Exodus and the GW1 Environment

You seem to forget that the Bonus Mission Pack and Beyond updates occurred into development of Guild Wars 2, effectively they already have "marginalized" their "newest cash cow." Fact is, they can still make money from GW1 and, more importantly, they have to pay for the GW1 servers to be kept running. They won't let GW1 simply drain them, and if people keep playing or wanting to play, they'll realize they can get money out of the game still. It might be "wishful thinking" but it certainly not impossible. Especially since they have an entire team - albeit a skeleton crew - making full blown content updates.

But my main point was that being given rewards and shit easier isn't going to keep the players. It's going to get rid of them.

Nevertheless, Anet has already stated that they're not yet done with Beyond content updates, as they have at least 3 stories left unfinished through them. So it isn't "wishful thinking" at all truth be told - what would be wishful thinking is getting this stuff in a reasonable amount of time with a proper team rather than the skeletal Live Team.

I cannot and will not speak for others. I am against making titles easier for three reasons, some of which I stated already:

1) Titles is the main thing that keeps people playing, make them easier and you remove a good portion of the player base. The OP talked about keeping people longer because they want to get these things... true, and making them easier to obtain is not a bad thing outright, however once they get them, they're gone for good until content is released - they're just leaving sooner.

2) Some titles actually do have in-game benefits. Lucky, unlucky, treasure hunter, kurzick, luxon, sunspear, lightbringer, dwarven, asura, norn, and vanguard all have in-game benefits. Some overpowered benefits. And yet over the years they've just been made easier... Let's not make them even more easier.

3) Some of the OP's suggestions are just outright bad and don't solve any issue that exists.

I don't give two hoots about exclusivity or whatever. When I saw the tengu mask last Dragon Festival, I was happy. You know what I say? RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO exclusivity. I don't want titles easier because the way the OP wanted to make them easier was just plain bad. For reasons I posted in my previous reply on page 2.

I can be fine with some titles being made easier - especially PvP titles (granted I would probably make putting them in the HoM a higher rank needed to equalize the effort, but still, higher ranks :P) - but the way the OP suggests? No. Just no.

Yes, i think some form of personnal ranking for everyone based on PvP would be good to calm down some players..

The new generation of players isn't really the same one than 7 years ago, today it's only players flaming everyone, who seem to know anything about anyone, who just troll you whatever you say, especially when they have no more arguments, etc...

A few minutes ago, i got trolled by some funny sin that was mad he had his skills dchopped, but what can you do today to show your competence, apart if you win a gold cape each month...

Having a trim : " you're just leeching lol " whether you played the mat or not
Having a high hero rank : " haha bspike player " , " gratz rxx in 2012 "
Having glad title : " haha syncer "
Having commander/codex( played on a fair way for some players ) : " haha syncer/ haha red resign "
Sometimes you can add the " ebay noob "

Old PvP players generally do "know " each other since they would see/remember those guys playing, but today it's just turning into a joke...

While I see what you're getting at, having everyone who wants to PvP join on the same server has the potential to create massive lag. Since I live in the US but travel abroad several times per year, I can personally testify that trying to play something like PvP or polymock on a server that is geographically far away is next to impossible. The delay from data transmission just can't be avoided much in some cases.

I don't think your arena changes would really do much to fix things. One of the main reasons they became deserted in the first place was people who knew more about the game coming back to play in them against newbies. Even in the ascalon arena, I remember facing people who certainly had max armor and elite skills, even though it was supposed to be lvl 10 and under. Letting people use skills than are unlocked still favors the people who have done more. There's also the matter of the arenas being so spread out that it would decrease the number of players in any one of them anyway.

To be really fair for newbies, one possibility is a fixed set of skills, which is what Codex did, but that again was a pretty big flop. Perhaps it could be taken even farther, giving each player a specific build (whether they have obtained those skills,etc or not), similar to how the costume brawl works, to level the field a bit. I'd be in favor of something like historical re-enactments, where a player has the skill set of Master Togo or whoever vs another player or team of players (they could use the BMP skills maybe).

----------

I tend to agree, but the problem is that rankings have been quite easy to manipulate. The current "ranking" is less formal, being largely your current title rank. Yet there are those who have bought there way up in ranks because of the rank discrimination. Those players usually do not have the skill to match their rank. Similarly, we have seen ladder manipulation in GvG (and HB while it was around) sometimes on a massive scale. I sort of doubt whether anet even has the technical prowess to implement anything on this scale these days.

They won't ever do it for sure, but it was still to say that having a form of personnal ranking is still better and happens in every game..

What happened in HB and GvG was a bit different.. players manipulated for rewards and titles, but not for the ladder rank... Apart for HB, most titles would progress thanks to team results, not your owns results.. Typically, it can hardly happen in Guild wars because it's a team game, and in fact, that's fun, but that's probably the biggest flaw in PvP.. It relies on having a too big playerbase..

The HB system was good, because you could have an idea upon whether the player was " good " or not, according to the ladder and tournament results... The same happened in GvG, although it's about the " team/guild rank" rather than the individual rank

Thank you for your response.

I remember my first time in Ascalon arena. Went in with my Rinblade and armor 4 shield and pre-armor, 2 sword skills, 3 mesmer skills, and res sig. It left a bad taste in my mouth, watching that level 3 warrior in Gladiator armor dancing over my corpse.

As for the lag issue you mentioned, if it is caused by distance to servers, I am not sure how to deal with that. If it is mostly caused by size of population, then how much of a factor will that be in a month or two?

The reason for suggesting doing something with the original arenas has to do with ease of access. I created a Rit yesterday, took her to our guild hall. When I opened my map, 'M', the only place showing is my GH. As a newbie, I would be asking, "Where do I PvP?" You could of course make a PvP character, with limited skills and equipment, but we already know how that tends to go.

So back to the original arenas. Should each arena be buffed or limited to the armor and skills that is available in the immediate area? For Yak's Bend, as an example, skills that can be bought or earned through quests up to and in the Northern Shiverpeaks. The armor obtainable through collectors or a crafter up to and in the Northern Shiverpeaks. It could be difficult to deal with the max weapons verses non-max.

The original arenas should be giving you a taste of what PvP is and allowing you to play against those reasonably close to you in skill level. They were ruined by those taking advantage of the system trying to be unbeatable. Remove most of that advantage and see if things can be turned around some. Waiting until or jumping straight into Random Arenas, can be discouraging. Taking smaller steps, building experience and confidence helps to create better players.

While data transfer rates have improved a lot over the years, physical distance is still quite relevant. Internet routing inside the US is quite sophisticated, but in plenty of other places signal routing is not (often due to limited hardware). If there are not a lot of pathways to send the data, the transfer is slowed. Since we're talking PvP, even half a second's lag would often be a death sentence.

Actually, if you want to do any serious PvP, you're far better off making PvP characters. It's easy enough to change skills/builds on PvE characters, but getting exactly the right equipment for different builds is a huge pain. With PvP characters its a matter of creating exactly what you want.

This sounds reasonable. However, when anet wanted to implement a "leveling down" system, they found it easier to build an entirely new game (GW2). My guess is that means something significant about how realistic it would be for GW1.

I agree with you. Unfortunately, the player base has always been far more effective at taking advantage of flaws than the designers have been at fixing them. With the extremely limited resources anet is devoting to GW1, something like the costume-brawl-esq idea I mentioned is probably the best we could hope for (and possibly still more than would be practical for the live-team).

I completely agree with you on that point, even though it's a lot worse than that. Majority of HA players right now are real bad trolls, and they do push other, good and genuine players away, or they turn them into trolls.
As I said, it is way worse than your sin example. There are people who stand in district whole day and they don't even want to play the game, they're just there to abuse people. And that's what happens on daily basis, really serious and bad abuse, with swear words, racism and real hate. In the worst cases, Anet will give them a 3 day ban (that's only if you haven't replied nor said a single word to those trolls). But in most cases they'll just remain unpunished and keep corrupting the community and killing it. I have witnessed a lot of that within last few weeks, and did quite a few reports. It's quite sad that only people who got banned were the ones who used "N word" which Anet considers as racism and those who used "F swear word" multiple times. But the personal harassment and abuse is just continuing every day. Trolls adapted and they just avoid using those words and they know nothing can happen to them. It is horrible.
Anet should definitely hire better admins to deal with those things. But I guess when they work on multiple games, they don't really care nor feel attached to it. It's all about the money. So yeah lets use the resources to make more costumes instead of fixing the game! Good job Anet!

How to fix PvP? Start banning abusers, trolls and cheaters. That will get better and more mannered people in. Newbies will have more friendly environment and will actually enjoy that amazing part of the game.

Being harassed for hours and hours, by multiple people in district (in local chat) for over 10 days, and then only one of them gets banned and it's only 3 days ban is definitely not the way to go.

That's exactly the point.. If i can understand someone flaming concerning skills( although most players do flame others without having seen then play once), flaming someone because he is x, he is from x country, it's a girl, he is x years old, ... makes no sense..

So well, that's quite sad when i once got ignored because i told someone he wasn't playing good then he told other guy i did say insults about him, although that one guy who ignored did as well refuse to play with him.. Past is past and i'm not really caring anyway since i'm not playing much anymore, but i gotta say i see those guys being flamed always, when i'm logging, for no valid reasons and that's quite bad..

Other good example is those guys in RA being flamed for anything : " we don't have 1 el 1 war 1 ranger, i'm leaving ", " our warrior doesn't have the wiki build , i'm leaving " , etc... I'm not even talking about those guys who wanna try and run original builds...

Bu twell, at this state of the game and regarding what they probably would do, i think it's easier to put everyone on the same status and allow hench parties... Then, syncers can play, fair players can still roll them with henchs if they want to, human parties can decide to faceroll all of these, etc... But at least, there will be activity, and it will only require 4-5 players...

With the huge number of skills and builds that are possible, the simplest fix for the various PvP formats would be to make a Dueling League.

Random Arena for example would be 1 player vs. 1 player, no hench, no heroes, no teammates. Whether you survive is down to luck, skill and forethought on your build.

Heroes' Ascent would get a similar treatment, but Halls would be 1v1v1, requiring the same thoughts as RA but allowing for 2v1 temporary alliances and such.

This would allow for quicker matches, more players having access and less reliance on a team to carry poor players. Honestly I have no idea why GW1 didn't have a ranked dueling system in the first place.

Probably because Guild Wars is and has been about grouping and fighting in groups, not about solo matches.
You can't solo PvP simply because it would defy the entire formula of the game.

What should happen is farming and SC builds completely eliminated, GW1 going F2P, and getting a trade system with something like gems like GW2 plus a global party system, and it'll stay alive for ages.


But doing that now could take players from GW2, so that can wait until GW1 gets old enough. Let's go for 10 years.

1v1 = mesmers rape everyone

Then let's make it 1 player + 1-2 henchs against 1 player + 1-2 henchs.. It's still PvP considering you fight player controlling heroes, doesn't involve more players, and is easy to implement..

Come on, they implemented 7 heroes parties in PvE to make it easier to form and nothing at all in PvP.. I can't even have a scrimmage against a friend using heroes, how pathetic is that...

You can go and play some single player game then. HA and GvG are the most elite formats of GW, they shouldn't be turned in such a joke. However, I think they could easily add hero battles back, they could even remove title and rewards but keep the rating system and many would play it.

It's not a question of single player games.. HA and GvG were are are still the main GW formats, however these (and codex) are either :
- abused by 1 player using several accounts( oh, i thought it wasn't single player game..)
- completly empty and unplayable due to number of players required( in my party but also in opposing parties)

There's no need to debate upon playing 1 hour or playing from 5 pm to 5 am in order to have 10 matchs, everyone will say that these modes aren't played much ,and furthermore, won't be played much after gw2. Typically last time i played HA( you were as well actually), we've had 3 matchs in 2 hours (!) and lost our last battle then because of afks and leaves... How fun is that..

My point was to leave those modes as they are, but add aside a mode where you can have those possibilities, so there will be at least some form of activity after gw2...

Not even taking into account the fact it would cause massive balance issues.
Guild Wars is balanced around teams, not around single player.
Mesmers and ( cripshot ) rangers would maul everything while things like paragons would have lost before they would have finished loading.
Basically, if that is what you want they should bring back HB like Winner said ( I still think there should be some form of reward, but in a way that we can avoid rr situations).

The idea of an individual ranking appeals to me however.
Another thing that is worth considering is making it easier to access HA as an outpost.
Most of the PvE crowd won't travel to balths temple or guild hall first, and then into HA from there if they even have it unlocked ( since it is not an outpost that is automatically available).

Perhaps they could borrow the GW2 system, as to where a single click suffices to get sent into the active HA district.

And this is why I say the naysayers don't read.

I didn't ask for them to change HA to 1v1.

I said to make a Dueling League. Go ahead, go back and read my post.

People in all the guilds I've been in occassionally duel with each other, often times to test new builds or even just for fun. Quite often, its not Mesmers or Rangers that win every time because, just like in 8-player parties, there are counters to everything. Every class combo in the game has access to anti-hex and anti-condition, so the idea that classes based around these builds would dominate is in fact wrong. There would be a shifting Meta just like every other PvP format as skills are balanced and adjusted.

The point of 1v1 Dueling builds is that players are forced to think more about what they're taking, and whether to gamble or not. Can they afford not to take anti-hex, in the event that all their opponents in a match series could be warriors and paragons? Should they take an blocking stance/spell/ward, or just heal through the damage of an assassin? And on and on.

And one of the ways to structure it would be to make it as an "add-on" to the already existing PvP formats. So zoning into HA for example, you find no groups and only a few people standing around. So you queue up for the 1v1 HA arena, with the same match structure, and take your chances. Or perhaps you want to GvG, but your guild isn't on. Why not have a "Champions" GvG system where people can represent their guilds ala the Greeks, the strongest warrior of each army facing off against each other?

The people on this forum are probably the people I've seen that are MOST resistant to changes in a game, and changes that specifically expand access to the game for the playerbase or in general make things more available. Instead of whining about how it would ruin the game (it won't because ANet wouldn't be removing HA as it is for example, just ADDING an extra option, like Hard Mode in PvE) come up with an idea that is better and addresses the glaring issues.

I am not even going to bother giving any serious form of response anymore since you contradict yourself considering your previous posts in this thread, you even manged to fit multiple contradictions in the above post as well, while pointing your finger at everyone else, while you ignore the ideas people have been posting.

Congratulations, you have made it to my troll list and are not worth my attention.

I'd just like to chime in that I'm one of those players that only started playing again a few months ago because I wanted to get as much from my HoM as I can for GW2 and the only reason why I would be happy with these changes would be that it makes it easier for me to get 50/50 (at 45/50 atm) and GWAMM after GW2 comes out (something that I'd probably do anyway).

On that note, OP it seems like you're incredibly childish which is seen in the way you argue your points. Especially when it seems like you argue the same points over and over without a care as to the arguments you're responding to. This alone threw me off of supporting you even though I'm one of the people who would love easier titles (not even considering the suspect reasons for supporting you anyway).

Wonder why it took you so much, I identified him as troll since the first "all of you are wrong and don't even read". That clearly says something is wrong and there's no chance of dialogue. Even more when he keeps repeating it at every post and keeps contradicting himself. Add all the raging...