm a PvEr who wants to PvP, so I'm working on getting better, baby steps after baby steps), but I tend to look at their decision from a very practical angle, i.e. given their limited resources and the existing constraints (updated game code, history of their updates, state of the community).

Correct. I bet Linsey would LOVE to do something like that, but can't because of lack of resources, or the game code itself would need to be rewritten (...GW2! but you know that).

I DO know the feeling. And in GW you quit only for a while (well not all do as we know) to come back later. When you only have, say, 2h a week to play the game, you don't want that to become a "work", which is an activity which is already taking 90% of your 50h+ week. The "smooth learning curve" you mentioned (and I agree on the fact it should be there, but I think the community hasn't done enough for bad/average players to learn, e.g. guides, training guilds, etc.) may well take players several dozen hours of gameplay, so it could be 1 or 2 months of GW. You need to be a seriously motivated casual player to do that. (or, as some PvPers suggest, spend several dozen hours being pwned gloriously in RA, CB, HA or GvG...)

Hey, don't take away my Rollerbeetle race! ;PPPPPP
I'm with you, bro, hoping that GW2 will be this game!

My major disagreement with you is here: no "WE", the community, can still do something about it, but "WE" don't, pushing completely this problem onto Anet and the Live Team (which do have some responsibility ofc). People preferred to leave the game. I'd say to those who asked bad/average players to get better at the game that they, themselves, should get better at helping them go through this learning experience. (as I said before, some people still do that!)

There's a host of aboslutely brilliant GW players here on Guru, who've mastered so many aspects of the game that it almost becomes funny. But I think there's an ingredient of genius missing here: that knowledge is in their hands and their head, they sprinkle it here from time to time by answering questions or sharing an opinion, very often insightful into game design and play. But it stops here, this knowledge doesn't flow. You want SF to "naturally" disappear? Show people how a coordinated group (I love the idea of "GvE" I discovered on TGH) can consistently kill anything in GW (apart from the gimmicky part) and how much fun you can get from that. So many players haven't had the chance to experience a great PUG. I know I did and after that day you never see the word "balance" the same!

But what if you don't want a free ride? If you don't care about the achievements, just care about beating a difficult challenge (as in, you know, actually playing a game)? If you don't care about the achievements, or about the ecto that you can farm, but you do care about beating the one of the hardest areas in Guild Wars?

There was once a free ride to anything in GW, but they saw that it was a bad thing, and they nerfed it. They should show some god damn spine and do so again, if they do that I might be inclined to think about buying GW2.

Because Shadow Farm is a free ride to a lot of things, running dungeons or missions, screw that. There should be no free rides because if you don't want to play, then you should not do so. But if you do want, then you have to deal with that playing means that you can win or lose.

Yeah fine, with those new skeletons there won't be any more SF perma sins speedclearing UW. That doesn't solve the actual problem.

P.S. Rock Band/Guitar Hero are very fun games, I love to play such, but in the end they are gimmicky party games, so yeah it makes sense to have a no-lose mode in those.

The reason I brought up WoW is because of it's current direction. In the past, way back in vanilla, all of the endgame content required a lot of effort, and because of that some of the best the game had to offer was shut out to a huge amount of players.

With the way it's going right now, it's attempting to remedy that. It's making the regular variants of dungeons and raids on a less stressful setting and making the gear progression a bit more in reach. This allows those who aren't largely experienced and without the larger time investment to see the most polished areas in the game.

At the same time, they're fine tuning the "hard modes" of the dungeons for those who want the better gear, who have more experience, and are able to spare more time to do so. They're catering to both the hardcore and the far less so.

While it's still pretty rough, it's a solid philosophy that all MMO's should be taking. It's good to see that Blizzard is taking the direction of WoW that numerous games have set before them: paying attention to the fact that everyone has different skill levels, and overall level of performance.

Guild Wars attempted to do the same thing, but the time it took to reach effectiveness as a player was still greatly reduced. Reaching that peak of performance is not a difficult task. It's kind of like making a game with a normal and expert mode, but for some reason when you start the game on expert you're given the best weapon in the game at the start with infinite ammo.

It's a bit interesting to do, that's for sure, and for some it is indeed quite gratifying. But some feel that a true challenge should be something that requires all of the best tools available in the game and it *still* remains difficult. If you have to limit your own abilities than the challenge itself isn't much of a challenge, is it?

That is exactly my point. What I'm saying is that stuff like UW or other so-called elite areas should not have shortcuts. The challenge should come from the game, not from seeing how much you can cripple yourself.

The main problem, I think, is that GW players have gotten used to winning everything, and doing so easily.

Careful where you're going with this (skill segregation FTL, look at my shiny emote or my gold cape or my guild rank). Some people just don't have the time to be "seen" as good players/simply play PvP at a good level. It's true that there's an inherent ability to play, in general and in GW, but it also has a lot to do with how much you practice. Again, not everyone has the amount of time for that.

And I'm sure some people do have the ability, the time, but not the wilingness, maybe due to other factors like the fun.

Anyway, it doesn't change the point you were trying to make, except it's not about "skill" per se (but something else I can put a name on it), but there are indeed "tiers" of gameplay (not "difficulty" per se, we could talk about lore knowledge also).

Excuse me if this has already been answered because I just browsed the last page of this thread, but I have a question. You say people preferred to leave the game. Fine...but WHY they preferred to leave the game? Perhaps it was something beyond community control?

Many of the good players realized that the learning experience was no longer worth it, as the benefits of knowing was no longer worth the effort put into teaching.

There is not much point in taking the road less traveled when the road most traveled is more efficient.

Then those players simply will not reach their potential, and in all likelihood will never be put into the "good" category. Just facts of life.

This is all pretty off topic though. I could post more, but I think Bryant has been making some quality posts that I mostly agree with. To simplify...SF and its inbalanced partners in crime are bad for the game in every possible way. This isn't even an opinion to me...I consider it fact. We only now realize that it is too late to go back in time (even though I realized this as soon as Nightfall was released). We can only hope for better design in the future.

I don't see what's wrong with those things. Stat recording is a highly coveted feature these days, and was a pretty decent thing to have with GW1, although it could've been a lot better.

Haha, you got the wrong date. It's not april 1.

Rank/titles/cape have only led to people farming (c.f. laming) for so-called "prestige" rather than playing because the game is supposed to be fun. It's the biggest hoax in all of gaming history.

There's always going to be farmers. But in Guild Wars the system/s were poorly maintained, simply put.

I thought "the greatest hoax in all of gaming history" was Duke Nukem Forever. But I digress.

It's hardly a "hoax". I've said it before: you're a dinosaur that's out in the tail of the preference distribution these days. Your strategy of gimping yourself to show off your skill was "content" in another era of gaming when alternatives didn't exist. Once games permit you to measure yourself against others directly, you don't need to gimp yourself to artificially create sufficient difficulty to get valid cross-comparisons.

The existence of your community enables game designers to justify putting out poor content with bad metrics for comparing player skill. The designers wait for players to find ways to contort themselves to show off their skills, and point to the niche community as finding "innovative" ways to play the game. That is the hoax.

Progress is developing better metrics that permit cross comparison while people play the game as intended without creating the sort of destructive stat hound behaviors that metrics often encourage. Were the GW metrics bad? Absolutely. Does that mean that we should abandon the concept? Absolutely not.

The hoax is that A.net promised the game to be grind free. Lots of people were fooled by this promise, including me. And I'm willing to bet you as well, if not for just a moment. That PvP has become a grind rather than a competition is the saddest statement one can make about a game.

You're assuming far too much. Please explain the chain of logic where you conclude that I intentionally gimp myself. Or actually, don't, because it is wrong. Like you, I pride myself on doing things as efficiently as possible, so what you say is farthest from the truth.

In addition to PvP titles not being a useful metric, further, there is already a metric that is nigh ubiquitous in every competitive game, including Guild Wars. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what that is.

That probably has less to do with the prospect of a stat-recording/ranking system and more a problem with the game in general.

in a word?


Yes

Absolutely true...but in principle we should have been able to back that out on day one. The needed data was present in the mechanics. The ladder system will match good players with bad ones, fluffing up the ratings of grinders. The rank system in HA obviously favors the grinder. In the limit, any points system will favor the grinders over the skilled. In the short term (which can be a while), it favors the skilled with the willingness to grind.

There's nobody to blame but ourselves, I'm afraid. To be fair, I think ANet believed their promises, and missed the same flaws in the design that we missed. The later decision to sell out and embrace those flaws is another matter.

I apologize; I've got you and Jeydra confused here. Statement and tone were consistent with Jeydra's position, and my brain made the connection to the three-way argument a month ago without sorting out who said what.

GUTLESS lack of perma-nerf - so guess what, 7+ ASSN permas still run UW.

Clue the F* up and deal with this exploited skill already.

This is true. It goes for every single thing where you have a number going up, especially if that number can be shown to others (since it creates prestige). It's not a problem with the game, because it's in every damn game that has it. Even in the gamerpoints system on Xbox Live you can see it: It's more common than you'd think for people to buy a game, play it until they unlocked all achievements (or as many as they can), and then sell it back to the store. Playing for the points, not for the game.

Winning should be the be-all and end-all of a game, any game. No points or titles or ranks or other such bullshit needed.

This is what I really don't understand. It seems that Anet's biggest target is the UWSCs which is why they put the Skeletons of Duhm there. However, it looks like speed clears now are already down to 20 minutes even with the new skeletons. If Anet wanted to stop UWSCs, why not add a skill to HM UW monsters that can strip SF? UWSCs would then be finished.

If they put something down there that is capable of bypassing SF/OF/SB then who are you planning to have tank? Might as well throw bonds out the window too. If they gimp the UW to the point where the next closest viable alternative is 90+ minutes then why bother clearing. Your odds on an e-blade are ridiculously low so nothing justifies the run time. You could just farm the Labyrinth and get more ecto than the chest per unit of time spent. For some this is about bragging rights but for most it's about money, plain and simple.

This is what makes me think some of the biggest anti-SC drama queens have never actually cleared the UW. It's incredibly easy to fail and always has been boiling down usually to just one rookie in the team who won't listen. The fact that you have players in this game coordinated enough to do these fast runs should be applauded and not greeted with hysteria. It's one hell of an accomplishment and I think that goes completely overlooked with so many people shouting it down. The key here is that few teams are capable of these numbers. It's just convenient to always use the lowest possible to exaggerate what's really going on.

I think it would help because having 95% assassins running UW is just a *LITTLE* retarded.

I'm just going to drop a line of the subject of achievements (in the case of GW, I guess you mean titles).

In my opinion, achievements are a subtle, evil mechanism introduced in games to conceal the fact that their base ideas aren't that revolutionary and their content has scarce replay value. Have Tetris, Street Fighter or even MUDs (if we want an online example) ever needed pats in the back in order to keep people playing?