Elemental Discrimination and Post-Story gaming

I have 2 problems with this game.

1. as an elementalist I think it's entirely unfair that Fire magic hits for twice as much as every other element as well as striking all foes in an area. it makes no sense that an AE spell would do more damage than a normal single-target spell would, and making an entire set of AE spells do more than any other set of AE or Single-target spells makes absolutely no sense at all. from the way I see it, Fire magic does exactly the right amount of damage that spells need to do, but ALL spells need to be able to do that much. Water, Wind and Earth spells should all hit for a max of 100+ damage (damage varies according to the spells, of course) unless the extra effects of the spell should cause the spell to do less (in other words, spells like Chain Lightning, Maelstrom, and Metoer Shower should do less damage than others in their respective magic catagories because they do things that are very powerful).

2. the game ends with the story. after you beat the story line, all that's left is to go back and do bonus missions and/or go to Underworld and Fissure. in other games, you can play for months and years and still have many things you could be doing, but on Guild Wars I've played for about a month and I'm already done with everything interesting. there's no awesome items that I can quest for, there's no particular reason for me to save up for more money than I have because the 15 and 30 K armors are entirely pointless (especially for an elementalist and a few others, where the only difference is the way the armor dyes), and there really isn't any motivation for me to play anything at all on the game outside of PvP. at this point I'm considering putting GW away for a while until there are more quests to do and more zones to explore. I still enjoy the game, there's just not enough for me to do on it.

i'm hoping they'll add some seriously insane bosses to the game. akin to WoW's stuff (while I never played wow, I've seen videos of some, insane battles to say the least)

I'm hoping for the same. so far the scarriest thing is just trying to pick on some of the bigger mobs, like the Bladed Aataxes. there aren't any stand-alone bosses that take a full group just to kill (apart from the last level). this game, as a whole, needs to be made more like WoW is, really. GW is great, the concept behind it is awesome and the gameplay rocks, but there aren't enough things to do and there aren't enough things to find to really hold the interests of a serious player. I think the problem is it's just too PvP heavy, really. PvP is great to have and I wouldn't wanna take anything away from it, but I think they've just focused the entire game into PvP, and not everyone wants to do nothing but PvP on GW....they just need to put more focus on improving the PvE experience and lengthening it.

Get out of here.

Yeah, guess what? It's a PvP game. Surprise! Go play WoW please, if you love it so much, and stop trying to mess around with GW. FFS.

But, unfortunately, they've been subtracting from the PvP game rather than adding to it. There are now less arenas and less PvP game types than there were at release. What's up with that? Bring back the CTF relic maps, add an Aurora Glade style domination map, whatever. If this is going to succeed as a PvP game then it seriously needs some more PvP content.

Agreed and agreed. If you seriously like WOW a lot, then go play that. What's stopping you...

And besides, I personally like GW better, and wouldn't want to see the graphics screwed up and cartoony or see them add a huge billion-level grind. I'm good

/endhyperbole

Note: We do need more PvP stuff though

one word: Glint.

My response to the OP's problem #1:

I don't completely agree with you on this issue. It is true that Fire does some huge damage with Area of Effect. I agree that Air should do more damage than Fire since it is more single target focused. However, water and earth are fine the way they are. Water is not meant for huge damage, it is a rather useful support line. The snares of water magic are very useful and in combination with maelstrom, can be very powerful. Earth already has some big hitting spells (aftershock, obsidian flame, earthquake), so earth should remain the same.

My only problem with the elementalists in GW is that the game kinda forces a beginning elementalist to use fire. It is very difficult to use eart, water, or air in the beginning of the game due to the lack of substantial spells. GW should allow a beginning elementalist to choose what element they woudl like to specialize in (i understand that this would make it a bit more complicated for the developers, but it would make it a bit more fair to those who are bored of fire)

Actually, forcing elementalist to specialize early in game would make most of them specialize in fire, completely defeats your purpose. The game as it is allows you to change specialization any time you like, just by moving attribute points and skills around, is far more flexible. True, fire magic is favored in pve, but in pvp characters such as Rangers have armor specially tailored to resist fire, lightening and cold (+15, and that's on top of +30 against elemental in general), warriors have dragonscale armor (not sure how much fire resistance it offers though), making earth magic a little more useful, in spite of its low damage. Also, area effect of fire is not very useful in pvp as players move around alot.

Well Earth, done right, is far more powerful than Fire. But, way harder to play. Exaustion, timing, and high cost spells, but lots of knockdown.

I recently build a Earth/Curse/Blood Ele/Necro for PvP and could easily take down a Warrior one on one and leave with 3/4 health (and no energy) using only a Earth magic Minor rune.

And earth magic is where all the good wards are. I don't know why so many people use fire, ohh that is right, firestorm, the most worthless spell ever.

You might as well hold up a flashing banner that says you have 10 seconds to leave the area or you will get damaged.

Learn Eruption, and Earthquake and learn to deal with the exaustion and cost while you blind them and knock them down.

And Obsidian Flame costs 5 energy, exausts you but I have made it do more than 110 damage. Talk about a killing blow.

I think you misunderstood my post (i probably wasn't very clear). When I talk about specializing in a certain element at the beginning of the game, I do not mean that they lose access to teh other elements. They just start with a different, but equivalent element spell - for example, an aeromancer starter would start with lightning strike instead of flare, a geomancer would get stone/earth daggers (don;t remember what the name is), etc. But they will still gain access to the other elelment spells, but later in the game (like an aeromancer would get flare when a pyromancer woudl get lightning strike).
I hope this clears up my previous post.

Ahh I see. Still I like the way it is.

If you have your Earth skills you are further along.

I am building a Sword Warrior right now. It was really frusterating having all the Axe skills I needed to make a warrior and only 2 Sword Skills. I fot a few missions further and now I am tryong to pick my favorite three the bring along.

I think it is in the design. I makes me mad, then happy

The problem is, fire is good for beginners, as most of its skills do what playing the early game requires, and that's damage. Earth is a lot more complex to play, as its defensive spells arne't that useful early on when enemies dont' hit for that much, and its offense is lacking unless you want to give level 5 players access to spells you get at around ascension. Airg is simply not very good damage wise for PvE early on, as most of its spells only target one enemy, and for its mana cost its just not worth it against most early monsters. Again, for air to be good, they need to have high level air and late game air spells, not something a elementalist below level 10 should have access to for balance reasons. Water spells pretty much deal no damage, and are mostly used for very specialized builds that do things other than damage, which again, needs other late game spells to work effectively and giving early players access would make the game imbalanced and probably more confusing to new players.

It WAS a PvP game... During the beta... now it's "Grind Wars" whoever unlocks the most skills first wins!! It's like a horrible version of WoW or something, with minor tweaks, but shortlived.

The above comment is simply not true.

There's no use denying it. I love the game... But I'm not going to pretend it wasn't thousands of times better during the beta, when I could log on, make a PvP character with a custom perfect build, and jump into PvP instantly.

The story is fun...

... the first time...


... going through it 3 times (minimum)... sucks...

Hey, great rebuttal!

He has a point, and a valid one. I don't know if I would personally compare it to WoW just yet, but I don't like slogging through the official campaign (aka the PvP tutorial) for the third time any more than he does.

Lets just think about this for a sec... you played as Elementalist for a month and have no more things to do... assuming you dont like PVP, you can create 3 new "different" types of characters and do it all over again and enjoy the skills from different characters. So that is 3 characters plus 1 month each to finish the game at your pace, thats 3 months more... soon also a "free" update is coming for everyone so there is more to do. Thats pretty good dont you think?
Furthermore, the game is titled "GUILD Wars" hence GUILDs have a lot to do with it. If you do create 4 characters and play your heart out, you are still going at about 4 months of gameplay, free update coming soon, and the occasional PvP match with your guild mates (if you are into that) all for a lost once off cost of $xx (wherever you are in the world), and no monthly cost to play, that is bad?
I know you are running out of things to play but perhaps the message in all that is that you have had a LITERAL BLAST playing the game so much that you are sad it is over but considering how much you can still do, try another character and build them up and enjoy being someone else.

No offence mind you, but I dont play as much as you do and sometimes I am daunted by the thought that I am only at level 12 or so and by the time I get upto the level people like you are at, it may already be the end of the year Just go with the flow, there is lots to get your kicks out of it. I personally made some new characters to enjoy their play styles. Its fun

Whoever unlocks the most skills wins? Surely you are not that misguided.

Surely you're not misguided enough to take every word you read literally. What he meant was that guilds that have access to more skills will have more versatility, the potential to create more effective and adaptive builds and so between two guilds of equal skill, yes, the one with the more unlocked skills will win. When do you ever get two guilds of exactly equal skill? Never, but that's the beauty of hypothetical situations and it doesn't invalidate his point.

If you have skills the enemy doesn't, how will they know (or have) what it takes to counter?

If you have more skills (and thus more build options), you have more options for creating "the perfect strategy"

And I completely agree with all of that post

I'm starting to get a bit bored with the pve game as well. I just beat the pve game last week with my mes /nec I really don't feel like playing pretty much the same missions as my ele/mo or my W/R. Hopefully Arena net will add more content besides underworld and fissure. Being killed in 3 hits by one of those axe things is not fun.

I made a PvP character the second the game was up. Pretty easy back then. If people stuck to the custom slated characters, then this "skill unlocking grind" wouldn't matter. However, since obviously people have unlocked and unlocked to make the ultimate PvP character, it's only right that you should put some kind of effort in it as well.

Otherwise, learn to get good with the default characters. If the people with less spare time complain about it, well...let's pretend that you could only use the default characters for PvP. The people who spent countless hours unlocking, instead spent countless hours mastering their default character. In the end, no matter what situation you make it, those with more time on their hands have the advantage.

Wow..sheesh...dayum. I am only going to address your "other games" comment about how you get months of play..blah...blah...

Well, in MOST games you get 40-50 hours of playtime. Go log on all your characters and type /age. Add the numbers, now guess how many hours you have playing all the characters you have deleted... Ok, now divide the fifty bucks you paid for this game buy the total hours. This is how much you pay to play this game per hour, and your still playing.

Now pull really hard, you will hear a loud popping noise, your butt will hurt and you will see light.

Nope. That wasn't what he said. What he said took two lines. You took four. So it wasn't what HE SAID, it was what you think he said... which for all intents and purposes, is all you, attributing your thoughts to invisible things in between the lines of WeezerBlue's post. Why? Go and take credit for your hard-thought arguments...

Because you're still wrong, man. If I have 60 skills, and someone has 61 skills, am I going to lose to this guy, just because his 61st skill is Signet of Judgment or Banish? Um, no.

Someone paralleled Guild Wars to Magic: the Gathering and other collectors' card games, which isn't such a stretch if you consider that from a wide pool of cards/skills in your arsenal, you can only take a small fixed amount into battle. I wouldn't argue that a person with a smaller pool of cards in MtG would necessarily lose to someone with a larger pool of cards... would you argue that someone with a larger pool of skills in GW would do the same to me?

Actually, he was just coming from another thread where he said just that, and his post was an allusion. Since you weren't there I guess I can't expect you to know, but the implications were there all the same.

And while it's rarely a difference of just one skill, that one skill can make all the difference. Let's say one group's healer is running Divine Boon, but the other group's healer doesn't have it. The Boon healer will be able to drop much bigger heals and effectively dampen all the damage spikes the enemy can produce. The other healer might have a little more energy in the long run, but he won't have the healing power to mitigate the other group's damage output.

Magic Cards aren't a valid comparison because one card floating around in your deck is less likely to show up in a battle. If you bring a skill to the table in GW, it's there, you have free and unlimited access to it.

I know I made a // with Magic in another topic, not sure that's what you're pointing to.

I (of course ) fully agree with Chaynsaw: additional skills for an attribute you won't even use is of little use

One skill can make all the difference, but that depends on the environement, what the opposition brings, etc, etc... And there is no way you know that ahead of time. Maybe Divine Boon will help you... And maybe you'd be better off with Orison of Healing (as in... you face energy draining mesmers...) Or both, or neither. If, if, if, if...

Another way to ask the question is; maybe one player does not have a specific skill, such as Divine Boon mentionned above. Chances are someone else in the guild got it; maybe it's the one with Divine Boon who shall be the healer if it really deemed necessary for the healer position.
If I don't have the cards to make a specific deck in Magic, I make another deck. I can't make a specific deck? Well maybe I ought to play something else then.

Saying that Magic is not a good comparison because a card is just floating and not going to show up in a deck is a misunderstanding of the Magic point. Whether the card will or will not show up is irrelevant to Magic deck building in the sense that statistics are part of Magic deck building.
Whether it's Magic or GW, having all the cards, or all the skills won't save you if you bring the wrong one to the table. Actually, unless you know all the skills really well, chances are that having lot of skills right away will increase the chance of inneficient build making.
A basic solid build in Magic or GW does not require that many skills, and certainly most are available pretty fast.

Louis,

In response to the original post :

1 ~ Try and consider the idea that each different school of ele magic will have it's strengths and it's weaknesses, and that each is specifically designed to stand apart from the others. If all elements did the same amount of damage in the same way ( aoe ) then there really would be no use to have any other school of magic than fire. All professions are built this way in the game, and thankfully with the attribute / skill bar set-up in GW, it helps prevent any single class from being able to make that *one unstoppable build* that can defeat all others.

As an extention of the idea of the elements all being different, consider a different class like a nec ~ you could argue that Blood / Curse should be able to do as much damage as Death, or that Death should be able to steal life as effectively as Blood.

2 ~ Something that's often overlooked by people in terms of what you may need gold for, or how to experience more with the rp content on a single character, is the ability post-ascansion to quest for a different sub-class. You can still switch back to your first selection, but it gives you the opportunity to experience new / different quests, and can end up costing a fair amount of gold for new skills for those you're not questing for ( they can get up to around 1k each depending on how many you're able to quest, and how many you choose to unlock via skill trainers ) On a single character, simply by changing your subclass you can take the rp content quite a bit further , and in the process you'll be opening up a third playable pvp profession with a complete ( or close to it ) skill set, giving you more options in how you experience the game on that end as well.

As far as high end boss encounters ... I have a feeling that as more content is added, there will no doubt be more challenging areas / bosses etc added within those areas. Hopefully though, that will never become any sort of focus to the game, as pvp is still what GW is about at the end of the day.

Comment in regards to Fire magic doing UBER damage compared to other spells, and I think this was already pointed out.

The spells have different secondary attributes that make them worth while besides their damage. Lets try to break it down like this, I am not saying this is the only thing it does, but there seems to be an underlying thread with each skill. FIRE: DAMAGE, EARTH: DISRUPTION, WATER: SLOW, LIGHTNING: ARMOR PIERCE. When I first started with my E/Mo I looked at the skills, and I was like 'Oh yeah fire it does more damage'. As the game has progressed fire has become more impratical. Monsters later on seem to have a higher lvl of fire resistance more frequently. I started to notice this with the White Mantle around Ettins Back, and it doesn't get much better (which is about the time more skills become available). So, that high level of dmg from fire really is not that high.

Although I do think Chain Lightning is nerfed, and should do more dmg, or recharge faster or blind all the enemies for 60seconds and maybe it could leech mana.


*PING*

"His post was an illusion" - my favorite line.

Moving right along: yes, Divine Boon can help you heal a lot of dmg, but it also takes away mana at a much faster rate. Decreases your mana regen, and it takes more mana per heal. Your example doesn't negate my argument, that more skills is not necessarily better.

I mean, how much PvP have you played that you can make a statement like that? Number of skills doesn't guarantee victory. Victory is decided by who can use the necessary skills effectively. I don't have Smite unlocked. Am I going to unlock it? Probably not... because I don't need it. If someone has all the skills I have, but adds Smite to his repertoire, does that mean he's going to beat me? The answer, you must agree, is still no -> not all skills are useful. Sorry.

Allusion, you know what I meant. Don't tell me you've never made a typo.

And you missed the point of my example. I pointed out that Divine Boon wasn't as good for long term healing but instead helped soften damage spikes. Against a team with air elementals, for instance, it's much preferable to the extra pip of energy regen.

I never said that number of skills guaranteed victory, those are your words. Nothing guarantees victory, ever, and thank god. But more skills does allow greater versatility. One skill might not make a difference, but if one guild has their builds decked out with elites and runes because they spent hours grinding PvE while another guild of equal skill and mental acumen doesn't, why should they win simply for having invested more time? That's not in the spirit of a skill-based game.

totally /agree

fire might have the highest damage numbers according to the skill descriptions, but the further you advance in the game, the less effective fire becomes. especially in the desert and on the ring of fire. the last mission makes you whince as a fire ele, because you don't seem to deal any dmg at all. the only monsters that have a very low fire ress are undeads, and those aren't too common lateron. still, i think everything is balanced out quite fine, so i hope they leave it the way it is.

If you think GW PvP is decided on who has invested the "most time" into acquiring elite skills, then you haven't played enough PvP. I mean, how easy is it to get Divine Boon?

You're quantifying the unquantifible and using it in your argument. "Oh if X has more skill and more mental acumen, they would definitely pwn Y if not for the god awful skill grind!" Disregarding how EASY it is to get skills and buy runes, how exactly is X supposed to have more mental acumen if they're not willing to get the skills they know they will need to succeed? Not even taking into account, having skills doesn't mean ANYTHING if you can't use them properly...

Even implying that a guild has beaten you because it just has more skills and runes is just ignorant. They couldn't be a better, more skilled, more coordinated team could they? They're just l33t farmers, or whatever pejorative you care to summon at the moment. Writing off the enemies you lose to as simply newbs with more time is just indicative of how much more PvP you need to play before you understand that farming skills/runes is nothing in this game. Knowing how to use your skills is everything.

Did you even read my post? You're trying to make this about something completely different. I certainly never wrote anyone off as a "l33t farmer", if they're skilled enough to take the elites they grind and build them into a PvP powerhouse, they deserve my respect and everyone else's. What I'm saying, is that if a guild of equal skill went up against them in the arena and got smeared because they had the potential but not the skills to back it up, then the game has ceased to be about skill and instead become about hours spent in PvE.

You get Divine Boon from a skill trainer, I didn't use it as an example because it was hard to acquire. Trying to say that I haven't had enough PvP experience or am just bitter is a cop-out and I think you can do better.

Fire for RP. All other elements for PVP
Theres a reason why Fire skills are so abundant and easy to get early on in RP.....

I do not agree with you in your whine regarding the storyline and length of game. The Game is not over, only this chapter of it is. Anet will happily take your money for the next installment. GG for finishing so quickly

I'm not even sure what you're saying anymore. Your argument becomes diluted with the more posts you make.

How about I liken what I perceive to be your argument to a boxing match? Boxer A has more skill than Boxer B, in some perfect world where the amount of skill can be quantified. All other things equal, Boxer A and Boxer B square off. But Boxer A is missing one thing: a jab. He doesn't know how to jab. He loses.

Do we dismiss boxing as a game that rewards investment of time more than skill, or do we call the naysaying for what it is: making excuses.

I mean, you predicate your example with a conditional: " if a guild of equal skill went up against them in the arena and got smeared because they had the potential but not the skills to back it up, then the game has ceased to be about skill and instead become about hours spent in PvE." and that, my friend, is a big IF. Why do you say IF? I say it never happens. I bet you unwillingness to capture skills is directly correlated to lack of teamwork, lack of experience, and lack of skill.

You can't be skilled if you don't go out of your way to acquire the arsenal you need. If you have skills, it doesn't mean a whit if you can't use them. I'll say it over and over because I believe it in the bottom of my heart that nine times out of ten, a guild never lost because their skill palette was not varied enough. They lost because they didn't use their skills properly, or they used the wrong build, or they just faced a better team.

You may think I'm attacking your character, but I merely take to task your argument, because I think it's wrong. Not having enough skills but saying you have skill is just making excuses for losing and for the laziness that prevents you from doing a necessary but simple skill-acquisition run that will make you competitive.

Don't blame Guild Wars for a losing team losing, blame the losing team.

Can you grind/non-grind PvP-equality people stop rudely hi-jacking other people's threads with novel-length debates? There are countless other threads made for your specific debate already.

On-topic - I'm by no means an 'experienced' GW player - and likely never will be even if I played for 3000 hours, since I don't pay a lot of attention to numbers and things - so I can only add that IMO, for PvE at least, it would be nice if there were a few more spells designed for the' lower levels' that would be more effective for the other elements besides fire.

If I want to PvE using an Earth build, it's not very 'inspiring' to think about having to go through the early part of the game using Fire again, since that's the best early tree. I tried making an Air, and almost every PUG group I joined I ended up switching it over to Fire because Air just didn't cut it as being helpful to the low-level party.

Now, granted, what other people have said is also true - that the other trees become more powerful/needed/useful later on...and that you can change later via attribute switches etc....but they key here, to me, is variety on all levels of the game, not just the' endgame'. It doesn't seem to me that adding a few low-level spells to make that variety more apparent would be out of order for the game.

The spells that would be added for low level areas for air, water, and earth would just end up being clone copies of fire spells. The fact is, there's no point in using spells other than direct damage from post searing ascalon to the northern shiverpeaks.

I am tired of hearing the same tired, baseless excuse for a rebuttal from you so I'm going to dispel all of your illusions right now. My guild is 8-0 at the moment. We have grinded out most of the runes and skills we need and it's pretty obvious that we are competitive as we are. We are never "unwilling" to get something we need when we decide our build needs it.

However that doesn't make it right that we have to endure hours of time we could be spending actually training real PvP skills wading through hordes and hordes of worthless AI-controlled chop liver. A simple skill-acquisition run? To get Spell Breaker, you have to run from Droknar's northwest all the way to Rankor's Fort, and from there travel north across the longest north-south area in the game, made even longer by the infuriatingly twisting road. If you hack your way all the way to the northernmost end and check three separate locations, the mob you need may not even be there. Hooray.

That's upwards of two hours with henchmen, still upwards of an hour with a solid guild group just from time spent running. Now multiply that by every Elite, of which there are over 60. Okay, you don't need all the elites? Then half that number, that's still 30 goddamn hours of our time wasted doing stupid things that we hate! And this doesn't even factor in farming for runes, an even more redundant way to waste an evening where the rewards are even less certain. Finish a whole mission and get blessed with two gold drops? Nope, one is a minor that you already have and the other's a worthless salvage item. Try again.

I am consistently getting the impression from your posts that you really don't have much PvP experience at all, and are just spouting the rhetoric of the ideal universe you imagine the PvP world to be based on things you have heard and what little you've seen. Me and mine are not lazy, uncoordinated, or unwilling to do what it takes to win and I resent the implication, but that does not mean it is right to make "what it takes to win" involve doing things we hate to do.

And if you really still don't think one skill can make a difference in a battle, just wait around until you see some real PvP and go up against a team making prodigious use of Spell Breaker. You'll see what I mean.