The Importance of Items

I've read your very long posts a few times but I still don't agree. Don't take me wrong, I do understand your p.o.v and you do have a point. Sure the classical mod system leave some room to grinding. Of course you'll see farmers who are selling stuff (for gold or on ebay). Ok it is bad.

But the huge difference with D2 or WoW lies in the amount of power you gain from a perfect weapon as opposed to a decently good weapon that you can find in a week or so. In EQ or in many mmo games, the difference is so huge that just cannot compete without them. If you didn't have your ith weapon in D2, you could not pvp (barring sorceress). The current issue in GW is that to be PvP competitive you DO need a few overpowered mods.

Once item mods have been decently balanced, the situtation is entirely different. A good GW weapon could brings +20% pvp power and a perfect one only +21%. The perfect weapon is still better and it could sell on ebay. So what ? Some players will be compelled to gain this tiny +1% even if it means buying on ebay. Then they'll be stronger afterwards. Good for them. PvE grinders will remain happy farming for their dream weapon. So what ? Most competitive players will be perfectly happy with their good but not perfect weapon.

That's probably why I still disagree. Any online PvE game has to rely on grinding to some extent because you can't do the same quests again and again, and you can't explore endlessly. Classical mmorpgs are sickening because they use this trick in a simplistic and basic way but you just can't hope for GW to be entirely grindless. The alternative would be to start with a PvP option and all skills/mods available. A good part of the PvE side of GW is about getting items and gold, about trading and crafting, about getting skills. As long as you can play the game without having to grind for weeks for something good (not perfect), I'm fine with that. If it can convince WoW/Eq players to play GW and to grind for weeks for a +1%, I don't have any grudge against that.

I don't think so. Just look at what happened with D2 sockets. Lots of socketable items, and quite a lot of sockets options (runes, charms...). Most mods were very straightforward and all PvP sockets were used only by a small handful of mods: increase attack speed, +dmg, resist all, etc... All other mods, and notably those who were not as easy to understand, were simply ignored in favor or the generic ones. The same stands for charms : +life, +mana, +dmg... All PvP charms and sockets were used by 5% of the game mods.

If ANet leaves item mods as they are, there simply won't be much room for future mods. If generic runes are changed to +dmg +speed and so on, they will overshadow any non-generic effect. Then only a handful of rogue builds will use the future mods. Three expansions later, that would cause an bigger grindfest : you must get a rune with one of the top 6 mods (out of 100), otherwise your rune is worthless.

That's why you can't have both generic and narrow effects in competition. ANet can design 10 to 20 useful generic effects at most and hundred of narrow ones. I'd choose the latter anyday. At least, I wouldn't have to bear with a dull environment where I would have to choose between 5 decent mods. Sure, some obscure mods may be overlooked during the beta phase, but they can be nerfed on the fly with a scalpel stream.

I've always had this idea for runes:

There should be runes for every skill, well most, ie:

Inferno Rune: Add +10 dmg to Inferno, but take +15 dmg from Inferno
Life Siphon Rune: Add +3 seconds to effect, but +5 seconds are added when it's used against you.

This would allow for further customization of armour. ATM there's 7 (?) rune spots, but most classes only have 5-7 ruins availble, everyone's just going to use them all and put no thought into it. Either that, or Anet's holding back on some more runes untill retail.

As long as options = power, which is a fundamental truth, then no, the situation isn't entirely different. It isn't the 1% boosts in power that are the big problem - it's the unique modifiers, the ones that make or break characters that are a problem. It's finding a focus with the right +1 to a skill out of the 450 possible ones.

It's the same problem as skill availability. Even if all of the skills are balanced, that doesn't mean that an arbitrary selection of eight skills is any good. You need a set of skills with synergy, not just with each other but with the whole team. Items work the same way - you don't just need 'balanced' items, you need the right items, items with synergy with your attributes, your skills, each other, the rest of the team. You need items that are metagame dependent, items to switch between as the competition changes.

Take all of the skills in the game and make the only way to acquire them is via 1% boss drops. Every 100 bosses you get a random skill. Is this an acceptable way of handing skill availability - after all, additional skills just give you options, not raw power.

Because if that isn't acceptable, then the current item system shouldn't be, either, because it's even worse than that.


How would adding a sickeningly long item grind to Guild Wars be any different? Items are rare, so you have to play the same levels over and over again hoping to get the right drop. That sounds like the item grind in every other MMO ever made.


You're mistaking the problem here. The problem wasn't one of simple mods / complex mods, but that the entire game is a cespool of bad balance. Why was Ruby/Fervor the only Jewel to be used by competitive players? Because it was orders of magnitude better than every other Jewel in the game. It added percentages while everything else had pathetic, linear returns.

Why does every Sorceress in Diablo II look the same? Because there are best items. Because balance between mods wasn't part of the game design. +Damage and +Damage% are easy to understand, but the latter was the only one people wanted because it's just plain *better*. People don't use +mana per kill items because they're complicated - they don't use them because they suck.


You're drastically understimating their creative team.


Just because a modifier isn't generic doesn't automatically mean it's bad. You can make an extraordinarily complex modifier that could be fabulously broken, or complete garbage.

You could have something trivially simple (+10% damage), to slightly complex (+15% damage while in a stance), to painful to evaluate (+20% damage while enchanted, -30% damage while hexed), to the just plain bizarre (+80% damage to Ghostly Heroes in the Hall of Heroes between the hours of 9 PM and 2 AM, PST, if your weapon is purple). In the end, every modifier is broken down to its fundamental effect - damage, energy, and time. You figure out the conditionals, you play the odds, and you take what's going to give you the best chance of winning - regardless of how bizarre the mod may be.

Maybe what you mean by 'non-generic effect' is a modifier that doesn't affect resources or time. The term for modifiers like that is "cosmetic", because they have no actual effect upon the outcome of the game.


They can make both. Balanced against each other, they'll all see play one way or another.


Are you so sure of that? Are you lobbying for an environment that has a lot of diversity and choice, or are you creating a plethora of narrow effects that ultimately end up being a bunch of non-choices?

I'd be interested in seeing what sorts of mods you would like in the game.

Peace,
-CxE

That's just plain stupid. Everyone knows the purple weapon mods are teh suck. It's the orange weapon mods you really want...

I dyed my hammer red once, thought it looked like ass, so I dyed it silver thinking it would return it to it's normal colour. For the remainder of the event I was known as "the dude with the pink hammer". :o(

would you guys mind making a guide listing what mods are available and what mods you can get with upgrades?

More importantly... you can DYE weapons!? I was under the impression that only armour could be dyed. I wonder what a dyed bow or a dyed dragon sword would look like.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...4&postcount=48

Oh what pearls of knowledge can be discovered by reading the post 4 above your own....

lol, I read that... I read the whole thread... it was more of a rhetorical question, said in exclamation/excitement.

I want that pink hammer. It'll look great with my go-go outfit.

quick question - will this game be as susceptible to bots with the game hosted on anet's system? couldn't they tell if someone was running a bot?

as far as pharming, well if someone wants to it's there time. for me, there is so much game to explore i'd have a hard time killing the same guy a thousand times hoping for that perfect fit. especially when i can get something pretty decdent crafted. if uber weapons do show up, they'd probably get nerfed if they caused a large balance issue.

getting a little off topic -
one of the articles i read that really made me consider this game stated they want to keep it balanced and prevent the trainers and other hacks that plagued games like diablo and D2. trainers killed d2 for me. you couldn't play an open game without being hacked. i hope the streaming updates keep this from happening to GW.

it just seems anet is putting A LOT of thought into how they want this game to run, and it looks like it should be challenging and fresh for a long time to come.

People are running bots *right now*.

Can bots be detected? Sure, but that's just a cat and mouse game - they detect one signature, so the bot writers have to get a bit more creative so that they blend in better. Then those get found and you repeat the process. It's just an arms race between botters and developers.

It's fairly simple - if there's top flight equipment that people want, but they can't acquire it in a timely fashion on their own by doing 'fun' activities, then they'll look for alternatives so that they can avoid the equipment grind and play the game in a way that's actually fun. People don't turn to duping, botting, and/or ebay because they want to, but because they have to if they're going to enjoy the game.


Well, there are uber weapons. There are going to be uber weapons in release. It's just a question of how much better they are than everything else, and how easy they will be to acquire. But they're going to be there.

Peace,
-CxE

Then items should reduce current energy when you change items so you'll get lower max energy (if you change from +20 to Max Energy to +0 you also get -20 to current energy). And when you change items from +0 to you +20 you don't gain current energy. That way it's still possible to change +Max Energy bonus during a mission, but there is no benefits if someone does that during a fight.

Skills should work as before of course (they should change both max and current value).

Not completely true.

Right, basically the worst of both worlds - though that has interesting implications for weapon switching in general that I'm not entirely comfortable with - say, switching between different +12 foci for different mods results in a loss of 12 energy.

I don't think it's a problem the way it is - it's a niche set of equipment that you swap into when things get tight - but it's an option that's available and thus shouldn't be ignored.

Peace,
-CxE

Really ? Damn. I was naive enough to believe GW would be safer than other games.

Are they basic macro tools (enter quest, click here and there, use skill 1, then 2, then attack, then repeat) or complex bots like meph/pindle runners with packet analysis ? I've always been both impressed and annoyed by the latter for they can make the botter very rich with no risk.

Who has developped such bots ? Alpha players ? Any feedback from ANet about this subject ? I really hope their counter-blast will be more drastic than Blizzard's.

There is no practical reason not to use item sets to change equipment during a fight. That's why i said "change items so you'll get lower max energy" - i talked about a difference in +Max Energy bonus between item sets, so to avoid a situation you explained.

In other words, it's impossible to compete for a top places in clan ladder without a use of a farmbots. Now, that is a problem. I already heard that alphas use bots, but i thought that some additional money or crafting materials will not really impact PvP (because they can be easily obtained in enough quantities anyway). But now with rares it's entirely another matter.
A situation when almost noone have uber rares is semi-ok and isn't a big problem in itself. In most cases, it will be inefficient to farm uber rares because it's more efficient just to play in a ladder when it's possible. With the same time spent there will be a better ladder score, and a team will be more experienced so it will be actually more powerful than a team that will spend time to farm uber-rares (at least short-term, and in a long-term veteran competitive players will eventually get them anyway). So it's bad but not critical.

But bots will give just a plain advantage directly reflected in a ladder score. That is definately one of the things that can stagger a belief that a guild ladder properly reflects skill with all accompanying problems that will follow. I hope that GW devs understand that this is one of the biggest problems they have if they still want to make a competitive PvP game.

If they'll make so rares can't be used in PvP, then it will be fine. In most cases farmers aren't really interested in PvP so they will not be significantly disappointed that they can't use rares in PvP (at least, it's better than no rares at all).

Then PvP weapons will use an uprades system mechanic as it was before (the difference was already mentioned here so no need to repeat it again).

It woks ok in Shadowbane, for some builds discipline runes work that way. Same with Magic:the Gathering etc. As long as these builds aren't overpowered even with these items, it generally means that this build will be rare. Probably it's even better becasue it's more fun to make them for some players and it adds diversity.

[COLOR=Green]I believe we have a winning idea here.[/COLOR]

The biggest issue presented so far seems to be more about availability than existance of the extremely high end mods/attributes. This reminds me of a post I made a few weeks ago where I spoke about the two types of players that will develop in GW the way the economy is, the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'. Anyway, why are Rares capable of so much more than normal items? That's a simple answer, the base mods. Only rares seem to have mods that are intrinsic to the base weapon and not available to the components.

I think that's the key here. Remove rares, give normal weapons the ability to have some intrinsic mods (the 'new rare' if you like, but without any other components, just the base weapon), and make all mods available through upgrade components. Also, why not make them simply infrequent instead of rare? If we saw at least one 'rare' drop in every mission, then we'd be on to something...

Anyway with a system similar to this, the path to those items that benefit any specific build can be either through farming OR trade. People will trade in base items and upgrade components to get the mix they need instead of farm-botting them, or some will go out and farm anyway because that's what they enjoy. With all the components available to most players and not restricted to the extremely wealthy or farm-botters, there should be a balance of power across all players, reducing the effect of items on battle outcome because everyone will have what they need with a little looking around.

Let me just say this. I don't like bots. I've been against exploiting a game using a bot for any reason for as long as they've existed. Though, in the long run, if GW manages to only have a bunch of farm bots running around, I much prefer that than a bunch of PvP pwnage bots. I got sick and tired of that crap in FPS games, and I hope ANet can keep them from popping up in GW.

Frankly, I think bots are a good thing - provided they are clearly marked as such. People will create them, why not just make it up-front and legal?

Examples:
- you might want to 'hire' a bot instead of a henchmen, someone's
AI might be quite good
- bots fix broken problems with 'rare' items, ie, they become
pawn bots... nothing like something like this to fix the economy
- competition between bots can be used for developing new 'AI'
for wandering monsters and such, ie, bot developers should
be submitting their bots (which can run in a jail)

In short, bots are unavoidable. Programmers love making them, beacuse they are challenging. Arena Net should welcome and regulate bots, not
ban them.

i am sure that they did not simply scream *[COLOR=Red]ITS A BOT[/COLOR]* and hystarically ban them

they must have given it thought before making a decision and i hope they will be able to enforce the rules of their game

i do not wish to compete with a bot because than it becomes a bot battle and every goodie a bot gets is one less chance for a PLAYER

EDIT

i hope they manage to stop bots cold

Yeah, in all seriousness, I am strongly against bots... I mean, I hope any reputable/respectable guild would feel the same way.

I don't really have an arguement against them, I just really don't like the idea. I think I was better off not knowing of/ignoring their existence.

It's really, if you break down, just plain old cheating.

Cheat: To violate rules deliberately, as in a game. (Maybe it's not in the rules to not use bots, but I think it should be)

I dunno, call me old fashioned but I'd rather have everyone playing the game themselves and not having some automated program do it for them.

Where we differ is whether or not there should be reasons not to use item sets. I don't see a need, and casters should be able to switch between various wands, staves, shields, and foci as needed. This is virtually identical to warriors switching between swords and shields, or a ranger switching bows. I see this as just another layer of strategy in the game.

I think that a Warrior switching to a focus to cast a high energy spell is a perfectly reasonable strategic option, and while I can understand why you want that removed I just can't agree with it.


That's really the crux of the problem - money, crafting materials, and the like are all relatively common and an organized guild should not have any issues getting those together to make their builds. On the other hand, good rares are nigh impossible to find, hard enough to acquire that people don't even know what's out there let alone what of it is abusive.

The problem with pharmbots isn't just that they get rares - they get the materials and gold, and lots of them. Those just get dumped into the economy, priced to move - crippling the parts of the economy that most players participate in.


Yeah, that's pretty much the issue - having lots of unique modifiers is a benefit to the game. Making the inaccessable is not.

I don't even think the problem is with finding a mod you want, but the fact that you have to find the exact combination you want. If you're looking for a good rare focus, you aren't just looking for +12 energy - you want +12 energy and *two* good modifiers, each of which spawns individually. If you want a good sword, you don't just want the intrinsic rare mod - you want a weapon with the right upgrade parts, and since most rares spawn with upgrades already in place weapons are really just 3 mod items.


The solution to this is fairly straightforward:

1) No more than one modifier per weapon. Finding a weapon with the right mod takes N time. Finding a weapon with the right two mods takes N^2 time. This change not only makes it easier for people to find what they want, but lowers the difference between haves and have nots as well.

2) Rares need to spawn with open upgrade slots - normal weapons need to spawn with upgrade components. Right now, the best weapons you can find already have their upgrades filled from the beginning the vast majority of the time, making upgrade components more of a sick joke. Make sure that when a player finds a rare sword, it isn't junked up by a charrslaying pommel or something equally ridiculous.

Alternatively, let people replace the upgrade parts in an item - spawn a sword of charrslaying, but let people put a new pommel on it, destroying the old upgrade in the process.

Basically put the emphesis on building up the right item, not getting lucky and finding what you need.


I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a bot, but that they can have effects on a game world that can be clearly detrimental. Pharmbots flood the economy making it impossible for those without bots to trade - PvP bots can ruin the Tombs by destroying human competition with inhuman reflexes and coordination. Neither of these are particularly desirable goals, but I can guarantee you that they'll be the two most popular goals for people who write bots.

If bots can be allowed in the game in a way that doesn't adversely affect the game or the players in it, then sure, allow them. But as long as they detract from the gaming experience of actual human players, they're better off banned.

Peace,
-CxE

The way I see the farmbot issue is that either Anet has to embrace them and give everyone one, not likely (or a good solution). Or they need to outright ban players accounts for using them.

They can't beat around the bush with this issue or the economy will be ruined fast. The last thing Guild Wars needs is to become another Diablo 2 with farm bots, spam bots, and even more scary like Ensign pointed out, PvP bots. What would be Anets stance on victories in GvG when using bots? What about just one bot? I hope they have a plan for these situations.

It's a shame that items are playing such a big role in Guild Wars, but I suppose bots would find their way into the game anyway.

EDIT: Cleocatra:

That's a very ideal solution yes, but more unlikely then Anet supporting bots at this point I'd say. (ok maybe that's a slight exaggeration )

Maybe both would be best. Decrease the rarity and importance of good items while also banning the botters because I imagine that simple bots (enter, farm, leave) only lead to more complex ones (PvP bots). However, I do like the fact that some items can work better with certain strategies. They should not be overpowered compared to someone without the best items.

I'm all for the human challenge but the last thing I want to face is a bot the equivalent of a Dark Sim from Perfect Dark...those were scary. (they cheated)

Or they need to reduce the rarity of good items and reduce the importance of items in PvP so botting and ebay won't be worth it in the first place.

This might be outta of the topic, but I am just wondering has anyone actually found a weapon with increased attack speed? And if you do still have it, do you mind post a picture of it just for our reference, please? Becasuse I remember finding a fire wand with +10% attack speed back then, but the dmg was too low so I sold it to npc... Ever since then I have not found a single weapon with that +10% attack speed mod anymore. Now that I realized how good it is...