Huge Nerf To Entire Game With New Patch

i was farming with a suicide monk at riverside,
now none of mobs drop,
tried different zones, its the same -no drops anywhere-

Have you considered, though, that not everyone finds fishing fun and, likewise, not everyone considers 'farming' fun? The trouble is, you might enjoy it, but because of your actions it means many people who find it a real chore feel compelled to do it too simply to remain competitive with you. The actions of a few 'intensive farmers' have repercussions for everyone, not just themselves. It effects the whole economy of Guild Wars and makes the game less enjoyable for (what I consider to be) the majority of players. Nobody wants to stop you doing what you enjoy but, at the same time, you have to realise how your actions effect everyone around you.

Hamidouch,

I ran a test run to see what they did to Riverside (which I already knew was going to get whacked by the nerf bat). I got my clock cleaned. I am TICKED! All they did was increase the gap between the wealthier early players and the later post-retail release players. This disparity is a polar opposite of what ArenaNet claims to be doing - equality among players for a fair, balanced gaming environment. I pity people who will purchase GW in a month. They don't stand a chance. The mobs are harder, the loot scarcer. Some of these mobs are now too difficult for a full party to handle unless you have an exact group, which screws over classes not on the list of that exact, specific grouping.

So, let me get this right... The patch has at once taken all challenge out of the game in order to appease n00bs and, at the same time, it is has also made the game far too difficult for new players. I'm confused

yes they added necro to any warrior group
im ok with that,
im ok they make farming harder ( actually its lot harder, a debufer in each warrior group powns any gm)
but removing all drops lol oO

funny

do i detect high priced rune farmers a little bit miffed ?

i`m glad to see any nerfing of drops,..sick of the prices being rogered by idiots who are simple exploit farmers making stuff too expensive for mid range players to buy.

20k for a major vigor...kiss my chuggies
80k for a superior vigor...as above.

hoping theres 100.000 vigor runes drops so they get stuck with theirs...lol

A Gambling Rune Trader would solve that. You could see the profession and strength of a rune but would need to identify it after you purchased it to determine exactly what you had bought.

This is a Guild Wars forum right ? Just checking, because some of the comments here sound like a completely different game.

I was out farming in various locations (including Riverside etc.) just after the update, to test some skills out. Loot drops were plentiful and good (somes runes & purples), and I didn't see any noticably harder mobs. Maybe I was just lucky, but right now I'm finding it hard to believe that some people aren't over-reacting just so that they can have a good whine.

well all these lame upgrades/nerfing is just for the people that just play this game to create pvp characters and thats all. if no one noticed there is really NO REASON to unlock runes anymore because you can just buy them in pvp areas. capturing elite skills is a joke now. just wait until the next patch when all pvp characters get all skills unlocked like in the beta and weapon npcs are added. yeh a lot of the game is based on pvp, but if GW really wanted to make a game full pvp they shouldv'e just scrapped the whole pve section a long time ago. a lot of people play the game just for the adventures in pve and a lot play the game for pvp fun. but now playing pve is nothing but a waste of time. you can do useless missions,quests,gain some money yet gain nothing out of it and quickly forced to deal with the dumbasses in pvp. there is only one simple sollution.... SEPERATE PVP from PVE!@. give all the pvp whiners everything they want and let the pve people enjoy the fun of an rpg. if not GW should change the description of the game to not be an RPG anymore so then all the people buying/playing the game simpily for the pve can quit or not bother and try something better. GW is quickly becoming a huge disapointed.

(HURRY post your disagreements)

IMO people who think it was a "NERF" are the one who play to grind 1000p in 1 week and sell all their "uber rune of cheating +999"(as The Pope funnily said) on Ebay.
People who think it was an improvement are the one who are playing to have fun.

I play PvE only and those change wont reduce my fun in anyway. The only thing i found weird in the update was .. Personally i think being level 15 in pre-searing must get boring.. but if some people do it, its probably because they are having fun and that's the main point of a game.

In no way this update should make any PvEr angry. Unless they want the monopoly of guildwars item on Ebay.

And people who think it taken all challenge out of the game... They didn't change that at all.. Unless for you grinding is challenging.. Cannot capture when boss use skills.. I also loved that but that wasnt a challenge at all.

If you want challenging grinding try this its free

I see no point in being so angry about anything in that update.. unless maybe the fact that now npc wont fly away after you respawn. I liked to see my npc go away but now they wont do it anymore.. At least Alesia is still tanking so i'm not all screwed up.

*sigh* I'm really getting tired of seeing people complain after every update. If I was working for ANet right now, I wouldn't feel like trying to make the game good for everyone anymore. All of the complaining and whining would just sap out the energy to continue creating and altering the game, and then everyone would be left with nothing. How would that make you guys feel?

I mean, honestly. The game is a month or so old after release, give it some time people. I actually had fun farming riverside, I have never been bored yet. Even the five infusion runs I did, I enjoyed them, why? Because I was playing a game that I paid money for. I enjoyed trying to weave my way in and out of the creatures, laughing as my balanced stance prevented me from getting knocked down. Some of the complainers just need to chill, wait, and have patience, which has already been said, I know.

I think that the update was fairly good, and I don't mind it at all. I love the PvE portion of the game, even after this update. I just love playing the game, period. Only thing I'm miffed about is when the rune trader offered to pay me 30 gold for my minor runes

Honestly, the PvE zealots are getting far more annoying than the PvP whiners. Oh, to go back to the days of old. When fansite forums were readable.

These steps are being taken to make the game, as a whole, more fun. Nobody likes having to replay the same area time after time, especially if it's not even remotely challenging or has little randomisation. So Arena are taking steps to ensure that you shouldn't have to do the same thing time after time, that you can get most everything out of a single playthrough. With no Hard Mode for the cooperative campaign (which I would love with all my heart, but I digress), there's no fun in going through the content a second time. They're implementing traders so you can get the stuff you've missed. How is this bad? After all, people have asked for a better implemented trading system than trade chat, and here it is. It's like a simplified auction house. If they could find a way to trade weapons like this, all our trade chat woes would be solved.

There, I've posted my disagreements, you ponce. Happy now?

Got to level mentality doesn't exist or matter in GW, when the advertised the game and made the game, the Idea was for 90% of the game play to be lvl 20, so getting to lvl 20 isn't an issues, If you have good guild friends you can actually get to level 20 very very easily.
Have you actually seen the prices for the Superior vigor runes, the runes that are essential if you are going to use any class superior rune?? 400k now how can that make it easier to make a elite character?
Sorry but the majority don't look or think before they start to rant nerf.
I beleive they are actually balancing the loot out through out the game, so new character will get good items and you won't need to farm for everything once you max out your character.
This is the way of things. This patch is about overall balance of the game, not just to make it better for the high level players. I am sure they will actually address issues for highend characters, but the key word is patients. When you fix something / change something at this stage of there will always be a knock on effect. So far they have actually added a great deal to the game and I hope they will continue to do so.
Rome wasn't built in a day.

Just another reply, I feel that people got spoiled from the various BWEs that ANet put out. Maybe they should have done closed beta testing instead, and not let everyone who reserved a copy of the game help test it? Honestly..god forbid you buy a game to -play- it..

Bobum said "Logging in and immediately having an uber character to go PVP with, takes NO skill."

You show zero understanding of this game with that comment. I could take a 15th level character against a 20th level PvP character played by someone new to the game and whip their rear end. So, yes, to win, it does take skill. By your thinking, if you do not grind, you do not have skill. That is completely inaccurate.

Sounds like they are realizing there is an issue with grind, and are planning to fix it. Until the next update it will have more grind, though, but that's ok as long as we get a fix soon.

ArenaNet has shown before they are willing to listen, too bad it just takes so long before something happens, like how Signet of Capture was widely criticized since day one, and not fixed until now.

I have to agree with you...I didn't purchase this game for the PvP...because quite frankly it won't ever compete with the other PvP titles available. I bought the game for the RPG aspect that incorporated PvP. This new patch is a dissapointment. Once I hit level 20 I'm going back to Counter Strike and rejoining my CAL team....there's no way I'm playing this game PvP.

Honest question - Have you even played the PvP part of the game? It sounds like you're so quick to just fob it off as total wank, yet you haven't even touched it.

if I wanted PvP I'd go play counter-strike......I've started a PvP character, yes. And to me it was the most boring asinine thing I could possibly think of doing. I'd rather play unreal or counter-strike than GW PvP

Actualy i think they are very fast to fix things. Some game take 2 years before fixing a major bug.
The two last update are massive compared to update in other games. Some game such as Ragnarok Online even go down every week for maintenance and they get update only every 2~3 months. Most of the time their update cause more bugs than it fix because they need to translate them from korean to english and they don't really seem to understand their own Data file structure. Gravity clearly stated that they would never take suggestion from players.

Arenanet on the other side implent suggestion in a matter of week if not less. I remember when people sugested to make cape for guild emblem. They made it the same day as the suggestion came.
When you send them an email for support or bug report, they answer you in 2~3 days(in your language).. in other game it take about 3 month to receive an automated answer that don't help you at all.


They cannot take all the suggestions. They cannot implent them all very fast. They have to study the impact that it would cause on the game and what would be the best idea to fix a problem and minimize other problem it may cause. They have to think about the up and down of a new feature. They cannot just throw in all suggestions.. it would make the crappiest game ever.

There's no game in the world that is 100% what you want. Even if you made that game, you would always want to change something. And if you have 500,000 person who play that game, you would always have the half of them not happy with what you changed.

The only time i was disapointed with GuildWars is when i had to wait 1 month between each first weekend of the month to play the game again during Beta Weekend Event

Sigh

The betas where for testing! To find out what people consider fun and entertaining. And then to remove it after release. Else it would have been a game. That you play.

sigh, how comes that people dont actually want to <<gasp>> play the game?

***
Really funny to see that the pvp crowd is accused of actually having fun in a game
Whats even more funny? GW had a beta that is considered to be better then almost every single MMO out there, even after 4 years of patching. And they still managed to have a disastrous launch / flamefest

Yup, a disastrous launch. /sarcasm

Number one in every country they launched for PC games, no crashes at all, very very few bugs comparitively, 1 hour downtime for a server update.

I'd like to see more disasters like this out there.

There were definitely some good updates and bad updates in the sense of more or less grind yesterday. But at least some action has been taken...even though it took 6 weeks to do so. I'm not going to argue that 6 weeks is too slow or just right, but I'm happy to see some changes finally and hope they continue to work in the right direction.

My guild spent a lot of time yesterday trying to figure out if there were any changes to the rune drops. What we found, and strongly believe to be true, is that the rune drop rates were not changed. However, what was changed are number of monster spawns, location of monster spawns, and types of monster spawns. For example, now you have to run past a pack of tengus to get to the ettins. Tengus, as many of you know, are quite annoying for solo farmers because of their enchantment removals. In Sanctum Cay, there's less Hill Giants, so less drops, but same drop rate. They also made it so that not every monster has a drop. There's a little quest with eight ettins that use to have all eight ettings drop something. Now, only four of the ettins drop anything.

Personally, I don't think Anet did this to increase Grind, but instead to cut down on people using macros for farming and people selling runes on Ebay. I'm sure they must have considered the side effects, but decided to go through with it anyways. My solution would be to make runes so easy to find that it wouldn't be worth selling on ebay and making macros. (Read articles on DVD Piracy solutions for analogies.) Either that or take them out completely. I'm very much for level playing fields where skill > time spent. The rune trader will help, but not in the long run. I only use PVP chars for pvp, so I would hate to buy a new rune whenever I'm using a new build or just testing a new build.

Specifically... THEY NERFED THE GIANTS AT SANCTUM (or rather made it harder to get there and then kill them)

If you want a game where you have to spend 1,000,000,000 hours to be "UBER" so you can win this is not the game for you. If you like "fishing" as somebody called it there are plenty of MMOs and other games out there that encourage this to no end.

I went and "farmed" some last night to see and well where I go the drops were fine and nothing I couldn't still handle solo (my farming build is pure Warrior, don't use my secondary at all so its no special super trick build) I pulled 5 purple and 2 gold armor drops in maybe an hour (I was also bouncing to the rune trader all the time to see what the prices were doing so I could unload my inventory full when they finally got up to a reasonable price).

The PvP here is dramatically different than CS or UT. This is like Chess those games are like Darts. Here you have to plan and execute on that plan while adapting it based on what your opponents do to you. In CS or UT you have to fire your gun and aim it like throwing a Dart. If you're the best at aiming and can react fast (think combat Darts where you throw them at each other) you win every time. If you suck at aiming and react like a troglodyte but know how to use the Internet then you can download your favorite bot and still win every time. Maybe I'm just old now but I prefer a good game of Chess over a game of Darts any day of the week.

The rune trader is a wonderful addition, this gives the PvP players a way to buy runes and use them if they don't reroll their PvP characters all the time (which with 4 slots if they are all dedicated to PvP they shouldn't have to). They can sell Sigils to make gold to buy the runes. It would be nice to see each player on a team get paid for winning the rounds to go along with the fame, perhaps 50g per round victory for 1 v 1 maps, 100g for 3 team and 200g for 6 team maps.

It would also be nice to see a skill trader at the HoH that sold skills for fame, as with the skill trainers have the cost go up over time. Maybe something like 1 fame per skill for first 4 and then go up 1 fame per 4 after that, so to unlock 80 skills (which would let them make a good number of builds) you're looking at 840 fame. To unlock all 600 skills you're talking 45,300 fame (I've heard of a couple of people having 6,000+ fame already? Maybe this would need to taper off some as it scaled up?)

In the PvE aspect of all games for some reason many people want to use the equation of TIME + LUCK = SKILL. I'm really glad to see a game that breaks that mold because that equation is inherently wrong (use a dictionary and see if you can figure out how to make it add up). I like the fact that a Minor Rune of Vigor is 30h and a Superior is only 50h, does the 20 extra help? Sure it does. Does it guarentee victory? By no means. Can it almost completley be negated by Fertile Season? You bet it can (when you have 1120 health vs 1100 health the difference means a lot less).

What makes this game good? A nice PvE story to get you pulled in, teach you the game and give you plenty of things to do for a long while. What will make this game last? The near infinite combination of 8 player teams that can be created (look at the math of 150 choose 8 just to see how many different combination of skills a player can use, then imagine attrib points, weapons, and then all of the possible 8 man teams, you end up approaching infinity) to battle against somebody else that has done the same. Will there be a FOTM that you run into "most of the time"? Always, because most people are sheep. Will the sheep cry when somebody disrupts their flock? You bet (see other threads for examples of this such as 5E/3Mo teams crying about 4R/4X spirit teams) because they don't want to think they just want to play and win. If you just want to play and win go to CS or UT or somewhere that doesn't present near infinite possiblities so your FOTM will never change.

[sarcasm]
And in fine forum trolling fashion I'll now state that I've spent 1,03004034,000 hours playing the game and that makes my opinion so much better than anyone elses. Sort of like killing 13,4,3,4,3,0100 Hill Giants makes me have more skill too. Ugh.
[/sarcasm]

Oh I just think that people are mad they cant make 100k in one hour now...

Just to add my 2 cents: I love the newest update. I've been playing since day one, and I've been playing alot (played through the game twice and almost ascended a third char) - yes, I've been doing some farming, yes I've been doing some grinding. Still, I think those new changes are great, and I'm looking forward to next week. As long as PvE (that's my focus) stays fun, I don't care if they adjust loot/spawn balance in order to make the game more fun for everyone.

I have a certain feeling though that some ppl, those that are called grinders, have a fear of losing their position. They have all the ph4t runes, they have all the items and money. It can be fun to grind, not because it's fun to do the same thing over and over again, but because some ppl love just being better, having more things, the love showing off. They feel they have a right to have more - much more - than everyone else. I hardly doubt anyone can really claim that doing the same thing over and over again is fun for them. If so, I'm sure ANet won't change their game experience, because you will always be able to do the same thing, you just won't get incredibly rich through it. Too bad. I know that I enjoy being 'better' than others. I love to have things others don't (I spent roughly 100k counting materials and dyes for each of my chars' citadel-armors). But I won't go as far as to call it a 'nerf' if everyone else is able to get the same things I have, easier and faster. I had my fun with them, I know I had them earlier, I know I had alot of fun gathering materials and money to get them. It still isn't easy to get everything you need for high-lvl-armor, so it is still an achievement and something to be proud of (you still have all the right in the world to feel special if you managed to get an armor from the citadel and dyed and tweaked (runes) it the way you want it to be).

In the end, everything will be the same, just more reasonable for casual players. More time to develop real skill in playing, rather than in repeating the same thing over and over again.

Too sum it all up: ANet is doing a great job, period.

Hmm I always though BETA events where to test for bugs, server stress test, last min skill balancing. Nothing to do with finding out what people wanted. Basically at that stage they have already design the game and already know how it is going to be released. The infamous Uas, well how else are they to actually test all the 375 skills available? The only ran Beta weekends, most MMORPG's run beta's for months continously.
It is the alpha stages that the majority of gameplay descisions are made, and these are behind closed doors, and the Alpha testers are often proffessional games testers / bug finders.
The actual Beta weekenders actual are the culprits behind the majority of Flame posts.

I dont care what UAS was for. If a janitor programmed it while the devs where asleep, to have access to everything because he is looser who wants everything handed to him and does not want to put time and effort to "earn" it... Fire the devs and make this janitor lead designer.
Fun >> all

Please everyone shut up about the game being too easy. That quote is from the Guild Wars site.

Juhanah, you rock.

The patch only "lessened the grind" for the pure PvPers. It screwed over the PvEers. I had just gotten to the point where I had the skills necessary to farm. I was not farming to sell to some website or on eBay or to gouge other players in Lion's Arch. As a matter of fact, I suck at selling. So I don't do it. Nor do I buy. If I can't find it myself, I don't use it. That's not because I'm a purist. It's because it's a pain in th @$$ to buy/sell from/to other players. I'd like prettier armor........

And yes, PvE players buying this game a month from now are screwed. The monsters have higher difficulty with lower rewards. You tell me how that makes for "fun, compelling PvE content".

I got three golden thingies in a single hour after this patch, while I got only one in the 130 hours before. I doubt they've nerfed anything like that.

I concur.

They also screwed up players who put a lot of hours to capture elite skills. Now its easy for everybody to get all of them.

I played through whole game without getting a single superior rune. And they lowered drop rates even further.

PvP is getting old pretty fast. I mean you're fighting to get a stupid sigil

The point of this game was that you can have everything fast (have you reached lvl 99 yet?). If you think that your work is no longer worth anything, then your "fun factor" capturing the elite wasnt at all based on how difficult it was. Unless AN travells back in time, capturing the elite still WAS difficult. If you want something that NOONE in this game has, go for the top spot on the ladder.

You and me both. I have yet to see a superior rune unlocked on my account, even with the small amount of farming I did before this patch. I cannot take a character into the tombs for 2 reasons: 1) I don't have the runes unlocked and 2)I don't have the gold necessary to buy them. Now, Anet puts another wrench into that by making it impossible for me to farm for gold or runes. All this did was screw the later arrivals. Those of you who have been playing since beta had access to what you needed, got in on farming early, amassed the gold you needed and unlocked a large percentage of the unlockables.

There is more grind now.

I was farming riverside for 3-5 runes a day. Mostly minor, some major and one or two superiors, now. In four days.

Now, I cannot farm Riverside, I have to take friends or strangers in there, and the giants now only drop white boots, if any at all.

So, what am I to do to unlock runes?

I cannot buy them at the trader, I am done with the missions, I cannot afford the 15K armor, and I cannot farm.

This is no longer the game I played in Beta at all.

I guess i should have quit school to play non-stop for the first few weeks, so all of................................................ ....

Now, I guess I may have to delete my character and play all over again to try to unlock the runes I need for my team build in PvP.

Now that is GRIND.

i find it funny that because some people are still able to get 2 gold and 7 purples in one hour, they think that's no grind. ok here's the thing. I can get that too. I can get more than that in a faster time. In fact, I have all my minors, all but 2 majors, and about 11 superiors left. Do you see the broken part of this system yet?

Ok to make things easy, I can't get the rune that I NEED. I get tons of superiors, but not Superior Death, not Superior Smite, not Superior Fire, not Superior Earth, or any Warrior Superior. So to repeat, I get TONS of Superiors, but NOT the ones I'm looking far. One time I got 5 straight Superior Healings. Um, so I continue my rune grind ad nasuem for the random chane that I'll unlock something that I haven't unlocked.

Again, I know about the rune traders. But I don't want to be buying runes over and over whenever I make a new team build or just to test something. Perhaps they should make it so runes ALWAYS salvage back out so you only need to buy one and be done with it.

You got this backwards, the patch lessened grind for PvEers through the introduction of a rune trader (although you could previously buy from others just as easily) and made it exponentially harder for PvPers to unlock the runes they need. Your second sentance is also a major problem at the moment. All the 'hardcore' gamers have most of the runes unlocked while those who play casually have a snowballs chance in hell to unlock runes.

A lot of people like to bash those who complain, but we're doing exactly what must be done. (provided that you complain with reason) Arena Net makes changes or 'fixes' and we tell them that they broke it more.