promote skillful teamplay and revitalize guild wars in one day!

I was referring to end chest giving an additional like 5k rather than giving anything from an onyx gem to an emerald blade but i was being sarcastic as well. The point i was trying to make is that giving extra chest rewards is not a good idea.

I am personally amused that the idea to "revitalize guild wars" can basically be expressed by the following:

Nerf things. Add minipets.

Zkeys will NEVER (REPEAT NEVER) be 1k again. Why would ANYONE sell Zkeys for 1k rather than just use it? The only time they approached that low value was before the Z title. Those days are LONG gone & won't EVER be back!

Great idea. The DoA is already a pain in the ass to do, kill it completly. Defy Pain isn't enough for tanking, a tactic sadly needed in every elite area.

And how exactly does this promote skillful teamplay and revitalize guild wars? All I see here is a request to nerf popular farms, add new skins, and add exclusive minis to dungeon chests, which won't get people to flock back to Guild Wars at all and it won't make people think anymore than "What new pvx farming build is there to use?"

Oh, and if you want to make yourself a little more credible, don't start sprouting bullshit about getting this done in one day, because I doubt any one is going to believe that after seeing how long anet takes to update its game.

Oh yeh jus to clarify,hell no to minis. They were a stupid thing to make 'rare' in the first place. They screw the economy up more than SF...

from reading the replies, opinions are mixed about the ideas proposed. let me reply to some posts and reinforce some of my thoughts.

so you would promote powertrading to afford something you want? why can't i just play the game to get what i want? you may retort that you can, but then how long would it take you to accumulate enough ecto to buy an unded oni through gameplay? even speedclearing DoA over and over and over at 1 hr a run avg and 3 runs for an armbrace, you're looking at over 250 successful runs.

is ghostly hero common? the drop rates can be fairly low, but high enough to promote play in that area.

you are correct. nerfing the super sweet tank builds will make DoA much more challenging causing few guilds to play in DoA if the rewards remain the same. as far as i know, anet is on track to do this sometime in the future.

the rare minis are in a market of their own. they keep increasing up and up because they are not obtainable in game except from trading.

all it would take is change duration of SF to 0, change duration of OF to 0, change damage of the 2 maintainable smites to 0. Add 1 item to the drop tables of about 20 end chests. you and i could do it in 1 day, but you're right, that means about 1 year for anet.

so nerfing SF means we will have even less build variety than we already do?!? well i better quit right now!

aatxes auto attack for 300+ dmg it doesn't matter what skills they have. and as far as i know, there's no monsters that maintain SF, OF or 600/smite your azz.

I thought the nerfing had support of the majority of the community (especially on guru), and is already in the process of happening? its not my idea, its just inevitable.


let me reinforce some points:
1. those that won the past 2 art contests or the henchman contest made more ectos than most players did in a year of playing. great for them, but a slap in the face to any hardcore gamer.

2. powertrading is very profitable, but requires vast sums of money, time, patience, and potentially a lack of consideration towards others. most of the powertraders i know, don't actually play the game anymore because the rewards of sitting in kamadan are far more than playing the game.

3. botting is a major issue. someone i know has raked in 1000s of ectos worth of tonics through the snowball dominance bot alone. anet has a lot of easily farmable zones/quests and just can't keep up with banning bots anymore. how long did it take them to make one simple change to the HFFF quest to put an end to botting it? over a year.

3. now lets say i don't want to engage in either of those activities to earn my coin. i make more gold running players through dungeons or uw than i do actually forming an 8 man team for any sort of activity, DoA included. as i see it, this promotes a few people playing guild wars and the rest going afk.

4. during festivals, solo farming makes more money than any kind of cooperative pve playing.

are there only a few people that see something wrong with this?

If you only read half of my quote, then you're at most going to only understand half of my thought. Nerfing popular team builds and adding a rare item at the end of the chest is not going to get people who have quit the game to come running back, it's only going to piss off the people who have been playing the game. If you want to "revitalize" the game Anet is going to have to do a few things.
1) Rework areas so that degenerate builds aren't needed yet make the area fun to play-this is not the same as making it easy
2) Add more content/story to the game (Another EoTN)
3) Listen to your pvp base instead of pulling skill ideas out of your ass
4) Make the game safe to play and eliminate the bots/hackers
I could add more, but I'm not in a thinking mood.


What was the slap in the face was Anet not creating anymore tournaments on a global scale.

You can't kill powertrading.

Agreed.

The game is old. People want the shinys from elite areas, but don't want to waste their time doing it after all the time they've invested in that area. They have money, and therefore will spend it that actually play, in hopes of gaining great profit.

You can't so this in an online game. Anet did it once with Smiter Boon and admitted they wanted it out of the game, but in fact it is saying they didn't know how to balance a skill properly anymore. If Anet would make the change you suggested, it would be a very, very sad move.

Accept the fact that you are not entitled to own everything in this game. This isn't Super Mario where every players should be able to get all 120 stars. This is a game shared with thousands of other people, each of them wanting to be unique. Be glad GW doesn't have a reward system like WoW, where only the person that gets to be the first that reaches character level 85 gets the 1 time only reward.

I'll have to side with The Drunkard here, the game is old. Nothing that Anet changes or will implement new will make people get back to the game, or let existing players enjoy the game more for an extended period. People have done everything over and over, and don't want to be bothered with bringing up new builds, they just want to get to their goal as fast as possible.

The only times when PvE was still exciting for me was when there still were unknown places left. But even when playing Nightfall I noticed it was basically more of the same. Guild Wars is in need of some major overhaul, and that's exactly what Anet is doing: designing a sequel and keeping the original playerbase busy with minor updates.

Anet knows how to balance skills properly?


I would have to disagree with you. While it is true that some people may just want to "get to their goal as fast as possible", there are also plenty of us that play the game for the fun of it. There are those of us who actually do enjoy PvE, and who do not merely rush through it in an effort to get our titles or money faster. Im not saying that I like the OP's ideas, nor am i saying that the game can be revitalized to its original content, but i am saying that you should not make broad generalizations about all of us PvEers.

True. But the players who actually do enjoy PvE for the fun of it or want to take their time for it can still do so.

The problem with this game is that people want to PvE alone. I remember when it was just Prophecies, and the last mission was fairly difficult without heros (and the henchmen were retarded back than with no hero flags). I spent about 30+ minutes finding the correct classes and decent enough players to finish the map. Let alone, most builds back than weren't great like today, and guild wiki had very few builds for just completing missions. You had to be creative to kill your doppleganger.

Now let's look at today's problems with the game.

1) Raptor farming. I just recently started this, barely have been doing it (I hardly play video games anymore), but yet I've gained easily 70+ rares and made hundreds and thousands of gold off of the wintersday items.

2) Heros over players. Honestly, no fix. Heros were a great update. You only get to use 3, and there's only 2-3 of the same class. What they should fix is having 4+ necros in the group. Once one player has Livia, another person shouldn't get to use "Shining Blade Necromancer", aka Livia number 2. So that way two people can't use 4+ necromancer heros. Also, players can almost have complete control over a hero (except Olias who is the definition of F***ing retarded). When a hero screws up, it's mainly the players fault. When another player screws up, it makes the "pro" players really frustrated. Players would rather have control over things besides their character than having a PuG screw things over.

3) SF needs a nerf? I'm surprised I haven't seen this yet. SHADOW FORM - Enchantment skill. Does what it does already. Disables all other enchantment skills for 20 skills. Doesn't fix much, but no more sliver armor.

4) 600 Smite should probably be nerfed. Makes CoF a joke.

5) I'm happy with better rewards at the end. But for us title farmers, I'd like something that does more with a title like reputation instead of simple money making drops.

In my opinion, I think they should stop trying to fix what they believe is broken in GW1 with GW1 updates. Just drag it to GW2. I'd be satisfied if there was no Triple Chop or Shadow Form or Mist Form or Searing Flames in GW2. I'm sure others wouldn't cry if they don't get SF in GW2, which is a new game.

This is not a problem.

Here's the fix. Humans must be able to do the following:

- Run the exact build I give them.
- Shut up and don't say anything, nor draw on the compass.
- Wait patiently whenever I feel like tabbing out of Guild Wars.
- Be ready instantly whenever I need a group.
- Follow all orders I give them.

If they can't do that, heroes are better and we'll all play H/H.

600/smite also makes most vanquishing easier, and that's a good thing, because vanquishing is incredibly boring and time consuming - 600/smite makes it less so and is actually more fun to play than regular group play.

Also, the problem with PvE is that Shiny stuff > useful stuff, and PvE = Single player with H/H, therefor obtaining shiny stuff = useless because no one is ever going to see it.

No...but is it as easy to acquire? only 1 team can win halls at a time whereas countless people can do a dungeon at once...And I am speaking more along the lines of say a mini mad kings guard which there is no method of acquiring in game... adding one of those would dramatically percentage-wise increase the number of them in game.

Yet in a game where you can't be best armor- or weapon-wise because of skill>time, getting more rare shinies became a way to elevate yourself from the plebs.

as i have said in other threads, we need a nerf to PVE skills and make them more specific to the campaign they are from. Such as Ursan cannot be used in maps that are not Norn based. Allowing broken skills from other campaigns into places like Tyria just allows teams to destroy Prophecies.

All this speed clearing has ruined the game with the availability of consumeables, glyph of swiftness (the real two problems with game that allow SF to be perma).

Other skills like Cry of Pain, Dwaven stability, etc etc are a real problem as well. Things like MQSC so people can farm the hell out their luxon titles without ever having had to fight one single battle in AB or FA/JQ. Really sux. It kind of makes me feel cheated out of all the hours i spent just getting to r10 so far.

This game needs to reward skillful team play or skillful design of builds if you want to solo with heros and henchies. But all we get in UW or FoW is the same old builds.

Whoever said remove 600/smite because it makes CoF a joke.... really? 600/Smite has been around long before CoF. How about nerf CoF? Ever heard of Chilblains or Dying Nightmares? A few monster skill updates with rend perhaps?

How about upgrading some of the PvE skills to elite. That way you can't keep your 3 OP PvE skills on top of the real elite. PI, EVAS, EBSH are prime candidates.

Just a one pve-skill limit is good.

I kinda need those PvE skills for convenient H/H. Norn shouts and Pain Inverter are part of a build that lets me properly use Discord necros.

Without that I'm back to either smiting (shit) or heal/prot (shit with heroes), or 600/smite (crashing your precious balance even harder).

The game's dead, folks. So, let's just move on shall we?


SOLOing & H/Hing = bad
PUGing = bad
nerfing everything/Not Buffing + Balancing = bad
no new content/skill changes = bad
bad = bad = bad
GW1 = bad

It is what it is.

There's a big problem that no-one seems to notice, and this applies especially to the day 1 players. GW simply isn't the same game now that it was when it was first released. People buying GW now, are not buying the same GW that you bought when it was brand new, and regardless of what people may think that aNet can do to change that brutal fact, it won't change.
That being the case, you sort of have to see the side of the argument that says leave things alone. Whilst I am ambiguous about the effects of all the half-assed nerfing and dartboard buffing coming up, if only from a builders perspective, I can also see that there are countless players out there who either lack the skills to rebuild, or those that are tired of GW to the point that those uber builds are the most enjoyable part. They are still GW players, if not for the same reasons as you, and as I've said countless times, they paid for their copies too.

GW is really unfriendly for new players, by the way, because there are so few of them. Thus, they don't get to have the experience of tightly filled outposts everywhere, loads of groups, everyone more or less at the same place as them, etc.

These days it's half-empty to fully empty, the only people in outposts are the occasional new player and a few old players AFK.

This is a big part of what I was saying. The new players aren't going to get the old outposts. What they get at the moment is empty outposts, and the only players they do see are there for exactly what most of them will end up getting too: runs through boring as hell content, so that they can get their toon to a sufficient level to get to the outposts, etc that are still full. At the mpment, for the most part, it's the evil nasty farm and running builds, or variants thereof, that are enabling them to do this.

It's one thing to expect a noob to grind their way through a game that has populated outposts, you know, where you can ask someone besides Wiki for help, and get an answer that isn't either blank silence, or "Hey wtf piss off n00ber!!". But that isn't "The new GW", and regardless of a blanket of nerfs to keep a minority, and I mean an absolute minority happy, it's never going to revert.

So what now? Is everyone going to be happy with a GW where the formerly packed outposts mirror exactly the old old formerly packed outposts current population? Zero?

Point to note, I went to DoA on the day of the last ZB there. Packed, mainly with runners, turning a roaring trade, and customers, happy to pay a small fee to have them run it for them. Went there 2 days afterwards, exactly the same time, and guess what? Grand population, 6 people. How much u wanna bet those 6 were all farmers? So if we take away the farm builds, how many u think will be there then? Hmm, that'd probably be zero. And in the opinion of the so-called purists, I'm sure that's the right number. They want Vanilla? I think they're about to get it.

when i've joined over a year ago and used to play on polish districts (even less populated than english at night), i just played my way through prophecies (without heroes - had only prophecies back then). sure, i was playing with two friends, but had to do some missions/quests alone as well.
after beating prophecies, we've bought factions and we played randomly. that is - one rerolled to another character and had to start over while the other one played less frequently. i've pretty much beaten most of the factions alone, later helping friends when they caught up after i've figured the builds to do it. i remember killing shiro for the first time - i didn't know guru or pvx back then, just gw wiki, and still had no heroes.

we've started to look for a guild only after we had all three campaigns and already beaten them in normal mode, so we're not noobs asking for help all the time or whining, but we could learn the game and be sufficient on our own.

what am i saying is that if someone likes the game, enjoys the storylines, likes to figure out new builds for every location and set up a team that's better for location X than it was for Y, gw is still enjoyable. it's only 'problem' is that gw isn't as social as various other mmos, namely lineage. you can't play on your own there for too long, a clan in lineage is everything; a solo player can't achieve top stuff, can't even really level up later or gather better equipment, kill bosses, etc. gw is not so much social - you can play it as an online single player game and/or play with friends/guildies for fun (or, well, in case of speed clears, for ingame profit). there's no need to group, no need to join a guild and no need to play with other people as gw is not designed this way.
playing solo or playing with people is optional. and that's a really big pro of gw. even though it might be hard to find a pug in most outposts, there still are guilds that advertise in kamadan/la/kaineng/guru/other sites frequently, there are guilds that would invite newcomers as long as they use their brains and there is always the option of making a guild and inviting other newbies.

on the other hand, gw isn't that much different to other mmos, at least lineage, when it comes to forming a group. you can form a pug - sure, go kill a boss, farm materials, go spoil some mobs in catacombs. but pugs are inferior to a clan- or alliance-party. so sooner or later you have to join a clan in order to be competitive with other players and actually be able to get drops from a boss.
gw is pretty much the same - sooner or later you have to join faction-based guild if you want to max out your allegiance title, you have to join high-end pve guild if you want to do doa more often on stable builds, you have to join sc guild if you want to do sc. or form one.

or you can play on your own, or with a friend, and try to achieve everything on your own rather than being run or get all the builds from pvx/guildies.

everything is optional. that's gw.

Because if there was such a need, Guild Wars would have died a lot sooner.

Wait, are you saying that new players are using SF and 600/smite to mow through Maguuma and Kaineng City? Cause...I don't see that happening.

TBH, most new players don't ever go near Maguuma. Hell, most old players don't go anywhere near Maguuma. That's beside the point, and so is Kaineng. If you honestly believe that I meant either of those 2 places, well..Yeah ok.

*Note: last time I went near Maguuma, it was with.... a perma. Farming Nick items. Osnap, didn't you say ppl didn't perma there?

Nice idea, dr love is clever much more clever than anet employees.

/Signed

i just think its a shame that players like myself (and millions more out there) that we play in excess of 3 years, and end up with...well not an awful lot

my "luck" isn't great in my real life or in game. (i suppose my r2 unlucky has something to do with that lol)

i have a fair few items and armours etc, i have chaos gloves and around 400k cash. i am happy with the game but i get bored with h/h'ing everything (not through choice) and not being able to afford pretty weapons and shields.

so what i propose is this: weapons / armour / shields etc. are made cheaper, or more easily obtainable so people can have more variation on the way they look. personally it keeps me happy just to change my appearance every once in a while, knock out gw snobs by using the pvp idea (j) pvp equipment in pve. e.g. open a new panel and select the armour and weps you wish to use.

as for mini's and tonics etc i believe those have been rightfully obtained by contest winners and birthday gifts etc and should be left in the state they are, a collectable / rare item.

as for op solo farm builds etc, why just not reverse the drop rates? e.g. more drops for full teams rather than playing solo? and people say speed clearing etc ruins the economy? its all a numbers game.
but through my time of playing guild wars i have seen shadow forming ruin alot of nice content anet have implemented.

i personally think that using the pvp idea of equipping a character through another panel will keep us veterans happy, i just wanna look pwetty. use same idea in pve, (J) then select your armour / weapons / runes (full pve content - still have right ranks etc. keep it fair?)

i wanna hear what people have to say about this idea? i'd be happy to see what you all think

If they add these minis, i will FINALLy be able to catch em all!