To Nerf or Not to Nerf

To Nerf or Not to Nerf instead of fixing the bugs already in guildwars they have changed Guild Wars creating a whole bunch more glitches in game.

they still havnt fixed assassin kanaxai timer of teleportation
Found one doing arena mission where the criminals dont attack you
the room of decay or mass error 7 still works how it did

my qustion is why spend time on that part of game when bigger parts are needed work on.

if this is flaming im sorry but its the truth,

The simple reason is: they don't give a shit. The game is full to the brim with bugs and exploits but they have your money now and its not a great priority. The henchmen AI sucks big time, the double-damage bosses are way too powerful and little things such as NPCs not moving will remain as they are. The buggyness is abysmal but don't expect anything to change.

You know henchman are fine... But its usually the p;ayuer that use them suck... You control tthem... I've done Every mission with hench only, but the protect baby turtle one...

I managed most missions using henchmen with my Tyrian toons but I can't manage it with Canthan ones. For some reason they deal very little damage and heal very little in comparison to the enemies.

Edit: Keep in mind they are working on Bug Wars...er...Grind W...er...Guild Wars: Chapter 3.

when you wait 20 mins for a rez and your only one thats dead then the henchmen suck, dumb tramps stand there like a retarded sister

Ahahahaha.

Things are broken. They're being fixed. Some might argue that there's too many problems in a released game, but I'm patient.

it also might be the reason (the fact that they just stand there) why they don't use their res sigs (if they have any), I ressed warrior during a fight but at the end two monks died, so I thought - none of the other henches was ressing anyone (as warr's death was the only one) so they will res the monks - yeah, right, I stood there for 5 minutes waiting and had to go around looking for a shrine to buy a morale boost and res the monks myself...

Henchies are fine? lol

Henchies gather for a group hug in the middle of an enemy AoE. Apparently the mobs are smart enough to move out of danger, but "humans" aren't? Their ability to rez has already been mentioned.
Yea, the game in whole can be completed with them, I did. But still, not having to baby sit or change Lukas's diaper all the time would be nice.

The only "fixes" Anet seems to be favoring right now are those that make PvP or Competitive play more valuable. This is not a flame at PvP, so read on.

The skills seem well balanced enough. Majority of bugs in the game are on the PvE side and AI related. S, by nerfing areas frequented by PvEers, Anet seems to hope to push more people into PvP so they wont notice as much. A distraction, if you will.

My favorite nerf is the Luxon supply run and Kurz Duel quest. What's the point of that? It will still be the biggest, most farming alliances that control those. All Anet has done is make the numbers fall across the board. It in no way makes it more possible for smaller alliances to suddenly take over or even work their way up. Dumb, dumb, dumb nerf. - Again, the only reason I can see for that dumb nerf was to make the Jade/Aspen more appealing. Those missions are pretty much rancid in that you can't even choose your team mates and get stuck with rage quiters and abusive babies. Maybe an attempt at getting more people into 12v12? Many still don't care for PvP - so why does Anet keep trying to shove it down our throats?

I just don't get it. I regret buying Factions now, and wish I had held onto my original plan and skip it. I kept waiting for the real fixes and still, only nerfs... Too little, too late now.

it seems anets priorities are to spoil peoples fun rather than fix the more important issues that plague the game, the disappointment of factions and the constant nerfing of things has made this my last gw purchase.
im sure someone getting some easy faction is more important than bugs and bots to anet but its not to us.

factions = dull, repetative, boring and now you can add hours of crap grinding for faction for the 10,000 you need to complete the befriend missions or get enough amber/jade for your armour. stupid anet, very stupid.

oh and funny how it takes them no time to nerf something but they spend months adding something that is missing from a supposedly complete game (15k tormentors anyone)

as with the post above i also wish i hadnt wasted money on factions

get your priorities right, fix the game and add the promised features before you spoil peoples fun.

ANet is really in a lose lose situation with this community. This is by far the most impatient and whiny gaming community I have ever been affiliated with. To begin with, ANet is notified of a bug, then they must find what is causing the bug and then fix it. This sounds like a very basic process; however, just finding the area of the code that is causing the problem could take days, then they need to figure out what needs to be done to make it function properly. Bug fixes take time. Beta testing will only inform you of so many bugs, once 75,000 start playing the game they will find more bugs then the 1,000 or so beta testers.

I realize that the henchie AI updates could have been handled by now. On the other hand though I am sure that ANet has their plate full with all of the bug reports and stuff that is comming in.

I just wish that everyone would collectively simmer down and wait things out.

Bosses too powerful? Are you kidding?
Bosses are easy to defeat.. Please dont whine when its your own fault

Total and utter bull.

Check the Game Updates page on Guildwars.com to see the refudiation of your statements.

Btw, the henches perfrom just fine but if players lack the intelligence to use them right..well...no amount of code is going to solve that.
The funny thing is that the biggest complaint about henches and res in the past was that they would res in the middle of combat, now that they dont..yes, you guessed it, people complain they dont res fast enough.

Try calling out the deaths, that has always worked for me.

Quoted for truth.

Getting notified of a bug also means they need to be able to reproduce it which can be very convoluted, Anet has more then once released updates within hours after being notified of one.

/agree

another thing, imo henchies isn't really the biggest thing that should be changed is it??

I love the henchies as they are now, k offcourse they are not perfect but who wants to play a game where you can bring 7 super heros with you so you have to do shit...

Isn't the meaning of an MMORPG (or whatever you want to call GuildWars ( GUILD)) of playing with real life ppl and not just bots.

Why do ppl have to whine about little bugs??... Overall this game is a piece of art with some little bugs wich can be and will be changed.

I think everyone welcomes bugfixes. Quest can't complete? Boss not spawning? Elite skill can't be found? Bugfixes to such problems would be welcome by anyone in the community.

What most of the complainers dislike however is the "rebalancing" that A-Net carries out. Bear in mind that these are not bugfixes - those areas/quests were working as intended, instead, players found someway to greatly exceed expectations or bypass limitaitons on them without using game-breaking mechanics. Of course, ANet doesn't like this and decides to "rebalance" them.

In essence, why change what was not broken in the first place?

There's a boss in the Maishang Hills (Luxon) which is an elemntalist with Lightning Surge as an Elite. I recall it doing 383 dmg followed by a Lightning Strike which results in death to a henchman. Furthermore, it casts 2x the speed of a normal elementalist. How would you counter that if you were a ranger with 7 henchmen?

You're a Ranger.. How about, interupting it? And bosses are bosses, they're supossed to be strong, especially in Factions, as they all drop Greens, which are supossed to hard to get in my opinion, but they're definitly not.

Henchman untilization is simple: if you call a target then they will follow it but that doesn't change the fact that they tend to remain inside AoE spells and use inapporpriate skills at inappropriate times resulting in death. To clarify, I made no comment on henchman resurrection abilities.

They cast twice as fast making interruptions difficult.

The thing is the devs (all the teams) are working their arses off trying to fix stuff. Most People think all the bugs should be fixed in less than 24 hours, but sometimes its harder to find the specific glitch, sometimes they may have to change something else to fix the glitch, sometimes they have higher priority things to do before hand. Im just so tired of people complaining the devs are working as fast as they possibolly can to solve problems after all they are human and not machines. If you find something post it here or any other fansite and/or send it via the offical NCsoft Support. Gaile, Devs, and Alpha testers do read these forums and do look into them so they do know about the bugs. Also consider NO GAME is bug free that is a Impossible state to achieve.

Reguarding the double damage from bosses. I think that its just perfect bosses are now WORTHY of the the boss title. Also you will notice that the Ch2 bosses for the msot part lost their Half Hex and Condition bonus as well at least now bosses are challenging rather than 4 level higher weaklings that I would rather point and laugh atthen walk away. Sorry if this is taken in any negative way, but I just think this is a good thing now that bosses are worthy of the title bosses.

Broadhead arrow perhaps? The boss damage requires that the bosses obtain focus before the regular mobs. Ooooh, also, try bringing the Interrupt henchie. They have insane reflexes. Then, target the boss and watch the interrupts. Bosses in factions do not lose conditions and hexes as the old ones did, so your broadhead arrow's dazed won't instantly vanish.

Yeah I agree that bosses are more worthy of their titles but in some instances its only possible to counter them with people rather than henchmen at later parts of the game. Halved hexes and conditions are a good idea but i'm sure Prophecies bosses had ths 'natural resistance' too. I remember a friend saying how Wastrel's Worry and Phantom Pain were good anti-boss spells.

Ah Broad Head Arrow is a good idea. And the illusion henchmen and the interrupt (ranger) henchmen are pretty sharp while they remain alive.

I have had no issues interupting it. Just gotta learn how to time it better...

Amen to that. Whingers.

There's a hair in my soup! Fix it Anet!

How bout the elementalist issue?

Which elementalist issue? The one discussed on this thread: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ta list+issue ?

Edit: Or do you mean the AoE nerf?

I know this has been said before, but the whiners need a serious nerf!!

Yes, there ARE some things wrong with the game, but you could right an organised, detailed post about it and what you think would be the best fix, but instead we get thread after thread about "ZOMG ANET T3H SUXXXX"

Persoanly, I'm very pleased with the game. Already completed it once with my sin, doing it again with my ranger and rest of chars not far behind. Only place I got a little frustated was at the bugged-Arborstone mission, but it was then updated and fixed the very next day xD

Yep, that one.

anet are too quick to nerf and not quick enough to fix that which is broken, go figure

actually I blame the lack of efficient Bug reporting.. they removed /bug for some UNgodly reason, and never implamented a /report command, and had a VERY VERY limited beta for factions compared to Prophecies... So in a sence we are doing the beta testing now during the purchase. the truth is the existing bugs in the factions chapter should not have been there if they would have tested as thoroughly as they did Prophacies which ALSO had a lot of bugs at launch, but not as many. This is FACT.

We are playing a Post Beta build that was not properly tested first...
And now they are seeing that... In all reality Chapter 3 will be scheduled to go And I Doubt they will be ready for that either... Not if they are pulling resources to fix bugs that should have been fixed prior to launch...

Server loads, Adequate Quests for requirements, Lag issues, maps stuck points, Faction Exploits, Mob Balences, bad spawn points, ect... I can go on and on... this should have been tested in Beta, But we only got a few oppertunities to do so... and they made some significant changes since Beta and Preview Events... That was the problem...

That still is the problem...

I hope they do not make similar mistakes with Chapter 3, but with current track record and schedule, I dont see how they will be able to avoid it...

Totally different team on ch3. The ch2 team is probably working on the bugs...I mean honestly...It takes EQ2 3 months to patch a bug no matter how big. And WoW usually takes a while as well (And the game usually goes down) Guild Wars is extremely timely about the fixes...but they still take time.

Trust me, while the GW community is bad, it is far far FAR from the worst.

They just want us to miss Lina ... it worked.

Maybe I underestimate the time it takes to fix these issues - being almost completely ignorant to software programming. They 'altered' the Luxon supply quest (i.e. the Faction farm) and I was surprised it took so long because it was well distributed knowledge that it was easy, fast Faction. This is not a rhetorical question: was it a reasonable or unreasonable time to fix that issue? I'm asking because I simply do not know and not to whine.

Yeah, Lina rocked.

so true i mean come on fix things first then nerf its not like anyone was making nay or much money from faction farming now my alliance will contro cavalon for a while

I don't see any whining going on at all. What I see are a lot of complaints heading at Anet about strange "fixes" while we (the players) continue to wait on things we should have already had.

Look at the situation; we'll use the Luxon Supply run as an example:

Why was it changed (nerfed)? Cause it was too easy to get faction? Ok, I'll agree with that. I laughed the first time I tried it, said to myself "That needs to be changed some, no challenge at all there".
Now that it was changed, look at why. Why? Does it make smaller alliances more able to over take the larger ones? No. Does it make faction harder to get? No, it just slowed it down some. What was the point? That change, and many others (except the assassin skill addition) should have been put on hold till after other issues had been addressed. The people that worked on slowing down faction gain should have been put to work on the other in game issues.
The man hours wasted on nerfing when there are still so many bugs is the issue here (at least for me).
If Anet ever gets around to fixing most of the bugs, how many new "adjustments" will they need to make? I say, fix the bugs first, then do the final balancing. Not the other way around, Anet will end up chasing the players ingenuity forever as they find ways around the grind.

A final look at the nerf on faction gain. Why would Anet really care whether or not people gain massive faction. Armor gained to quickly? Chapter 3 is on it's way. Most of the armor being gained now will be tossed for the new stuff in a matter of months. Wasted time and effort to slow that down.
Fairness to Alliances? Larger ones will still hold the towns and outposts, and lets be honest, the only ones anyone really cares about is the ones with the Elite Missions and Anet is apparently working on giving alternate access to those. Again, massive faction points for players was a moot point. Wasted time and effort to nerf.

Edit: Another note: I personally love the new difficulty. The boss mobs are, I think, awesome now. The double power they have really makes them "feel like boss mobs". First time I got one hitted from a spell, I was at the keyboard laughing saying to myself "Awesome!".

I am waiting for some fixes as well. But it always seems like Anet is quicker with nerfs than with fixing for some reason.

Must be just me....

I read that and I just hear someone complaining about people complaining. An unnecessary, hypocrital post. Now looking at the posts made, not only in this thread but others as well, it looks as though there are far more people that have issues with factions than those that don't and it's not just because those that like the game will play and not post. There are just as many people that have issues with the game who don't post either. So the forums can be taken as a census to determine the views of the GW community as a whole. Alot of people have made valid complaints whines or otherwise they are still valid. These issues have not been addressed. It seems that anet has been making fixes, not only to the little things while the big things go unchecked, but fixes that are quick. Lazy.

Bosses hard or not what about the enemies. Is the lvl6 Kappas at the beginning of the game eles or warriors? The reason I ask is because they do the damage of an ele but have the armor of a warrior. Take a look at the lvl5 oaks in presearing. You can take on two of them at the same time solo with any class and not have a secondary and be only lvl3. Good luck taking on two lvl6 Kappas solo while lvl6 yourself with a secondary on a strong solo class like warrior. Oh and those that say thay have done it (which will be the same that said that the game is not hard and are ignorant to say stuff like "just because you suck and can't do it") are most likely those that have GW playing experience and have played prophecies for atleast months. What about those that are new to GW in general? Those that have bough factions and joined the GW community with factions. Are you ignorant enough to say that they don't matter? Face it. Those that get factions only get shafted. Compare the two.

Prophecies:

Presearing. This is suppose to be the tutorial for prophecies. Everything is dirt simple and is there to not only start your character off but to start you off as a player with the basic skills. If you do every quest, which can be done solo (except the Adventure with ally and Across the wall which demand someone be in your party), you will leave presearing with a full skill bar, secondary class and will be atleast lvl4 (usually lvl5).

Post-Searing. This is where the game really begins. It is also where access to the first missions begin. The enemies are still soloable but those that are new and only have the basic skills taught in presearing my need atleast a healer henchman. There are shortcuts for those that have beaten the game already and want to create another character to mess around with (sample the other classes, use them for the repeatable areas etc.). When me and my wife went through with our rangers we took as little help as possible. We paired it for most of the quests and then started taking the minimum henchies for areas that were a little more difficult. This was so we could get the most loot but it also meant we got the most xp possible. After doing every mission, bonus and quest available to us from the start of presearing we reached lvl 20 (and our pets too) when we got to Sanctum Cay. That is about the half way mark of the game.

Factions

Presearing. Presearing doesn't exist in factions for story reasons of course but it does have a tutorial that would be equivalent (or atleast it should be) to the prophecies' presearing. Well it's not. The tutorial in factions is rushed and doesn't give you the time to practice what is being taught like the presearing does. Also in the tutorial it is all kind of thrown at you all at once within a 10min period. Unlike prophecies, in factions when you get to the actual game you are lvl2 with no secondary and not nearly enough skills to fill your skill bar. Sure you can't enter the first mission untill you get more skill, get your secondary and become a higher level (even as a side affect) but you are still playing in an area that is accessable to characters of all levels. Just like post searing ascalon is accessable to all levels. A better design (or atleast one that is more equal to prophecies) would have been make atleast half the island you start out on a "presearing" of sorts. Where, just like in presearing, you can do quests, get your secondary, get a full skill bar and be able to reach a nice starting level. The dojo thing would be the quests you need to accomplish to get from one have to the other half. Once at the other half there is no going back. It is also where you would access your first mission and you would not have access to your storage on the beginning half.

Post tutorial. For factions this means doing the same things you would have done in the prophecies tutorial (presearing) out side the tutorial (postsearing). Practice what you were taught, get a full skill bar, get your secondary and reach a nice starting level are all done outside the tutorial in factions. In the "postsearing" part of factions. There are alot of locked doors in factions which puts restrictions on taking shortcuts for those that already have beaten the game. If you do every quest and mission (master in each) with as little help as possible (which me and my wife had done with two new canthan characters) you'll reach lvl 18 by the time you get off the island. So that is only after two missions done. Two levels short of lvl20 and no where's near the mid point of the game. So yes I would have to say that this game is rushed.

They say factions is not only an expansion but is a stand alone game as well? Hardly. yeah sure you can own just factions and start playing which technically makes it stand alone game but they also say you don't need both games to be competitive. That there is the problem as this is not true. The game rushes you to level 20 and has a mediocre tutorial when compared to prophecies. The game is harder in general which makes the game more tailored to those that have prophecies and therefore have previous GW experience. After the first two missions and you get onto the mainland the henchies are lvl20 as are the enemies you will be facing. That's like facing lvl 20 enemies outside yaks bend. Then there are the mobs themselves. The mobs in factions are twice the size as those in prophecies. This game my claim to be stand alone but it was designed to be an expansion and nothing more.

dont nerf anything dont even dare to make the bosses or faction easier.. might as well keep it to regular gw if u want that to happen.. over n out.

^^ You'res is an interesting pet peeve. Not sure if this is the write place for it though.

Did you guys realize the healer henchies have no DF? **In GW:F.