What does playing GW "normally" mean? And why?

Yes, it's watching heroes play for me.

IT'S NOT FUN.

No. The way the game was meant to be played is defined by its creators. As the game evolves that definition may change, but nonetheless it is those in charge of the game who continue to define it. If a player is able to play the game in a manner that was not intended, that indicates the game is flawed (and no game is perfect, so exploits exist in every game). It's certainly possible that playing a game in such a manner may be more fun to some players, and in the case of an MMO it might be a good idea (businesswise) to move in that direction if its overwhelmingly popular. The players can influence the creator, but the creator is still in charge.

Yes, sort of. The devs define what is acceptable, and the players define what is normal from within the bounds of what is acceptable. My opinion of normal play in GW is 8 players playing through the storyline, and along the way experimenting with different skills and synergies within their own build and with their party members (not copy/paste from wiki).

These are the kinds of questions that are just frustrating. As in, we know what we mean, you know what you mean, we can't really explain it well, and you're going to abuse it.

To me, playing the game right is to not try and find exploits to the game or things that make it way easy. No MMORPG gives great rewards for things that are incredibly easy, and when Anet proves they don't want people getting rewards with hardly any risk by nerfing previous builds, it's obvious they don't want people to play the game that way.

People abused SF to the point where about 50%+ of the farming builds contained it. It had to be nerfed.

Question two - Let's look at it this way for PvP - Anet created things like Jade Quary, Fort Aspenwood, and Alliance Battles that have shrines/defenses/whatever. When people don't focus on these objectives, they aren't playing the game correctly. How does this affect other players? Quite simple - one team usually dominates, getting easy faction. While the other just parishes.

In PvE - simple economics, or simply making titles a joke.

I agree for the most part, except that I feel unconventional "gimmick" builds, (such as discordway), are simply a clever way of using your heroes. On that topic I agree with Cluebag. It's totally allowed within the game mechanics, and in no way like botting. It might be stronger than Anet had intended or foreseen, but to me it's still "normal", even though it might be gimmicky/unconventional. It's simply clever, that's all. Anet made the game so you can have secondary professions, and making ritualists out of your necro heroes is an option that is perfectly viable. If other people use this to skip content, then that is "not-normal" play. And yes, gimmicky builds may allow you to play through the game with free party slots, that others can fill up and be afk, but basically, a good (team of) player(s) with good builds can play through the entire game with a 7/8 party, so destroying gimmicky builds won't change that.
But as you say: People hopefully play whatever they like, picking up among the options allowed. Exactly my feeling too.
Find a guild. A good one. There's plenty still around.

Finding a good guild is nearly as hard, if not harder than finding a good pug. Finding a good guild that do most things in the game (maybe except for PvP), active in non-standard time (Morning/Late Night), actually tries to do things fast even without gimmicks, don't go on a billion coffee breaks, use vent/TS for harder areas, and is mature is torture. ESPECIALLY with the hundreds of LYING guilds everywhere, and no guild preview system available.

Check out my very first post on this thread:

Looks like we agree even on this point.

Many people mentioned this in a way or another. To me it's just natural that if something becomes popular people will try to obtain it and sell it to make a profit (like opening up a shop). Some people play only for that (trading). When there is demand someone will try to play the supplier because some people make their ingame gold like that.

So you also believe that traders don't play the game normally? They don't actually play content they just buy/sell and may cause all "these" economy issues.

On the other hand: Would you prefer GW would contain more grind? Would you prefer ANet made popular drops even harder to get because they're popular? GW today is already a grintastic game far from the release "no grind" philosophy.... why would you want it to become even more so?

Economy doesn't mean intentionally sabotaging suppliers to maintain an artificially high price for certain items... (well at least not an opened/free economy). China might do that tho

Actually China (and Japan/other Asian countries to a lesser extent) actually plays the role of the farmer. The governments provides "shadow form" support which increases supply and lowers price. Its totally the opposite of you analogy :P

As for the grind arguments, generally I see hypocritical "in a pro guild" people that screams for farming nerfs because it doesn't affect them at all. I've already seen examples of the people wanting farming nerfs because it "ruins" grouping, then tell people to H/h in another post when they complain about lack of pugs, and then tell people to "get a guild" when they complain about H/h boredom, followed by some sort of trolling "you suck quit" comments. And no, not different posters.

True But then we love China "the farmer" since everything is "made in china" and costs almost nothing.... Good point, I wonder if people complaining about in game economy bitch about Chinese goods being too cheap and would prefer prices for something (TV plasma screens?) never drop cause they're "high end" items and should be "hard to get".

Hi-end items in the real world drop in price as they get surpassed/superseded by better, improved new items.

In online games, hi-end items - expecially those that only differ in looks, like GW items - are pretty much status symbols only.

So, stripping those items of their "status symbol" makes them pointless.

That is not the only reason, even if the item doesn't get superseded the production costs goes down as we learn how to produce them more efficiently and "en masse". *This* is what happens with the ingame "production" actually since we (the players) can't produce new items in GW1 to supersede older items.

So basically you're saying yes to:

PS: I wonder... would you rather ANet implemented something like: "Voltaic Spear has a 0.0000000001% drop rate and there are only 2000 voltaic spears to drop in the entire game. After the 2000th voltaic spear dropped none shall drop ever again."? Same for all "high end" items.

PS2: I don't think any kind of dropped items are "player status" they just say: "I am the lucky guy that the random generator blessed with this rare item". It doesn't say anything about how much you've accomplished since you don't get one per accomplishing something, it just says something about how lucky you were when the random drop rate was evaluated and turned into your favor (which could be the first time ever you open the UW/... chest for instance) and that's about all.

Not really. Just to keep up with this economic parallel:

- Farmers are suppliers
- Some abusive methods are being used to supply certain items: speed clears that make runs usually meant to take hours down to a handful of minutes
- Some suppliers have what in open economies is called "unfair advantage", either allowing them to have uncommonly broad stocks of items (overfarming) or the faculty of manipulating prices (powertrading)

Europe and America have imposed quotas for pretty much all the supplied goods and have strict rules against unfair competition. On the contrary, in China pretty much everything is allowed, even the violation of copyrights.

It's not black or white.

The problem is not farming, but overfarming. Limited supply is not the answer. I think it's good for hi-end items to become more common and widely available, but there's also a point where hi-end items should retain at least some of their hi-end status to make sense. For those who don't farm and purchase from suppliers (farmers) some value retention over time is expectable, while most of the suppliers tend to monopolize the market and impose disproportioned prices for thw rarest items - I've seen so many Obsidian Edges around that I can't believe they're still so rare to be worth a million, yet that's the price I've been asked for one. Depreciation is non-existant on the most-wanted items, as a result of price manipulation, while there's an abyss separating the values of hi-end items and the "middle-end", overfarmed stuff, now worth nothing.

So why does everyone wants Eternal Blades, when it's widely recognized as one of the ugliest things in game? Masochism?

Why are the rarest items also the most sought after? The most traded ones?

So you can say "I was not lucky to drop it, but I can afford it anyway" <- that's exactly the definition of "status symbol"

Is time "overfarming"? Some items have been dropping for 5 years now. I think you get what I mean.

I believe any try to monopolize/control/restrict access to certain items just to feel "player status" is preserved is wrong and impossible to achieve. Time is not the side of anybody attempting that.

I actually believe quite the contrary. Do you own an item that was cool 5 years ago and you stopped playing 4 years ago? Good for you, but when you come back your 5 years old "player status" item should mean nothing anymore than: "oh he has that old thing and he thinks he's cool".

Why should players retain their "status" through high-end items if they haven't played for X years now? If they don't play their "status" should lower and "high-end status" should be displayed with the coolest new high-end items added to the game recently that currently active players can get.

But on the other hand I'm a person that couldn't care less about "player status". All I care is how people play when they're in my party. Kicked off my party plenty of "FoW armor high-end status weapon" players that had no clue how to use their 8 skills. Actually in my experience it looks like those players that go for the items... are usually bad players. Anecdotal evidence but that's my impression.

PS: I believe power trading is normal play btw.

I too believe power trading is absolutely acceptable. And I myself don't care about status symbols. I must be one of the few "seasoned" players around who still hasn't bought even one set of Obsidian Armor. I don't like any of them, so I went for the armor sets I liked and I was happy with what I considered a good look, even tough I don't look "wealthy" to other players. I don't care. The fact you and I don't care tough doesn't mean status symbols are not there.

But again, you're making extreme examples. We're not talking about 5 years old items now. Actually, some oldschool items that were just "cool" 5 years ago are now priceless collectors items. We're talking about the average gold items dropping from dungeon chests. Some skins were pretty novel and uncommon (like, say, Crystal Flame Staff, Fiery Embersteel Blade, Pyroclastic Axe, just to name a few), but are so overfarmed now they are worth very little and also hard to sell. Or think of Diamonds and Onyx Gemtones. There's no middle ground today: we have "hi-end" items worth millions (mostly because of inflated prices, not because they're actually that "rare": check a random GW:Guru Auction, you can find quite a few Obsidian Edges for sale) and "common items" not worth the time spent trading them.

Restrictions are absolutely possible: toning down skills makes some farming techniques less profitable, so supply is slowed down. Slowed down, not removed completely, so that the farmed items aren't worth nothing in a matter of days. It's probably way too late now, but if some form of restriction was implemented sooner, you wouldn't be hearing so many players complaining about the game offering crap "rewards" today.

Limited import quotas are pretty common in "open" markets: they slow supply down to prevent "unfair competition". Rules are necessary: markets with no rules (like China) are not "free", are just chaotic, and the most artful one wins.

But that's just it. It didn't take a "couple of days" to get where we are today. It's just that farmers farm the same items for the past 3 years now. So it was bound to happen. No one can design a system where items can keep their rarity for 3 years. Even the mini polar bear would be common by now if wintersdays was everyday. You can't stop time from passing, people/games from aging etc.

I remember the days when grapes were valuable and being traded in between players. I remember when specific items were valuable which triggered a farming crusade for said item which made those that farmed it first richer and made that item widely available. It didn't happen in days, that's for sure. The pace of the game was just fine.

What you observe today is the result of 3 years of lack of content updates, not overfarming.

Overfarming just made it worse: what I observe today is what I could observe 1 or 2 years ago already, while hi-end items still retain their "elite" prices even years after their introduction.

Lack of content updates makes this more evident now, but overfarming hugely speeded up the process.

Power trading would be fine if it didn't get it's income from a degenerate system (speed clears) or scam people with methods such as selling for more than the trader. Really without all the excess items there wouldn't be as many for people to powertrade.

No, actually, they're not. They're acting as a group of individuals, or maybe pairs. The game is designed for the party to stick together to make a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts (except when you split for tactical reasons) not for having unkillable individuals each soloing a different part of the zone.

Where it becomes an issue is when things get so ingrained that there's only one way of doing things - at that point, if you don't enjoy doing it that way, you're kinda stuck. If the gimmicks work but are just one way among several, fine. If the gimmick is overwhelmingly better than anything else, not so fine.

Lack of content means people got two choices (mostely): leave and play something else, stay and farm. Had there be new content many of the players would be out experiencing it and the farmers would do their routine. But since there isn't any new content many people that would normally not farm... got a new job.

So we have an old game, with very old items, a growing number of farmers and a descending number of people that actually want to buy items from farmers. So supply goes up (more farmers, time goes by) demand goes down ("normal" buyers are not playing this game anymore and don't need the items the farmer crowd that's getting larger farm)... so what do you expect to happen?

So I don't believe the cause is what you blame. I think this aging process is only natural. And when you take the farmers their tools, remember that crowd that moved from casual play to casual farm choosing to still stick around? They'll join the other half and just leave because: no new content to play, nothing to farm "casually"... what's there do to?

What's left to do in GW today?

The goal of DTSC is not vanquishing is faction points farming. You have the same choices you ever had to vanquish DT. Discordway works, pugs work... but no one can form any pug in *any* outpost for a vanquish because there rarely are 8 random players in an outpost to begin with.

If there would be a better way to gain kurz faction the DTSC crowd would move and it would become a ghost outpost like all the rest. It is a bit ridiculous to claim that you can't find a pug to vanquish DT because of DTSC.

I believe it is the same with the UW and other (I know you won't find this easy to swallow). UWSC is not done by people that want to play UW for the fun the UW area provides, UWSC is done by people having different goals than just "complete an elite area".

This was nicely proven immediately after they've added the skellies in UW. Speed clears were affected as people didn't really know how to react to the added monsters so they all moved to FoW speed clears for shards. No one found it easier to get pugs to complete UW because none of the speed clear players want to pug to finish UW to begin with.

They couldn't care less about UW or players that want to finish UW for the first time. If ectos would drop on the moon and they could get there to farm it faster than in UW, they'd all move on the moon.

You have to realize that people would always follow their interests and with a 5 year old game no one (?) is interested in helping new players play some content for the first time or pug just to fool around... and nothing is going to change what players want at this stage of the game.

No sorry, it's indeed a natural process, but it was drastically speeded up by excessive farming. The effects of overfarming have been more than evident for years now. As I said, you only notice them now that there's no new content to replace overfarmed items, so pretty much any items, be it 5 or 2 years old, is available in so big quantities today that the supply overshadows the demand and values plummet.

Think of the Colossal Scimitar, just to name one. It went from 1600k to nothing in a matter of what, 3 months? And that was 3 years ago, when the game still had some development ongoing. People soon forgot about it, because they went for the Elemental Sword instead.

Don't oversimplify things. There's rarely only one single cause to problems. You can't simply discard the effects generalized farming has had on economy. Unless you can explain why perfectly decent items with highly appreciated skins like the Murakai's Reaver are now just merchant food. I don't believe it's "natural", CoF has been overfarmed. Onyx Gemstones? You name it.

Not that I care if items are worthless, but some realism is needed: overfarming has had an impact on economy, and that's a mere fact.

The most impact still comes from how the game wants you to "find" the stuff you want. You either have to go out and farm one specific enemy over and over until the drop chance finally caves in. Or you grind something else and buy the item of your choice. Both ways, the game sets itself up to train all users in the art of grinding, if they ever want something.

There are too few items which you can truly "achieve". At the very low end, there are the BMP and campaign-completion items; also some "I was there" masks. At the higher end DoA items can also be achieved in a reasonable way and some EotN armor is linked to a title. But apart from that, there is no item that will have you do something in the game that is not either group-farmgrinding or solo-grinding. The stuff you can buy for Z-Coins is already 99% questionable and just there for the sake of something being there.

There are 36 (?) lines of green text you can earn, but hardly anything in the game to show them off; aside from the green line of text that it. Six titles have skills, which is nice, the rest basically has no reward. I am sure the little content that is still released is wasted, if it is simply applied to a chest for solo-farmers.

Running through a vanquish with Discordway is, to me, normal, because you're using a team build that relies on 8 characters with synergistic skills. Furthermore, it's a modular build that, while able to specialize for particular areas, is not basically an insta-win button by exploiting weaknesses in the AI or builds of mobs (ie, an inability to strip SF). I say this because you seem to think that everyone here espousing different ideas of what "normal" is would be happy to see anything that doesn't have a clearly defined front-, mid- and backline (with proper classes in their proper places) perish in a fire. That's not at all true. Now, it's a bit offputting when a midline class can, say, outperform a backline class at backlining (ER ele), but that's just a balance thing; I don't think anyone wants to see a game where eles can't play as backline, they just don't want them to be the absolute best at it.

I've always found 2 UA monks + hero of choice to be better than discord, but then again that's personal preference, and it requires more than setting up 3 necros since your 3rd optional hero changes based on the area you are doing, anyhow I'm just rambling.

In an instanced game normal is what the end user wants it to be. Anet provides the tools and it's up to the craftsman to decide the best way to use them and a true craftsman never blames his tools.

Actually normal means intended or most common, and in the context of GW people use the former. This is not a balance discussion, it has to do with a question that was asked, what do people mean when they say 'normal'?

This does not reflect my own opinion of what should be considered normal, but from my experience, when people refer to playing Guild Wars "normally", they usually mean playing through the game, doing missions, PvP etc etc and NOT doing any form of speed clearing or solo farming, as well as not skipping content by paying runners etc.

A lot of the time, this expression is simply used to criticise the specialised builds such as solo farms and speed clears, and also to attack the idea of people "skipping" content by getting runs and therefore, in some people's minds "cheating", as they firmly believe these things have no place in the original plans of the game.

Show me where this mysterious article says what Anet's intentions are of how we the player base should be playing their game. If "normal" is defined by what is most common then Shadowform is normal as well as the SC crowd. Your definition of normal is no closer to the truth then my definition.

In an instanced world with an environment catered to role playing the turn normal doesn't exist except in the mind of the end user. We decide who, when, where, how, what and why we do what we do at our own discretion. There is no roadblock in PvE that suggests you cannot proceed with said skill bar and/or tactics etc...

I didn't read all the posts because I'm lazy... But to me playing Guild Wars "normally" is playing it the way you feel most comfortable.
If you like to take your time and enjoy your experience with your new character every time you create one that's fine. If you want to grind your way to level 20 in less than 4 hours because you can't stand waiting that's fine to. If you like doing casual or "Hardcore" PvE that's fine or if your a "hardcore" PvP'er that's fine to.
To me there is no "normal" only your way.

The game played "NORMALY" is playing it how the societal norm stands...if its farming then the norm is farming, if its pugging the norm then is pugging....normal isnt the word people want to use >__>

Playing the game how its meant to be played is However you want to, Guildwars was designed to allow players to play it how they want. The only problem here is farming became so intensive in some areas it restricted other players fun. THIS is where the term how it was meant to be played came from, from those people unable to get into a group to have fun themselves, because its so packed with farmers, or pug-hateing players.

Meant to be played was being inviting to everyone, and when something breaks from that and restricts someones play style its dissalowing the game to be played how it was meant to be. thats my view. Permaform i belive broke the rule on this restricting anyone who wanted to get into UW to be a sin/rit/necro/monk/ele with a meta team build...the other classes were left out because they had no use there. 600/smite i saw no problem with seeing as it was used more as a running tool than a farming tool...or at least both in combination.

They think it is a single player game:S I know you can play it solo but who buys an online game to play solo...

They play it multiplayer too you know!

They solo the game, then e-peen their cool shit in multiplayer while effectively blowing the economy to shit. You just have to look at it from that point of view to understand the happiness generated to them.

megalomania - a psychological state characterized by delusions of grandeur

Just use deductive reasoning, the areas were designed for a party of 8, therefor they should take a party of 8 to complete. in other words, the bars that allowed quick clears with one or two people or invincibility are broken, I believe recently ArenaNet even used the term "unacceptible"

But they did nothing that was forbidden in order to do that. There is no build that could not be learnt (eventually) by the majority of the playerbase (I know, that was a leap of faith), and unbalanced builds were there for the taking for a very long time. Anyone so inclined could have taken the same route as the solo E-peeners. I remember when I first started green farming Grenth's Footprint with other players and there'd be 'Grats' all around when 1/8 got a green, but it didn't take long before the party sizes were being reduced to get a better chance of those drops. Ultimately, that has just been progressed to the point where 1 person is all that it needs to get the drops you want.

I doubt that ANet designed the areas for an optimally efficient party of 8 though. They'd be preventing the less-able player from having fun if they did. This leaves room for the more-able to play more efficiently.

1st Point: I was responding to the 'Who buys a multiplayer game to solo' point that Squirrels made. Never said they did anything illegal, just said it killed the fun for non-hardcore players and people who didn't want to solo on a multiplayer game. Megalomania is still applicable to people who did/do solo in a multiplayer game. Its all about the e-peen that we stroke.

2. I agree with this post to a degree. I would think that 5 people would be optimal, leaving room for 3 retards or 3 heros depending on area.

Yes, I do apologize, I thought my reply came across that way too and was amending it when you replied

I'm not going to get into a full drawn out essay on this subject but here is a small small example of why "some" people prefer to play solo.

You know the gold that drops from enemies? I'm not talking gold items but actual in game cash or platinum if you will. If for example X monster drops 200g, that 200g is divided among the number of people in your party whereas in a solo situation you keep that 200g to yourself.

Another example is Raptors. There is a fixed amount of Raptors (33?) and it's more efficient to go at it alone as opposed to bringing a party of 8 to tackle just 33? foes. Regardless of loot scaling you're mathematically going to get a decrease in drops because your drops will be divided/assigned to someone other then yourself.

Having said this, there are benefits for teaming up as well. DoA, UW, FoW, The Deep, Urgoz, Slaver's, EoTN dungeons to name a few.

It all comes down to efficiency, play style and what you want to accomplish which determines how a person wants to play.

That is sooo wrong I can't even begin to explain it.

First of all you need to realize that you will never be able to change how other players want to play a game (any game). If it weren't for these players GW sales would be a lower, possibly so low that you'd find yourself alone with all the fun ruined because there is no one to play with much sooner.

Second the money of solo players that want to play an online game are just as good. Should/could ANet sell the game only to truly hard core social heavy multiplayer gamers that would do nothing solo? No. That wouldn't even be possible to implement, what you'd want them to add a clause in the EULA: "if you buy this game you must play 90% of the time spend in game in a party with other players or you will be banned"? That's ridiculous.

Third they have provided hench from the start because they wanted players that don't play regularly with others to pick this game up. They've made it even more clear with GW2 where they claim to support solo play to be able to finish anything except highend areas.

And last, in reality it's the solo players that sticked to GW1. Heavy social/multiplayer players left first when their social environment left. They are the first to leave actually ("oh my friend left to play bla bla and I'm bored I'll just go with my friends"). Soloers are still here grinding on titles and what not spending money on costumes, storage panels and what not.... so ANet should really love them and probably you should be grateful as well as whatever life is still left in this game is "solo" life that doesn't mind playing alone or doesn't need 7 other persons to form a party (impossible task in GW1 today).

I doubt any player that wants to play only with other human players has any chance of still enjoying GW1 today.

Actually, gold(money) is the only thing that scales perfectly, enemies drop gold in a small range based on their level, and then that amount is multiplied by 8. I've tested it, extensively.

It's funny you mention raptors, because nobody really mind that those can be farmed, how many times do I have to say "Speed Clears != Farming" ? Farming is fine and dandy, speed clearing is not, soloing missions as fast or faster than a full party is not, one option excessively more viable for elite areas is not. Going out and killing a few choice enemies alone however is perfectly 100% fine.

Normal:
- Step 1: Finish all the campaigns
- Step 2: Finish all the campaigns in HM
- Step 3: Vanquish
- Step 4: Capture skills
- Step 5: Max whatever titles you have left after finishing the campaigns and vanquishes
- Step 6: Finish your GWAMM, you don't have much left anyway
- Step 7: Spend the money you have earned to buy loads of armors, tormies and minis
- Step 8: PROFIT!

Not "normal:
- Step 1: Make a sin or anything really for farming
- Step 2: Farm
- Step 3: Get default armor (blindfold, black obsidian, chaos gloves)
- Step 4: PROFIT! (aka spend a shitload of money to buy you titles)
- Step 6: optional Max your titles (It will take a looong time for you to do that because you'll need to learn to use other builds than Shadow Form based ones)
- Step 7: optional Screw titles and bitch at the ones that title hunt
- Step 8: optional Quit GW at the next farm nerf

You made my point in the bold area. They provided henchmen and heroes to help people solo the game except for in highend areas, such as elite dungeons that we are discussing right now.