Game Update - 9/9/10

I just love all the professional coders here that are way better than anything ANet can employ!

Not

There are some fairly obvious flaws in the programming. If Da Vinci drew a stick figure with three legs, any idiot could point out the problem. Let's not pretend we don't have the capacity to notice when there is room for improvement.

Signed,
Professional Coder

But there is always those people who would say its amazing art(see above poster) and buy the thing.

Well put. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

See this. Cheers.

That's something that I have personally felt was -always- lacking in GW, and I hope it is something that they try to remedy in GW2. It's almost like they barely even thought out the reward system.

Drops are one thing. I've always felt like the number of drops you get is a good 3/4 times less the ammount you should be getting. Most drops are crappy, as they pretty much are with every MMO. That's not a bad thing, in fact it's good. Crappy drops might be good for anyone leveling in the area, but for most, it's gold fodder which, I repeat, it's bad at all.
Do people even realize there are actual merchant NPCs in explorable zones? I've only ever used one a handful of times. in PRE SEARING. It's because they simply aren't needed. When you go through 4 zones whiping out mobs upon mobs only to get maybe half my inventory full, if I'm lucky? I initially felt, when playing this game way back when, like pre-searing had the perfect drop-ratio, and I was very surprised when my drops started to get severely punished just because my party size was going up, and I still feel this way!
Why exactly are we punished drop-wise for more party members, when the only feasable way to play WITHOUT said party members is by solo farming? And A-net wonders why SO MANY people solo farm? Why so many people do speed runs and try so hard to break the boundries they instill? Sure, it's going to happen regardless, but I think it'd happen a lot less if people felt that they didn't need to do it, which is how people are forced to feel now.

The other side of the spectrum of course it quest rewards, which past level 20 I've always thought were laughable. Unless there's some specific reason to do the quest (certain mobs, ect), questing isn't that great, as getting XP past level 20 is like people handing you plates of food when you're already for. The XP isn't needed, especially now with all these tomes and whatnot. Arguably, I'd say XP (specifically skill points gained by XP) should never have accumulated past level 20, and they should have found a different way to give Skill Points.

Quests just feel like half of the actual reward I'm getting is useless to me (XP) and the other half is too mediocre to bother with over farming (gold)


Not that I have any hope of this ever changing in GW, but I do hope the GW/GW2 team at least realizes this, and is taking it into account with GW2

The coding isn't the issue. The game is good, whether or not Anet cycled off so many devs that the code eventually began to look like a transcribed telegraph of Helen Keller falling down a well.

Honestly, I would assume that most of us here are more concerned with the future of the game and its community. To me, personally, it looks as if Anet has given up on us and the game.

......

Man, my posts have been depressing in this thread. Sorry about that guys. I'll be hopeful from now on! You never know! John is new! He might fix everything!

You made me quit GW abandon ship!

Nah not yet I think GW is still a pretty solid, and fun game to play.
Alright it didn't achieved the perfect balance but let's hope Anet learned from everything that went wrong and GW2 will kick ass

GW might have turned into a shitty, broken car over the years, but damn it that car is stilll awesome!

It's very unfortunate for GW in the programming department, as the game is still very fun to play.

I still don't understand this sentiment. Nothing that Anet has done in the past few years indicates they've learned anything from GW1 and won't make the same mistakes in GW2. It sounds more like wishful thinking to me.

This. Linsey and Izzy designed gw2 from the bottom up. Who here thinks they've learned anything since they got moved over to full time gw2 work in 2008?

They've probably played alot of WoW since starting "work" on GW2...so if you like the mechanics there then ya sure they've learned alot.

Well I just have some faith left in Anet I guess. I noticed that here on guru there is always some atmosphere in which Anet can't do anything good, if you know what I mean. However, I'm still playing, you're still playing, a lot of people still play GW and I think we still have fun most of the time.
When I see the Anet people really enthusiastic on the GamesCom and PAX I get excited too

But maybe I'm just the last naive person on this whole forum

Speak for yourself, I'm not. I still post if that's what you're referring to.

Yeah sure any shiny new toy is exciting, but after you unwrap and look at the cheaply made parts you start to realize your mistake. All I'm saying is that if GW1 is any indication (and it is), then some of the enthusiasm is at the very least uninformed.

The game is still very playable from a PvE perspective. However, I think a lot of the hostile feelings come from high-end PvP'ers and retired high-end PvP'ers, and that should be no surprise. PvP is where poor updates and lack of updates have the biggest effect on the quality of the game. They had the opportunity to create an unbelievably great PvP format, instead they ignored their die-hard players and lost them. The message sent by the way Anet handled high-end PvP was, "we hear you, but we just don't give a shit." or maybe, "we hear you, but we would rather cater to shitters since there are more of them."

I could understand that. I myself am a PvE-only player for the 5 years Guild Wars exists. So I wouldn't know much about PvP tbh.
I never got an impression that PvP was so terrible imbalanced though
Ah well, maybe on a good day a Dervish update will pop up and we have something to talk and rave about again

PvP went through various stages. When the game first came out, there were a lot of overpowered skills, but it took longer to figure out what they were obviously because people were just learning how to play the game. After a while things were toned down and the game wasn't terribly imbalanced. Then Factions was released and along with it came new skills, new professions, and a lot of new imbalances. After a while they got it mostly sorted out and the game was no longer terribly imbalanced. Then Nightfall came out, and with it new skills, new professions, and the implementation of Heros. After a while the game settled down, skills were toned down, and the game wasn't terribly imblanced anymore. Then came EOTN (understand the pattern yet?). The same things occured and history kept on repeating itself.

The problem is, although after every new campaign/expansion, there were nerfs that toned stuff down, but the skill pool just got larger and larger and became harder to manage. A lot of concepts with classes became overpowered (unremovable paragon buffs, assassin shadow steps, etc..) which basically meant there was no way to properly balance them because the whole concept itself was imbalanced.

To make matters worse, when A.Net stopped their business model instead of nerfing the imbalanced concepts and allowing the players to evolve the meta, they decided the game would be better off with giant Elite Skill changes. So we got those two updates that changed about about 40 elites, and some of those skills (mark of insecurity, hidden caltrops, Primal Rage, Melandru's shot, Lingering Curse, etc.) became extremely over powered and left the game in a much worse state then it was in before those updates. The next months were spent toning down those skills and then when the meta was finally "playable" again, they would just do another stupid "shake up".

The addition of the campaigns, new professions, and elite skill shake ups just constantly pushed the game into further and further imbalance, and A.net has just never been able to undo the damage they did. Part of it is because they fail to see some skills as a problem, but the main reason is because they didn't view their skill update job as a means of skill balancing. They viewed it as a means to shake up the meta and turn it into something new. Unfortunately, that is the exact opposite of what most high-end PvPers wanted.

TLDR : The game has always been extremely imbalanced and just when A.Net is starting to get it right, they decide it is time to "shake up the meta game" and bring about an even worse state of imbalance.

And all this lack of update lead to easy situation :
-RA : bsurge/empathy/antimelee spammers usually win ( having monk also but not the point )
-HA : every team is either 2 spirit spammer + 3 healer/support , either bsurger + 3 backline
-GvG : although a bit more diversified , it's still too much defensive and usually going on 20+ mn fights .

in pve : to make a link with other thread , the only reason they don't put an end to shadow form and SoS is because 3/4 of players would quit becase they wouldn't be able to farm anymore

/agree. The game's pretty much dead now. Anet's probably going to stop supporting the game entirely just as soon as GW2 comes out. GW1's not raking in any significant revenue, so it's going to be lights out in the near future when it comes to updates. Heck, I even foresee Anet unhooking server-based play and possibly releasing GW1 to the public as free to play mmo like the rest of the mmo's out there.

Weird, people don't want to die!

I would like to point out that GW has always been a rather defensive game, but that's what you get with low-recharge skills.

Don't believe me? Go look at build back in GW's prime. Ever wonder what happened to Evasion, Ether Prodigy, Aegis, Distortion, Boon Prots, etc.? Hell, even honourbalanced has defense up with wazoo.

Also, nice to see optimistic KJ once in a while!

Since I heard this the other day from an infamous source: Their slogan should be "maybe it'll be different this time" with regards to GW2.

Sounds like a nice fit to me.

You're right, but there have always been spikes too. Anet's just never really been good at balancing. I think that's probably why they made the skill, health, energy, and other values so incredibly high in GW2. They're just easier to balance that way.

I do my best

I think that this has been one of the better skill update threads in a long time. Not only has some interesting information about the TK and the programming been discussed, it also happened in a very civilized manner. Maybe it's because more and more players find themselves accepting Anet's shortcomings (not implying that they will still buy GW2).

I don't know how much moderation has been done to keep this thread clean, but it's been a nice read for sure.

Today was a bad GW day. I made the mistake of reading this thread AND Gaile's support page on the same day.

Off topic, but you know that at one point Gaile admitted to a user that although support KNEW that he did not intentionally bot/cheat/scam/whatever, his account was involved in those activities and thus had to be banned. I almost set her an e-mail saying how angry that made me but i know shed never get to it. She prolly gets like 1000 a day. But apparently the policy is, you are responsible for what happens on your account, even if you can prove that you didn't do it.

Now, I have strong doubts about buying GW2. Also, I'm glad I wasn't selected for the TK now. The only thing worse than being ignorant of an impending disaster is being insightful but ignored.

Not much, from what I've seen. I think you were right about us just accepting Anet's shortcomings. It's been a long year, and we've had plenty of opportunities to get used to it.

What a nerve fixing a bug with a skill that nobody uses.

Hey, live team? Check out the official wiki page for Fort Aspenwood:

Even if they did do a real update, they would just muck it up. It might be better that they do nothing.

I lol'd when I saw this. Beyond this, there are so many other unsorted bugs in this game. But when a bug fix comes out it's always something minuscule.

I usually say that I leave GW when no updates are made, and come back whith updates...

I should clarify that I mean UPDATES THAT ACTUALLY ADD OR CHANGE SOMETHING.

So... It seems I'll have to wait a little more.