Sigil of Capture "update". BAD JOB Anet...

I'm not trying to start a flamewar, or wanting to sound whiny, but this part of the update :

"Changed Signet of Capture so that it now targets dead boss monsters. When you use the signet, you are presented with a menu of all of the dead boss monster's skills, and can capture any skill of your choice. This eliminates the need to keep boss monsters alive while trying to capture their skills, and will substantially reduce the difficulty of capturing certain skills that are rarely cast by boss monsters."

just makes capturing Elite skills TERRIBLY BORING.

What the heck happened to this being a strategic game? Trying to figure out a way for a boss to actually USE a skill was considered having to use your brain a little, be smart / creative, and for me was actually FUN.
Yes, there were several skills which were a nightmare to capture, and some boss monsters were even plain broken (such as having to drop items and gather them again to the Battle Cry), but this is just plain ridiculous.
Going to capture your Elite skills is one of the few things left to do once you've ascended, now what is anyone going to do? Wait a YEAR for the expansion pack?

How does capturing skills going from : 'Think about the skill, try to create circumstances for the boss to actually use it, then try to capture it' going to 'kill boss, use SoC, select skill'
actually make the game more FUN???

Yeah, it makes it EASIER, which I suppose for some people is great, but for people who enjoy a little challenge in their game, how is this fun??

Now a rune merchant, who now makes finding a rune about as exciting as finding a 2-5 plain shortsword (whee, another rune, wow, that's another 50 gold I just found! Sweet!), I mean, what's next? Having a merchant in Ascalon Ascend you on the spot for 50 gold?

I know that Anet has a big thing against grinding, but simply taking away every single ounce of sweat and handing you everything on a silver platter does NOT make a good game.
Heck, if we want that, why not just let us create a roleplaying character like a pvp character? Here ya go, lvl 20, every item open for you to use, tadaaaa.

I'm going to stop because I'm skirting close to whining, but seriously, this is NOT an upgrade that's going to help anything out. I've already talked to several people ingame who are going to stop because there's nothing left to do now. Everything's become way way way too easy.

This was a bad update.

Creston

I think, overall, it was a good update. And, just because you do not like this particular aspect of the update doesn't mean you need to bash the entire update...

They did it for the PvPers. You must like PvE. But the real long-term interest is in PvP, so they get the better deal

I hate to say it but im willing to bet this is exactly what will happen.

They're just making the game more PvP oriented and less farming oriented.

They think we're people who want to have fun and who don't wanna camp the same spot over and over again. Alas, maybe they're overrating some of us.

I think it was a good update also, just a few specifics were too out of whack. Rune traders should be way more limited than they are now; signet of capture needs a little tweaking and nerf the xp on galrath a bit and everthing will be fine again.

Why do people want a random chance of getting what they earned after they earn it? If you can win once, you can win 500 times. Mobs don't learn after you thrash them.

i agree man. removes the fun in it. its like its all handed to you on a silver platter.

i think the old method of using the signet of capture is better. if you got the wrong skill, then your fault coz you didnt analyse the tactics used by the mob.

i remember when i was in a mission in sanctum cay. i was after the signet of weariness and when i casted my signet of capture when i hit it once, i got mantra of resolve, which is a good catch also.

i wish they roll back the update.

I sort of agree with the first poster:

Elite skills should be hard to get.

Otherwise, why would they be elite?
They should be hard to get to and hard to capture, that way, when you have it and can use it, you actually have a decent reward for your achievement.
It's not like farming because you can't sell or trade your skill and you only ever have to capture the skill once. They should have left that part of it alone. I'm all for fixing the economy to eliminate farmers, but they should have left the elite captures alone. If anything, they should have improved the boss AI rather than click and collect a skill.

But the point is that it just becomes an assassination mission. There's no strategy in that.
ANet should have delayed this and thought on it a little longer. They had an opportunity to improve the elite capture quests but instead have basically eliminated it. What they could have done was added a whole new dimension to the "keep the boss alive to capture the skill" concept by improving the boss AI. Hell, they could have even have made a new quest system where the reward was an elite skill.

Hey! Did you hear that? A voice! A voice in the wind! It's saying "posssssteeerr...maybe they're Elite because you can only have one of them in your ssssssslooooot baaaaaaaar"

Alas, the voice is gone again.

I agree in a way that there is no point in having to fight the same mob over and over to try to get that one item, but that was never what I was doing. I kept doing quests and would kill some of the mobs that I saw and that's about it.

But when my first Major Vigor rune dropped (I say first, I should say ONLY), I was happy as a puppy. I've treasured that thing forever, waiting for my character to finally get her best armor so I could then put it on there.

It's FUN to get something rare drop. Runes are about the coolest things you can get in the game. Now they're as exciting as a 50 gold drop. How is this a good thing?

I perfectly understand that people who do not have a lot of time to play didn't want to have to keep trying to get something, but how exactly is your life lessened if you DON'T happen to have every rune? I have three characters, and one of them actually uses a rune. I don't buy them, except from party members if they happen to drop in a mission. It's not killing you to NOT have five runes on every character, but that is exactly what's going to happen now.
Everyone will have a rune for every one of their attributes, and then a vigor rune. So that makes the whole rune thing about as exciting as finding 1 bone.

Half the fun in this game comes from finding cool stuff. If they wanted to make that less of a grind, they should up the drop rate. But everyone who has farmed up to now has cool stuff, while the rest of us can now... well I guess we can buy runes, and probably never ever see a really cool weapon drop ever again?

Finding loot is fun. Buying it is not. Getting runes now makes me feel like I'm going to the grocery store. :|

And sorry, but removing ANY form of skill required to capture an Elite skill is just stupid. It's an ELITE skill, it's SUPPOSED to be difficult to capture. They remove them from all bosses before Ascension, I guess just because you might otherwise, you know, have FUN using them earlier, but okay, at least it makes getting them more of a reward, and now they make it so easy to get them. I just can't see any parallels between those two moves.
They might as well go ahead and put them back on the old bosses that used to have them, since they're seemingly insistent on making everything as easy as it can be.

Again, I don't want to sound as if I'm whining, but I seriously don't see how this makes the game more fun. A LITTLE challenge is a good thing.

Creston

AN Elite is an Elite because you can have only one in your skill bar. That's the strategy, when you have to fgiure out which one to use when you have 10 staring at you.

The old SoC method was not fun. Sure, I thought it was when I first got access to a SoC and was runnin around Capturing everything non stop. But, once you actually needed an elite, getting it would take forever. There wasn't any "How am I going to make him use it". Either they did, or they didn't. And if they did, maybe you would get it. The old system was not fun, and this is a good change, that when you do kill the boss, you will actually feel a sense of accomplishment, instead of swearing at your monitor because the boss didn't use the skill for the 500th time.

Just because you can equip only one, does not mean they should be too easy to get.
In fact, I'm looking over the list of possible elites for my Me/Wa and according to the way I play, I will only ever use about 4 of them. I don't see any problem in getting members of my guild together to go for an "Elite Skill Run" that is similar to a regular quest.
One thing Guild Wars is missing is exploration. Because the paths are basically laid out for you, there's no special hidden places you can explore and find for interesting rewards. Elite skills being harder to get would have been part of that "exploration" sort of thing. It's not grinding or farming because you only have to do it once (just improve the boss AI to respond to certain tactics that make the elite come out....like catching a bear in pre-searing), but a bit more "off the beatin' track" adventures would help to realise the world of Tyria more fully.

That is not true, you know. Yes, for certain Elites it was annoying, but there were quite a few that you could GET the boss to use by using tactics. The Elite skill that removes conditions from an ally for example, you had to poison the boss monster's allies so he would use it. That's called thinking, and to me makes the thing actually fun.
There is a great thread about the stuff people did to try to get Elites on one of these forums (I can't find it, there are too many different forums here, seriously ). While some of them were very aggravating (Battle Rage, for example), there were quite a few descriptions of tactics that people used to get a specific skill.

Now you go, kill the boss, take the skill you want. Woohoo. How is capturing elite skills now different from one of the "kill ten certain monsters for 500 xp" quests?

I really don't see how : No Strategy = Better.

Creston

I think the hard to get items should be stuff you show off, not stuff you need to PvP effectively. I'd say they should add extremely rare drops of things like glowing dyes and other appearance mods - they would be something worth looking for, but no one would feel that they NEED them. Searching for an item is not fun, but finding something special is. Therefore, the best thing to do is make special items that you don't need to search for to get a full power character.

I agree that more exploration would be nice, but I don't think that making elites easier is necessary to do this. I think that the change to Sigil of Capture is a good thing. One of the most important gameplay dynamics of Guild Wars is that you focus your time more upon utilizing your abilities and finding new strategies for those abilities, in unique and interesting ways, not upon acquiring those abilities.

If you want a challenge try playing against some real opponents that have actual brains instead of some lowly AI that stands in chaos storm/fire storm/meteor storm/any AOE, casts through backfire, attacks through empathy etc.etc. If you hit the "M" key and warp to the Tomb of Primeval Kings you can participate in what is known as PvP. I assure you, you will find the challenge you are seeking. Of course most people just end up complaining that this is too challenging. Go figure

Now that was well put...

Anet could work on customization now. Maybe rare drops could be items useful to make your char look different instead of Uber runes all the time. It would be nice, and would make all the unhappy grinders happy again.

(to the origional poster)

So umm... you're voting for more grind? I'm not a pure pvp guy, but I would like to be ready for it before next year. I think this patch is a fairly good one. Though I do find myself a bit worried what is going to happen to the economy with the rune trader.

I love this game, but I have been a bit upset about the whole elite skill capture thing. Elites were origionally introduced in the beta testing (to great criticism) to prevent obviously overpowered combos. It was a balance measure, plain and simple. Signets of capture were brought in to replace "skill gems" which were later replaced with skill rings and skill charms... It is a little ironic that out of all of those, they chose the one system that I DIDN'T like. Not only that, but it was further complicated by making the use of Signets of Capture required if you ever wanted a single elite skill. Anything they can do to make this cumbersome system a bit more streamlined is fine by me.

I rather liked the original method also. I'd prefer a challenge.

However, there are two reasons why I can understand the change.

Problem 1: Some players would join mission groups, and risk the teams ability to win, by demanding they wait until the boss used a skill they wanted and were able to capture it. I've heard of many people then leaving immediately if they were unsuccessful.

Problem 2: I cannot confirm this, but I've read in these very forums, that some skills are bugged, and could cause a boss to never use a skill, unless an odd requirement was met.

If it benefits the whole of the gamers because of solving those issues, then I have no problem with it, though it does seem like a "band-aid" fix, if that is the case.

Quoted again for truth. PvE doesn't involves changing strategies, using tactics that can be reacted upon. They just give the monsters bigger stats or make you fight more at a time and call it a challenge. I don't want my PvE to be work because the only reason I PvE is the game forces me so I can PvP. This is a good change.

umm what about coop mission boss. You know the last boss you have to kill for the mission to end(well some of them anyway). What if your trying to capture that skill from them. So if boss dies cut scene happens do you get the chance to get the skill? Sure something else might drop it but usually I like getting it from them least I know they will spawn there.

As for the runes...I don't buy from people really cause I just wanna find it one my own. Also I don't have a lot of money now(trying to get al 15k armor) E/Mes don't farm that well .

Best thing I see is that henchies don't run after everyone dies and respawns. Was such a pain to get to granite that way.

This was a good update. No, let me change that. It was a GREAT update.

And you people saying that Elites are elite because they're supposed to be hard to find, well obviously you're wrong since that's not what ANET sees it now. I really don't see how you equate something frustrating and tedious to get as being Elite. They're elite because you can only have one in your skill bar, that's plainly obvious since this is a strategic game.

It's so true... that is why PvE as a whole depresses me... I see no point to play GW due to this situation though, for people who do not like or appreciate PvP.

I hope no one that was one of those PVP people who wanted a UAS button are complaining because they are the ones who brought around this new way of capping skills.

I'm behind you on the glowing dyes XD

Well, instead of nerfing Elite Capture quests into simple search and destroy missions, what they should have done then, if keeping in the spirit of PvP was allow for an Elite skill to be a reward you can obtain for achieving something in PvP like taking the HoH or winning consecutively a set number of times or....well, people with more time than me could think of something.

I don't think there was any skill involved in capturing skills before. If you had everything else the boss had, then you just spammed the sig until it worked. If you were lucky, you got it.. if not.. you didn't get it. There were some weird things that people did to get it to work on some things.. but I wouldn't call that skill. Dropping armor and running around to get an elite isn't skill, it's unnecessary garbage that's better off not in the game.

The only thing this hurts, is if someone ran to a boss to steal, and couldn't kill them.. but eh.. I doubt that effects too many people.

This patch is great, I'm really happy to see the direction they're taking it.

Closed.

Simply put: We're all human. Have some decency and act that way in your posts. We're here to help a game improve, not turn this place into a soap opera.