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Originally Posted by Kaleban
Well, first off its agreed that HOW ANet handles GW1 will affect players perceptions of GW2. And you're right, if they can't do a good job with GW1, it will decrease the playerbase's faith in ANet and its future products.
The problem is, how do you define a "good job?" GW was billed as a game that emphasized skill over grind, and yet, since its inception GW has steadily become more and more grindy, to the point where the game has lost its meaning.
Consider this, WoW has a level cap of what 80 now? And it takes months and months of steady play, in a vast open world with a significantly larger playerbase. The amount of content is orders of magnitude larger than GW, and is not only better maintained, but also constantly updated and changed.
Now I'm not saying I want GW to go P2P, not only would the current system not really support such a model, the game itself is nowhere near worth a monthly fee.
But the problem lies with GW's design. A level cap that can be reached in a few steady hours of play, especially Canthan, and instant maxed PvP characters means a LOT of content can be bypassed or avoided. The ease of the game means replayability is not that high, and the lack of "jobs" for the characters (not professions like crafting, but specific roles for each character to play, such as tank, off-tank, nuker, main and secondary healers etc.) forces a rut of gameplay in which everything is balanced solely around classes that focus on healing, prot and damage. No stealth system for Sins, no real way to aggro and maintain it except by position etc.
The tl;dr version is GW was poorly conceived, riding a "free to play" wave to counter the inevitable backlash against poor maintenance and content updates. On top of that, GW has been poorly maintained, with slapdash "balance" updates and poorly thought out and implemented class additions that make the game feel bloated.
Yes you have hundreds of options and combinations, but the balance and design of the game makes it so that only a very few are ever very effective, especially given the average skill level of a random PUG.
As to the "meaningless farmfest" welcome to the world of MMORPGs. After the novelty has worn off and you've leveled a couple of characters and beaten the campaigns, thats all thats left, the search for more loot. You can PvP sure, and help guildies with their PvE, but for the player who has six or seven level 20s and a couple suits of FoW, GW doesn't offer anything NEW.
I'm sure some will mention their business model and how they're poor and suffering and like little Orphan Oliver just desire a little more gruel. Those people know nothing about business, and its safe to say that ANet's business practices and long term survival don't depend on costume sales, they're not Spencer's after all. The point is, for any persistent online game, just as in business, you must expand or fail, stagnation means death. GW has been stagnating for a while now, and as an informed consumer, my decision of whether to buy GW2 doesn't hinge on one single exploitable skill out of hundreds (there are many others btw), but instead on whether ANet can make their games FUN.
A single exploit skill doesn't remove fun, what does is a lack of replayability, lack of new and interesting content, under-developed storylines that make me want to beat my head in when I read the dialogue, etc.
ANet has the potential to not only make GW2 a great game, but to also inject new life and verve into GW1 to keep and increase the loyal playerbase. Their current path seems to be absolutely counter-intuitive though, with lackluster performance with their flagship game (series), terrible customer support, terri-bad handling of PR, swiss chesse like security and a host of other issues. All of which makes Shadow Form nearly a moot issue, and its detractors seem like infants.
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Your own argument shoots itself in the foot. If farming is all that's left after the main content is done, then the only way to increase the game's lifespan is to slow down the farming. Because eventually, once you have eighteen stacks of ecto or whatever, even farming is meaningless (or rather, just as meaningless as putting another character through the game, but with far more repetition).
Balanced is more fun than not balanced. Whether you agree with this idea or not, it is a core assumption upon which ALL games of this sort are based.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mcsnake85
I dont totaly agree...
Mobs have bad build ok,they move and do action with a limited AI (in other words they are stupid) and sometimes they kill themself...BTW they still do more damage then you,i can say triple damage.
The point is not how good are you or how good is your buil etc, the point is : you dont deal damage..
without other things in play if you and mob cast the same skill MOBS always win.Because it dont have only higher HP but higher damage and defense too,so you cant kill it..thanks god we can change skill,make a good build and solo kill something but not always is enough..
A monk as you said can do something more...a sin can do something more (with only critical build too, withou sf)..but other classes?And you think that some mobs dont have aegis or other thing to defend?
I was just compare base damage of (fireball) a skill without other things...
I have to be honest, i really dont like Shadow Form, but i use it, not always but when necessary...why?because with SF you can do a lot of farm and you are stronger than a mobs..just only because they cant hit you is a great advantage...
If they update some skill and make mobs die more easy, the first thing i do is give a kick in the a** to my sin...because NO ONE NEED God mode if you can kill MOBS IN 4/5 SKILLS....and i want to say just another thing, i dont pretend to apply this in HM, but just NM.
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I guarantee you that if your monk is doing his job properly, and you are bringing a decent build (that you are using properly), that you are doing FAR, FAR more damage than the monsters are. If monsters had the kind of offensive power you seem to think they do, HM would be impossible.
The fact that decent players can beat monsters most of the time is proof that players are more powerful.
If you and the mobs use the same skills the same way the monsters win every time? Yeah, well if the players and monsters have the same "power level", the players will always win. That's like saying that a guy with a sword will always beat a guy with a gun in a fight if the guy with the gun has no bullets. Your hypothetical situation is taking away one guy's advantage while leaving the other guy with his. It's not a valid comparison. Mobs get extra armor and damage and whatnot, you get intelligence and good builds and prot and PvE skills. If you're using the same skills as the mobs, you're
supposed to lose, because you're playing wrong. If a guy in hockey gets the puck and shoots it into his own goal, should we give his team a point? Of course not, because he RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up, and he should not be rewarded with victory for RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing up.
What I seem to be getting from your post is that you want players to be able to have as much damage (pre-enemy defenses) that monsters do, while having just as much innate defense as they do. Ok, sure, I'll agree with that, once you give the monsters intelligence equalling the average human player, good monks with prot and heals comparable to that of humans, 3 monster skills per bar that are equal in power to PvE skills, good builds, consumables, the ability to rez at a shrine, and good team synergy.
Oh wait, no, I read that wrong. You want a
single player to have the power of a mob. Sure, we can do that, once each monster in said mob has the power of a mob.
Oh great, now we've got an infinite recursion going. And now Anet looks even more incompetent, because even beginner programmers know that you always program recursive stuff with an ending condition.
