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

Oh you mean title grinding ? yeah , with SF and 600/smite that time is lowered but ectos farm , gems farm , elite tomes farm , orr emblems farm and bla bla bla farm no . If you are farming X and with with SF you can farm more X per hour .... i can assure you that the farmer will farm the same time or even MORE because its easy.

Anyway , those farms are not the real problem , the real problem is reducing drastically the times in wich you do X "challenge" ... wich are no challenge at all due to SF and 600/smite. Ofc there are other "broken" stuff in this game but SF is the number 1 on the list. ( im not telling this to you upier , i know you know it ).

It would, actually. People keep forgetting that it's not limited to UW. In fact, if SF was only used for farming ecto in UW, I wouldn't have any more problems with it than I have problems with it any more than I have a problem with Vital Blessing or Dust Trap.

But it's not just UW, it's everywhere. And nerfing SF isn't the ultimate answer for everything, but only because there is no ultimate answer. It would be a good step to take, though.

The ultimate answer is there, it's just big and difficult and is completely unlikely to happen: Fix PvE. Long-term and widespread effects like boosting AI and brushing up enemy builds/team compositions is what it would take to have a much more meaningful PvE experience.

Long term wise, I don't see SF's nerf doing much. There's too much imba in PvE. Just like Ursan was, SF is only the tip of the iceberg, and all that's happening is it getting chipped away each time it gets bigger.

The problem is the lower end.
Needing to open 10k chests, or getting 2,5 mil lucky points, or 10 mil donated Luxon faction, ... that's the low end of the title that matters.
And it's these goals that should be obtainable.
And they are not currently.
(Also keep in mind that stuff like ecto gets you booze, sweets, lockpicks, HoM weapons, ... so this isn't just limited to things you advance directly.)

What SF (among other broken things) does it make this easier to achieve. But you are right - considering the ease, it also has the potential to cause problems once this low end is obtained. People will rush out and farm more crap, not because they need it, but because it is easy.
Had they fixed it the right way - by keeping the difficulty while reducing the number of times this needs to be completed, we should see less negative effects (as I have said - instead of 20 10 minut runs, ask that something should be done 4 times BUT it takes an hour to do it).
The problem is that they said that they feel that the way titles are currently designed is acceptable - so I do not see something like that happening. Which means that by nerfing these farming tools - these goals become harder to obtain or out of reach for a plot of players.
And that is not good for a game that is in this state.




And no, SF isn't No.1 on my list of most broken things.
Grind is.
Remove the need why players resort to this crap and there will be no good reason to keep it in the game.

to be honest there are degrees of farming. there are situations where SF is overpowering such as is the case in the FoW SC. However, as is the case in UW there are the skeletons of Dhuum which make SF completely useless.

What i am trying to say is that there are cases where SF is abused, but there is another scenario where it doesnt affect the gmae situation and economy such as is with the perma SF raptor farm... that it not abusive.

the rest is up to your own personal discretion

Dear god you tell me , im about 1500 chests away to lose my mi... i mean , get the treasure hunter title and almost 1mill of lucky away from max ..... thats insane. Even thou , i would not want a new quest with 10 chests that can be done in 8-10 mins with SF , see my point ?.
Some titles got to be harder , grinder or whatever and im in for making them more easy to obtain but SF or <insert other broken combo> is not the way.

Well , nerfing or reworking SF will not be all butterflies and roses . UB nerf brought slower DoA farms and slower Norn rep farms but life goes on. Like i said above , im in to make some grinding titles less hard ( or time consuming ) to achieve but SF and broken stuff is not the way.

Sure why not but pwning SF its hell lot easier ( and fair ) than reworking the way that 3-7 titles should be obtained.

You'd be right if it was not for content devaluation. As long as maxed Luxon title or whatever isn't commonplace, many will simply skip it because it's not in their reality.

When seen that way, SF and UB and such are good things, right? They open new possibilities... WRONG. Because, now suddenly you need to get that maxed Luxon title and so on. Of course, it's optional, but even the most grindy game ever is optional.

Yeah... You better not open your skills list, or even start thinking of how to improve your play.


PvE, imba? Of course it is. And it always was. Even simple skills that have existed since 2005 are imba in PvE (Spiteful Spirit, I'm looking at you). But some of that is ok, because in PvE, we are the heroes who save the world, after all. I completely agree that the AI should be fixed, though. In fact, that alone would correct some (but not all) of the imbalance caused by SF: If enemies stop bunching up around a perma sin once they understand that they can't kill him, SF would lose a lot of potential as a farming skill. Even then, though, it would be overpowered and imbalanced.
However I fear that an AI boost won't happen until GW2. If even then.

Back on topic. Just like Ursan was, SF is just the tip of the iceberg, I agree. But does that mean you should leave that iceberg alone to sink your ship? No. Just like Ursan was, SF is a problem. Ursan was nerfed, and that helped the situation. What to do about SF?

I do not mind harder titles.
As long as they are in touch with the reality of the game.
As I have said, VQing the whole Jade Sea 40 times isn't in touch with the reality of the game. On the other hand - something like max Sunspear is! You get that title by VQing all the areas that give you Sunspear points.
Sure, since one is an account-wide title that can also be obtained though PvP, you can't do a 1:1 comparison. Maybe 5 or 10 vs 1. (You'd need to VQ all Luxon areas on 5 or 10 characters to max it.) It would be a bit steep, but if you VQ a bit, do some PvP on the side, the title would actually be obtainable without some heavy ass grinding.


The question is - are you willing to give up this shortcut that makes this less grindy for the chance of a change? Do you trust A.Net enough that they will fix the game?
I don't.
That's why I'd rather stick with the broken crap until they present a solution to the problem.
And if they don't - I still have my shortcut.

You come on these forums and you have most people yelling that any armour and any title is worth nothing.
Unless it's a specific PvP title.
The rewards are worth nothing, yet the way to them is still designed as if they actually mattered.

Plus GW is going to be dead in 2 years.
Which means the players need to earn their bonuses by that time. Even some players that played since the start will not max out the titles in these 6 years!
Imagine if somebody just starts playing.

That would mean that there are better options than SF.
So if they are, why nerf it?

If I am trying to achieve maximum efficiency, I'll use the best options.
If am playing for fun, I'll use the what I have fun with.

Yeah, partying BLOSSOMED after Ursan was killed!
Well, it actually did.
With SF.

Perhaps I should have put a "massive" before the imba in this case. PvE is "imba" as in "horrendously broken beyond *#%*ing belief". There are tons of massively powerful, brainless builds in this side of the game.

While it was still horrendous implementation, the premise behind Ursan was pretty interesting: an attempt to make all classes equally desired. Unfortunately, they did not follow up on balancing classes. Not only that they buffed PvE skills as well.

But none of that's going to get fixed. The only way that ANet is (sadly) making more classes viable is buffing them to overpowered and back. They do not take a broader view of the game. They only respond to what the mob wants changed the most.

I'd only appreciate the nerf if it was the start of a snowball effect that lead up to the balancing of the game, but seeing ANet openly endorsing farming, that's really never going to happen.

As is, for me, nerfing SF is like trying to put out a burning house with a drop of water.

Wtf? Arena Net did not make the skill so that players would "farm UW". It was made so that players could find parties easier in any area, which was Ursan Blessing's goal. The problem with it now, is that players seem to think the whole GW world revolves around Shadow Form. Everyone thinks that an area is impossible to do unless there Shadow Form is used, which I disagree with, because I clear all sorts of areas, HM dungeons, Urgoz, Missions or whatever, without one. I refuse to party with a Shadow Form Assassin because of this reason. Shadow Form makes the game easy, and I play this game for the challenge, I want to feel like I earned my money and my titles, and having a Shadow Former means I just had some "invulnerable" guy hold aggro with no monk support, then have 3-4 guys destroy them. I would feel like the money was given to me, and I am not one to enjoy taking something like that.

Design will always shape the way the game is actually played. It doesn't matter that people say they consider the titles as nothing, because once they sit in front of GW they will still pursue them!

You assume that GW2 will be pitched as a grind junkie's game. You may be right; in which case, it doesn't matter to me as I won't be buying it anyway. But I hope you are wrong.
Also, if someone just started playing maybe he shouldn't expect the same bonuses as someone who played since 2005.

Perhaps you have amnesia. This argument was repeated over and over during the UB debate. Here goes:

For some people, fun involves attempting to improve. Attempting to overcome challenges. Attempting to play the game well. However, SF stands out like a huge neon sign: USE THIS TO IMPROVE TO MAX INSTANTLY. It also beats the challenge in question to the amount of removing it completely. That is boring.

Or maybe you have "fun" with some stupid build like a Mending blood necro. Others don't, in fact I think most people think that would make for a horrible game experience. But with SF, every other build is a Mending blood necro. That is boring.

So you can choose between boring and boring. That is bad.

Nerf SF.

Actually, the only thing that made partying blossom lately (outside event related content) was Zaishen quests.

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Ursan didn't make all classes equally powerful. It made all characters almost equally powerful, on the condition that they changed their class to ursan.

You are right - but consider what skills we are talking about.

Tier 1
Shadow Form

Tier 2
Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support
Pain Inverter
Signet of Spirits

Tier 3
Cry of Pain
Asuran Scan
Great Dwarf Weapon
There's Nothing to Fear
Ray of Judgment

Those are just examples of overpowered skills. There are a few more in tiers 2 and lots more in tier 3. Yes they are all imba and affects PvE stupidly. But come on, it's PvE. It's meant to give you a challenge, sure, and I'd like it to be more meaningful, but it's also meant to be casual fun.
The tier 3 skills, most of them anyway, are completely ok. They are hilarious to use and while they can be used in stupid gimmick builds, they are more efficient when used side by side with normal skills (by which I mean for example, as soon as you have TNTF you are playing a gimmick, sure, but it's still true that the paragon in question has other stuff he relies on as well - TNTF is a boost, but it's not the leverage that makes his entire build work).
The tier 2 skills could be dampened until they fell into tier 3. Pain Inverter should not be the only thing you need to kill basically any boss in the game. And so on.
But Shadow Form, being alone in tier 1, isn't like those at all. It is the single skill that allows you to run calmly through an entire dungeon or elite area and kill the end boss without ever taking a single point of damage. It confers near-complete invulnerability for as long as you can repeat a very simple pattern of mouse clicks. It gives an infinite tanking potential for any sort of normal and most non-normal enemies. It can be defeated by a very small number of skills or circumstances, most of which can be easily bypassed.

Writing things like this just to make a point is obnoxious. Necromancers were and still are one of the most versatile professions for party formation. If you understand their role there is no PvE situation I can think of where one doesn't fit. Just this last weekend I went 2+6 on mine to do SoO on a guild run with none of those crutch builds like sab/discord. We did it for fun, what a concept, and no SFers were harmed in the process. Was it slower than a 600 team? Probably, but I bridge pull Fendi to avoid the channel spike which adds a good 30 minutes to the time. I don't see guildies very often anymore so this was a welcome change of pace. Claiming you can't get groups or all other builds suck in comparison is absurd and complete hysteria. The truth is you just can't be bothered to try.

bro I love necros, don't get me wrong. I just think that with all that versatility it's a waste to rely on Vampiric Gaze and Life Transfer.

I don't see what being a necro has to do with pulling Fendi to the bridge, though.

Quit crying about the damn uw nerf. As you can clearly see, ecto prices are rising, and the supply of ectos is no longer being abused, therefore in that aspect it was good for the game. Additionally, being able to solo is just retarded in general.

So if people will do them regardless of anything, why does it matter if they are worth less (or worthless) or not?

Yeah that will make a splash!
GW2! The game where you can get all the bonuses only if you ground your ass off in the casually advertised GW1 for 6 years!

All of PvE was beaten already. Not only that, it's really easy. So seeking challenge in PvE is like trying to swim in the kiddy pool.
Which means that the only way to improve is to be faster.
SF does not prevent that.

Plus (based on your first quote) won't people do these things regardless of the fact that someone else does them better?

Yeah because everyone does SCs with heroes!

That wasn't my point, the point was that I am one of those weird people who doesn't care how long something takes so long as it's fun. It was a slightly different scenario back when I religiously did 4-4-4 Deep. Even then though it was less about drops and more about blowing things up. That for me is what GW is all about, not about what some other guy/gal is doing on their Sin or whatever the current flavor of the month is. If someone wants to turn content into a part time job in the vain hope they will get a 1% drop or an Olympic event for clear times then more power to them. It has absolutely zero impact on me.

You make no sense.

It doesn't. I never said it did. But since they are the baseline due to being possible to achieve to anyone who grinds enough, they invite to grind.

Being a dedicated player isn't the same as being a grind monkey.


It does, actually. Once you put on SF, it's as good as it gets - it doesn't get any better than that. Try as you might, some other method no matter how skillfully you play it, is inferior.

Yes, people will choose between boring and boring. Some will choose boring, others will choose boring. Both choices are, unfortunately, boring, which doesn't make a good selling argument for GW2 at all.

"Buy GW2, sequel to boring! Now with more boredom!"

Yeah sounds great.

Derp
Most people don't do SC at all. And SC isn't the problem, either.

I agree with you, what other people do has no impact whatsoever on me (unless they are in my team).

That has nothing to do with what I could be doing, though.

You still just don't get it. Making you do easy stuff over and over and over again is grind. Making the content hard is a challenge.

It's fine for players to find ways to make the content easy over time. But the only way that the game stays fresh is if the developers beat those efforts back once they become widespread, so that players are always forced to find new ways to get an edge.

People spend their Yetis to get Zheds. Once someone owns a mini, it doesn't disappear from the system. If we're talking about clean minis, it still doesn't disappear until someone actually dedicates it - at which point it becomes dedicated and loses some value. I reiterate: this is a much larger group of players than you seem to think it is. There's a huge number of names that have come and gone in High End over the last few years - thousands and thousands. Your "massive majority" is a chimera, I'm afraid. The number of hardcore grinders that go after GWAMM may be larger than the high-end community, but not by the huge factor you seem to think it is.

Within the high-end community, the minority already owning the items benefit and the vast majority lose out. As noted, I happen to be in the minority that wins...and it sucks. The time investment necessary to get an Oni by actually playing the game has multiplied by a factor of seven since the SF bomb went off. (The good ways of making money are faster than UWSC, and haven't gotten more valuable despite the inflation.) That's a strong deterrent to actually playing the game.

It's great if you want to sit in Kamadan all day, because your margins widen.

I agree with you here, but if you're going to institute this system it's essential to provide goals that keep people around. Highly scarce items do a good job of providing those end goals for players, and GW came up with a solid compromise by making them scarce but also making them purely eye candy.

The HoM made a hash of this by artificially creating demand for in-game cash. People feel like they have to have armors, Destroyer/Tormented weapons and minis or they will miss out in the next game. The result is a whiny group that wants the devs to make it easy to acquire all those things. After all, if they liked farming they'd already be farmers. The HoM was a poor idea, but catering to the whining just compounds the error. It simply demonstrates once again that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, promoting more community whining.

People wonder why the community is terrible and full of bellyaching? ANet made it that way. The stimulus/response model at work. You want something to get done, you don't have to improve at the game. Just get enough people to complain about it loudly enough and long enough.

While I'd like to become eight times more efficient at playing GW, that's impossible. There isn't that much room to give. So I work the system. Worked well for your group of players, didn't it?

So you are advertising that a game where people don't actually play it?
You'd rather have goals that are unattainable?

Maybe you'll have people looking at GW2 and thinking that they don't want it because they didn't play GW1 which would allow them to get all the bonuses?
That's the issues with goals that are unattainable in GW1 and their potential effect on GW2.

If you win - it's as good as it gets.
And you can win with an empty skillbar.
Foes do not get magically harder in PvE. So as I have said, the only way to improve in PvE is to beat them faster. And SF does not stop you in doing that. It just means that you will include SF in your team build.
The same that you would include other best options.

Yes, some people will have to choose between boring and boring.
But some people will have to choose between fun and fun.
Just because something isn't fun to you, does not mean it not fun for everyone.

So if something being fun should be a factor, can you accept that the option that isn't fun to you wins?
And if you can't - why should someone else give up their fun then?

Something as overpowered as SF is perfect as since it can negate some of the issues that could arise from playing with people you do not know.
If the build requires you to do it all, do you really want to pick up some random guy?
And if you do not want to pick up a random guy, how does that influence partying?

Of course it's grind.
And as I have said - I would rather not have it in the game.
But as long as it is in the game - I would rather have less grind. And crap such as SF achieves that.


How many Zheds are there in the game?
How many Oni?

Based on those numbers, your Average Joe should reasonably expect that they will never own it. And what this influx of goods causes is that the items that your Average Joe will probably never own, get more expensive.
Now this would be an issue if owning a Zhed would somehow play a role.
It does not.
What does play a role is maxing those 30 titles to get God.
And this influx of goods makes this easier.


Getting God/full HoM is that goal that will keep people around.
Not only is there no limited supply of this goal - meaning that anyone everyone that works hard will get it, contrary to a rare mini where you can only get it if someone is selling it - it's also a goal that is relatively achievable. Sure, some of the grind needed for it is still a bit out there - that is why I do not mind the shortcuts - but it's nowhere near the grind needed to be able to participate in the high end market.

That's why I feel that a full HoM or God is something that should be available to the masses. A lot of the titles, such as VQing, doing missions, capping elites, mapping, ... promote playing the game. And this is what we want. We want people to play the game.
Getting people to get Zhed does not promote playing the game.

No, it doesn't. Blow up SF and people have to find a new way to quickly beat content. That development process isn't grind. It's challenging and stimulating.

Skill balances are effectively dirt cheap content. That's why game companies love them. It's a lot cheaper to nerf skills than create new monsters, much less make a new area from scratch.

70 and over 900, respectively. Add up all the really rare minis and you've got about four thousand items. That assumes that Ghostly and Polar Bear are both in the low hundreds, which I believe is a safe bet.

Does Average Joe have hundreds of hours to invest grinding GWAMM? Average Joe could have grinded up a whole lot of in-game cash in that time a couple of years ago. But Average Joe doesn't play in the High End markets. He doesn't get GWAMM either.

No, it isn't. People get GWAMM and quit. I've seen that pattern too many times. The limited supply of the miniatures and multiple end goals is what makes the system work. The supply keeps renewing itself because eventually someone gets more goodies than an owner has sense and the owner sells the pet. The supply may be fixed, but the items move around quite a bit. Those thousands of items have been owned by many more thousands of players that don't own them now.

The only reason that the entrance grind is so prohibitive now is SF. You're looking at hundreds of hours of gameplay just to have the capital to move Onis around. It wasn't that way until people started farming UW into the ground. I could grind the stack of ecto needed to purchase an undedicated Oni in twelve hours, back when people still paid decent prices for dungeon runs.

Now that same method would take a couple hundred. Some of that is the decreased value of runs due to competition, but most of it is the increase in item prices that SF has caused.

Again, the reason for that is that playing the game no longer pays well enough. The persistence of SF and the UWSC is directly to blame.

The amount of stupid posts by people who think they know what they're talking about is absurd.
But then again, if you insult a stubborn person's ideas, they only act more stubborn. So I guess there's no point to joining in the sf argument.

My thoughts on the general matter though? Don't reinforce Izzy's job.
I would say to just leave it for the test krewe and arenanet to handle. SF was promised to be nerfed by the end of the year anyways.

Ok, I'm an elitist? The only UWSC I've done is Chamber, and I've done that a few time, but it is extremely boring. I only do FoWSC, which isn't really a complete speed clear, as it uses a main balanced group.

There is no incentive to UW, because the rewards are shitty for the time it takes to do a balanced clear.

I'm probably (I am) going to get flamed for this. Join a huge guild that actually does activities. KISS and NiTe are 2 examples. I'm sure you can find a group of willing people in the huge ass alliance.


Sorry to say this, but the days of PUGing the UW are long gone.

Unless the new method is as effective as SF (which is being asked to be nerfed because it is TOO effective) - the amount of grind increases.
Also keep in mind that outside of a few players, the majority of players will wait for the build to show up on wiki.

That means that at any given time - up to 4k people can have the reward.
Which means that every player can take a look at how much gold they have and earn and decide pretty much instantly if there is a point to them playing.
If you can not compete for these 4k items, there is no point to continue playing.
If on the other hand we are dealing with something that has no limited supply, meaning a person obtaining it does not prevent me from obtaining it, that means that there is always a point to continue playing.
Something with a limited supply in no way caters to the masses. It actually excludes these masses.
Because that is it's point.

That's the problem.
Had GWAMM been rebalanced, Average Joe could have obtained the title by playing the game. Average Joe can not participate in high end market by simply playing the game. Grind is required. Had namely playing the game provided you with enough funds to participate in the high-end market, the excluding function of said market would have been lost. That would mean anyone would be able to obtain said items, making them lose their point.


GWAMM would keep people interested and occupied and not prevent them from quitting. If the GWAMM goals were attainable, players would have something to do for the next two years.
It would allow playing the game to be sufficient in obtaining goals.
Playing the game is currently not sufficient.

The reason why the entry is limited is because that's the nature of the beast. It always was and it always will be.
As I have said, the point of the high-end market is excluding players.

As I have said before, playing the game never paid well enough.

I agree with this 100%. I don't understand why people keep moaning and whining about this though. Just like in real life there is a high end market for things and it excludes probably 99.4% of the world's population. Seriously, how many of you have an Aston Martin in the garage, a Rembrandt on the wall over the fireplace and a rolex on your wrist? Most of us don't and most of us probably never will. That is why they are called high end items.... Then again, the people that whine because they can't have the flashiest pixels are probably the same ones who want everything handed to them in life also.

If you're willing to make some assumptions about your future cashflow and that of others that may or may not be accurate, AND if you're too incompetent to rigorously question whether there may be ways to improve your own cashflow that you haven't discovered yet.

This is also the point of a title like GWAMM. The time requirements are sufficiently high that it is inaccessible to everyone but the seriously hardcore. As it should be. You are not entitled to fill up your achievement meter because you bought the game and installed it to your hard drive.

If you don't want to do the work, quit worrying about whether or not you get the title. I don't have GWAMM. I won't be getting GWAMM. I detest Hard Mode (other than farming), and I am not about to go invest hundreds of boring hours vanquishing zones. That's a choice. It's fine not to do everything there is in the game.

The goals are certainly attainable over the course of several years for a casual player. But acquiring that title isn't going to attract the casual player's interest. Average Joe plays through the game a couple of times over a long period of time and wanders off to go play something else. The hardcore player that gets GWAMM might be better off if the grind involved in the title were reduced. But making you better off makes a lot of other people worse off. Every time you dumb down an achievement you're negatively affecting everyone that already climbed that mountain.

You're not understanding the argument.

Upier is the one who wants everything handed to him. I'm arguing that the inflation SF and UWSC have caused make it pointless to work and innovate to find new, efficient ways to play the game. The only way you can make decent money in this game today is to power trade. Even dungeon running won't provide enough to enable you to purchase the least of the high end minis without grinding for hundreds of hours.

That leads to stagnation, a lack of innovation and a dead game.

I'm not saying there is or is not or will or won't be new and efficient ways to play the game, what I am saying is that I see not only in this thread but in many threads that people whine because they don't have "X" item and how it's not fair that others do and it should be accessible to all/others. If a player feels there is no way to accomplish something in the game other than 1 method they should /uninstall and the rest of us should really hope they are not being relied on to adapt to any kind of change in real life. If all people thought that way we'd still be living in caves and beating each other on the head with clubs. I am not "rich" by most standards, I have a few nice vanity items, a full HoM and a little over 1 mill in the bank..... I have never power traded anything, I am not a hardcore speed clearer, I do not have a sin character. Builds I have enjoyed have come and gone but it is completely possible to still accumulate some wealth and get some bling if only you're willing to change as the game changes. I think what would really lead to stagnation and lack of innovation is if everyone did have everything, if you think about it, people use whatever methods they use be it sc's, power trading, running whatever to accomplish something whether it's to reduce grind, build up cash reserves, get that elusive mini whatever. If we had it all there would be no reason to do anything.

We are getting ahead of self with all the "high end" talk....pugs have problems with Vizunah Square NORMAL MODE without a SF sin "camping" a group of monsters from one direction for them, or relying on gimmick heroway/MM. Missions like Dzagonur Bastion and Eternal Grove is also complete hell with any sort of pugs, unless there's a SF sin camping one direction so that the idiots can stick together instead of running around in circles trying to figure out that they need to split.

For high area there's even less point in trying to do it balanced with any pugs....once I take into account all the money and time I wasted with all the idiots in balanced pugs, I might as well go feather farming for more reward. Nerfing SF would do nothing except move every farm group (which IMO are FAR BETTER in terms of skill compared to balanced pugs, at least they know that aataxes hurt) to another gimmick build for another 100 threads of whining on the forum. If they somehow decide to go for the nuclear option and just nerf every team gimmick (if they could without destroying normal builds that is), then people would just go back to solo or duo farm UW. The most profitable method ALWAYS wins, and Anet will never get people to go to varied/balanced builds until there's sufficient reward in doing so.

don't play harder, play smarter? laughable advice though, since a lot of people can't tell the difference from their head and their ass =P

Then I don't see the problem with the high-end market.
It's excluding by default, and SF just made it a bit more excluding.


I do not want everything to be handed to me.
I just wish the designers looked at the game and took it's basic premise into the account when designing it's goals. The question is - how hardcore is too hardcore?
And it's the same question you are asking yourself - you obviously feel that grinding for 100s of hours is too much.

People would need to achieve some goals in a reasonable amount of time by simply playing the game. Which means there is no need for grind and that means grind can be reserved for the high-end market players.
Currently, grind is required for reaching goals that should have been obtainable by playing the game and that means that players of the high-end market need to grind even more.

Ya. And if people are not forced to learn, they never will learn, and will stay crappy players forever.

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If you actually use grammatically valid sentences I might be able to understand what the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO your moronic babblings are about.

Of course. And there are plenty of those goals in GW already. I'd rather see GWAMM being near impossible to get, than some stupid minipet.

If you think people will buy or not buy GW2 on basis of some bonus weapon skin you are RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing deluded. People will buy a certain game because they want to play that game. Or they will refrain from buying it in case they do not want to play it. You have to be a god damn idiot to think anything else.

Since you always win in PvE (which should be fixed), it's a matter of winning quickly and easily. You can win with an empty skillbar? No, you can't, at least not if your entire team have empty skillbars.

And there are no other best options. It's SF and nothing else.

I can only speak for myself. If I spoke for others I'd be a hypocrite since I don't know what they feel.

But go ahead.

Of course. That's when it gets interesting. You have to actually try to make it work instead of stupidly spamming shit, repeating a click pattern, or simply pay someone else to do it for you.

Too many. The RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOers always pop up when you least expect them.

Maxing those 30 titles will likely give some vanity reward in the next game. Which is exactly the same thing as owning a Zhed, only it will be more common and therefore worth less than Zhed is. If anything, owning a Zhed mini matters more than achieving GWAMM.

It's funny you say that because PEOPLE ARE NOT PLAYING THE GAME, people are getting ran to the right and left and are using shitty gimmicks to cheat their way past stuff. Merely being logged in and paying for someone else to play your game isn't playing the game.

P.S. why does this faggot board replace normal English words with some go red engine bullshit?

This thread seems to have some tension in it. I'm getting tempted to skim through the mere 18 pages and add my 50 cents..

Sorry precious.
Missed that. Having looked at it again - I have no idea what words are missing because I have no idea how I wanted to word that sentence. What I do know is that the sentence was asking the same thing as the sentence below it.

See precious, there is no limited supply when it comes to GWAMM.
Contrary to a rare item, where the supply is limited, you can get GWAMM if you are dedicated. You can only get a rare mini if you are dedicated AND someone is offering it.
The only way to make Zhed's attainable to more people is by increasing their numbers. Otherwise, they will ALWAYS be near impossible to get.

The point is rather that it keeps players interested in a dead game. Free advertising for their next product.

See precious, SF is best at what it does.
But it does not do everything.
Wouldn't you rather clear an area with 8 SF assassins each invincible, yet dealing sub-par damage, or would you rather run guys whose damage output surpasses the SF guy but that comes at the expense of not having invincibility?
SF just means that if you are looking for a tank, you will take SF.
The same way you won't take a dervish if you will be looking for a healer.
You'll grab a monk.

The chance of failure influences the efficiency of a road taken.
In farming, where SF is used, you want to minimize the risk of failure. Because bigger risk means the chance of less rewards. And that is not compatible with farming.

Oh precious, you crack me up!
Acting as if you didn't know that we were talking about minis!
Classic qvtkc!
CLASSIC!

My whole argument is build on a simple premise. You will need a certain number of GW1 rewards to receive a bonus in GW2.
The reason why I do not care about rare minis is because I think that the GW2 reward that will be awarded to players for having a certain number of minis - extremely rare ones will not be needed.
When it comes to titles - I imagine that the reward will be based on the GWAMM title track. Now if the GW2 reward is given for reaching Kind - then everything I said about too much grind regarding the GW2 reward is false. There are 5 titles in the game that one can achieve by playing the game - so no grind is needed. Players would need to max out 5 titles and they would get the full reward in GW2.
If on the other hand the GW2 reward is given for God - that means that some heavy grinding is needed. Too much grind in my opinion.

Now this is only regarding GW2.
Then there is also the question about the quantity of grind in GW1. And for that, I'd just look at how I feel about God rather than Kind.
Too much grind.


See precious, that's the result of the game demanding things from players that can not be obtained by playing the game. GWAMM is currently too much grind to be achieved by playing the game.
And not only is that bad because it removes attainable goals from the players, it's also bad because it makes players resort to grind, and when you are grinding, you might as well use the most efficient way of grinding.

You may find UWSC boring, but I don't.

As you said, PUGing in UW is a very bad idea. No wonder people use SF, mmm?

Thats asuming that having a Zhed will unlock anything at all....

Imo I believe they wont give rewards on the types of minipets you acquire it would be far too unfair considering that there is only arround 50 of the most rarest pets in the game. The MORE likely reward you will recieve is for having say 20 minipets or a full momument stand to display will unlock the same reward as having every single minipet in the game.

Until Anet actually officially tells us exactly what is going to be rewarded for the achievements we make there's no point in delving into the matter and guessing that someone who has dedicated a extremely rare pet will get anything better than the average joe who puts just enough to fill the momument stand.


Will that said, I would only assume that they wont reward the person who has EVERYTHING in the hall of momuments over the average God Walking.

As for my thoughts regarding SF, I do not agree that people are having to use their sins to get into groups for UW, My reasoning behind this is because of what happened with Ursan, People were discriminating against anyone who was under Rank 8 Norn, it's exactly the same situation now only you have to be a SIN which is much harder than thought considering you can't just clear an area for a few SIN Points lol. however, I couldn't really care less I've got my momument for UW and FOW I personally have always felt that UW has always been a farming ground, I DO THINK that URSAN WAS FAR MORE FUN though :P nothing beats running about like headless chickens spamming 123 FTW.

wow, i started a major rage thread here lol nice to read peoples oppinion on the matter, turns out leaving the skelies in UW has made it more fun xD

I don't have your god damn ring!

Good point, they should increase the numbers. Though your argument is flawed since it only holds water on one side. Any fool that inputs enough time can get GWAMM, but how about actual high prestige titles, such as Legendary Hero (HA R15)? There is no limited supply of that either (apart from the total amount of people playing PvP, maybe). And guess what? Most people won't get R15, they don't go for R15, it's a thing far far away that only actually good* and dedicated players get.

* Yes, I know that there are people who scoff at HA. You know very well what I mean.

That advertising isn't needed, anyone knows that. It does however prevent people from jumping ship to a newer, competing MMO (say maybe Aion or EVE Online or something not yet released), which could lure them away from GW2.

Tank? If SF was limited to tanking, it would fall in the same cathegory as Dolyak Signet and it would not be a problem. But it's not limited to that.
If you want to clear an elite area in record time, SF.
If you want to solo a mission by running to the end and beating one guy, SF.
If you want to solo a dungeon by running to the end and beating one guy, SF.
If you want to pay someone to play your game for you, SF.

Thank you for pointing this out. One balance metric is the risk/reward balance. Clearly, with SF, the risk is not only smaller than with basically any other build, the reward over time is also greater since it's so fast. It's obvious that SF is unbalanced.

I have a feeling the enjoyment is mostly mine.

Um. Ok. So you don't really care about GW1 apart from milking it for whatever shiny thing you can get in GW2 but with as little effort as possible?
Why do you want to ruin for the people who actually do like the game?

But the game doesn't demand that you reach GWAMM any more than it demands that you reach Legendary Hero or get a Zhed minipet. On the other hand, skills like SF making GWAMM generally available makes it feel like achieveing it is demanded (it's the simple concept of apparent social baseline; "everyone else is doing it", even when most don't).

Ok, to clarify: What I meant was that the current benefit of having a Zhed minipet beats the future benefit of achieving GWAMM, even when you don't account for the fact that said future benefit is unknown in quality as well as quantity.

Well sorry Faith; it was Upier who brought it up with his unusually retarded argument about that SF should not be nerfed for the sake of the rewards in GW2.

GWAMM will probably not be average in any way whatsoever.

Ursan Blessing was hilarious to play, however it was devastating for the game, devaluing some content so much that it will never recuperate.

Shouldn't sink down to insults.


Yes, it was terrible, the economy dropped, everyone had fun, it was fun to see where you could ursan. Truly devastating to the game.

At this stage of the game does it really matter if Arenanet nerfs shadow form or not ? GW2 is on the way and the majority will be moving there. I say let people have their farming fun.

It'll be out in a year and some months. That's not "on the way".