Updates Have Ruined the Game

Now I think I'll find another game to play.

Most RPG's use levelling up to determine how strong your character is.

Guild Wars however made a level cap in which everyone is basically on par, and the weapons and armour as well all have a standard "max", nobody runs around with a rare sword ten times as powerful as everyone else's sword etc.

This was BRILLIANT and is what I LOVED about this game. NOW it was about actual skill, strategy, teamwork and player type diversity that determined success, not how many decades of your life you could sit there ringing in sick to work mindlessly hacking and slashing to gain the next level.

The makers of the game seemed to embrace this, and were proud of it, and they cultivated and encouraged player experimentation. THAT was the fun of the game. Trial and error, finding things that worked alright, didn't work, or worked great. Enhancing your character was now not reflected by stats alone, but playing style in all.

I've had some of the more unorthodox builds and received ridicule for them. I didn't care because they worked and I had fun.. Assassin archer, better than my ranger archer with more energy and critical strikes.. Paragon sword warrior.. Same armour so why not? Necro nuker etc.. It was good times but these days seem over.

The makers have decided to do a complete 180, orchestrating a complete and universal departure from the very principles they used to promote. And their tool for these counterproductive modifications: the dreaded nerf.

I've not noticed until the other day the extent to which they have damaged their game. I looked at my Necromancer and found there is now a limit to soul reaping! I'll admit soul reaping was pretty powerful but now it is useless; I'll get more energy back from inspiration magic. All three of my necro characters are rendered pointless.

And reading around on these threads I have noticed people referring to the discovery of a decent and successful combination as "abuse"! In other words, we did some experimenting, found a combination was a pretty good and viable one, and this means we have "abused" the game. In other words if you don't use the bog standard run of the mill conventional build then we need to put a stop to this.

One example, referring to fast casting used on secondary profession spells, the proposed nerf apparently to stop this "abuse" of fast casting?!?!?

In other words using the primary attribute the way it was intended is somehow wrong?

I thought the whole POINT of having the two proffession system was to mix and match between the two and to foster more diversity and fun in build creation.

No wonder why we see the same standard builds all day with no one venturing to think outside the box. Because this is what the makers apparently want.

WHAT IS THE POINT of me spending time experimenting, reading all these skills, shopping for new skills, playing with the attribute arrows, going out and trying these builds, making modifications to them, and then finding a build that hey, I actually like, this is both useful and fun to use, all this experimentation paid off, and feeling really proud of myself, having an absolute blast playing this character, only to log on the next day to find that the latest update has completely neutered my build and rendered my previously decent character as impotent.

I've also noticed that ALL of the classes seem to have been nerfed at one point or another. Due to alleged "imbalance", i.e. one class having an advantage over the other. How could there be an imbalance if ALL of them needed negative mods applied in order to acheive a balance? So they were ALL to powerful so ALL had to be downgraded? This makes no sense. Why not just make the monsters harder?

One more point.. The game already has a very steep learning curve. Constantly changing the rules all the time is going to frustrate the new players even more and simply scare them away.

In conclusion, I'm frustrated to the point that I'm looking for something else now. In a couple of weeks I think I'll have enough money to get Starcraft 2 so I should do that, and needless to say I won't be ticking the days off on the calander until Guild Wars 2, unless the makers vow to go back to what they originally did best, that is promoting a game which allowed for strategy and rewarded creativity instead of blending themselves in with every other RPG in the world, trying to force players into the traditional mindless hack and slash standard roles.

LOL!

Good idea

We used to see these threads say 3 years ago or so...........but it's been fairly static the last 2 years. Things aren't barely changing at all, there's no 180, the devs have generally left the game alone since EOTN was released.

Soul Reaping is far from useless.
But yeah, a lot of power creep has occurred and the live team has taken on too much work (GW Beyond.. woo..) to effectively balance the game and encourage stupendous builds. I think they have their priorities wrong, but this GW:B stuff is a marketing tool for GW2.. at least it will be when it's eventually rolled out.

You're a few years late.

I'm late? Even if they ruined the game three years ago they've still ruined it.

Yes, you are late. We are at the opposite of builds and skills becoming obsolete or functionally different. There's only been a couple real skill balances this entire year.

While I would agree that the updates have damaged the game, I think that this is true for completely different reasons. Pretty much, it all boils down to power creep imo. I wouldn't say the game is ruined though... and soul reaping is far from useless.

This is what I love about GW too. I don't have to subject myself to large raids just so that I don't fall behind. It happened a little with Ursanway that people wouldn't take members in their group if they didn't have a particular Norn level, but this period in GW's history was blessedly brief.

At 9 Soul Reaping, you can get 27 energy every 15 seconds for simply being near battle. Along with Signet of Lost Souls, which has the potential to give you 6 energy every 8 seconds, you'll never want for more energy than you reasonably need. Can an Inspiration Mesmer get more energy more quickly than that? Sure. However, that's no argument that Necromancers are pointless; plenty can be done with natural regeneration, much more with high Soul Reaping.

If your Necromancer is useless because you only get a ridiculous amount of energy per second, then you want to have no energy bar. This isn't a fault of the game.

It turns out that certain builds using unlikely combinations of attributes and skills are disproportionately powerful. Rather than encouraging variety, this actually leads to players evolving towards the same builds. The Meta is popularized, reasonable yet relatively underpowered builds fall into disuse, etc. For instance, the Mesmer was often used as nothing more than a Fast Caster for skills from particular other professions. Did it encourage variety? No, in fact it made the Mesmer more one-dimensional. It pushed a lot of players into using a small number of cross-profession builds, not being creative.

This has nothing to do with creativity - it's just max/mining.

This didn't happen because of nerfs, and it especially didn't happen because Fast Casting got nerfed, but because certain builds are too relatively powerful. The monsters are hard for some reasonable builds.

You answer your own question - you had a blast playing the character. The good news is that once the skill changes have landed, you don't have to spend much effort rebuilding a character you'll enjoy. If you were using a very popular cross-class build and find it nerfed, you have the capacity to find another build that works.

I heard when Shadow Form lost its flavor, everyone went kaboom, then somehow realized there were other skills available to use to play the game.

The only thing updates have done is prove you can overlook Ether Prism so much before Double Dragon is worth more than Second Wind.

That's the thing though. Good players already found what works and doesn't work and other players use what they've gotten use to. There's players out there who seem frozen in time no matter how the game changes.
It was apparently a PvP thing that spilled over to PvE. Anet should have kept it PvP only if there was a problem. You want trial and error, but you won't have as much trial and error if people find something like Shadow Form solo builds or the old Ursan.
People are trying new things. Maybe not the people you know or the random players who rage or ignore the slightest input/advice. People are trying out Vow of Strength assassins, etc.

It's a bizarre argument, isn't it? I want variety in the game, but not if I have to change from a build I enjoy.

The state of builds is not static.

I stopped reading when he said that necromancers are now useless because of Soul Reaping nerfs.