Arena.Net and PvP

I am Dac the Hork

*former*
Leader of Blood Eagle
Alpha Tester
Player of Guildwars


also knowledge of guilds quiting is first hand information...

check www.guild-hall.net for the remainder of Guild members and look at the attitude there.

It's interesting you mention the Total War series...

As you mention, SP and MP were split, and nearly all units were available for MP right from the beginning. There was nothing to unlock.

Oddly enough, most of the best players thought it was the greatest hurdle for beginners to overcome. The variety of units available made it very tough for beginners to pick competitive armies. Most of the top players thinking about modding the game for competition were hinting 10-15 units instead of hundreds...
For GW, that would mean; if you really want competitive PvP, then accept an UAS with 50 skills around. Chances are it will be more balanced and less abused.

It took hundreds of battles to become competitive in Total War... Hundreds of hours... You could spend those 600 hours in Medieval, and you'd still be smashed by the vets with no idea what happened to you. If anything, Medieval was hardly a game for a casual gamer if looking at competitive MP.

Another interesting point you may want to learn from Total War: there too community was split, and there too elite players left after some beta testing stories...

That somehow to be expected when players / testers think they are game designers.

Louis,

are you actually that person named or are you making a statement from another source?

o....
I think i'll go hide in a corner and wimper then
no more posts for me...

False analogy but I will still give you my time..

Basically the diference is that, the best of the best have access to everything, new players have acces to 15 skills.

This is a little different. The playing field is not even. A high skilled player with 15 skills will lose every time, and also is not good guild material (no flexibility).

Unfortunately they are different games and your analogy falls a little short.

Because the biggest deterence to GW PVP is the grind :\

also I like your theory on the best players being mad, but it is not just the best players :\ It is 95% of pvpers ;\

lol Im actually that person, it is pretty clear if you check other boards that it is indeed Dac the Hork ;\....

I dont think I am special though, i just care a lot about PvP, and people are finally listening.

Don't tell anyone, but I'm going to throw a quick apology for coming down on any PvPers for their whining (as I called it)... on reflection I really don't have the perspective to constructively criticize a position I've never really been in. Post-release, 5 total PvP matches (3 victories!) in the Droknar arena, that's it. Being primarily PvE only (but willing to change), some of the arguments ut forth by the PvP crowd don't make a lot of sense to me... but that just means they don't make a lot of sense to me and doesn't reflect on their validity.

'Nuff said. Go play.

A.Net has always directed its players to post on fansite forums regarding their gripes and praises. I would think they've directed a good portion of their attention toward them, that said.

Actually, many of them announced the reasoning behind why they're no longer playing on the Guild-Hall, if you'd like to take a look at the threads over there. Kunt0r mentioned Nu breaking up, for example. Blood Eagle hasn't GvGed in over 2 months, and their former leader posted as much on the Guild-hall (http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/show...ht=Blood+Eagle)

Furthermore Guild-hall Messenger = Dac the Hork from TGH = Former leader of Blood Eagle. I think he's qualified to talk about his own guild.

Maybe now you should be worried. I certainly haven't seen half those guild win the HoH recently. Tombs being the festering pit that is, many top guilds don't even bother with it anymore.

It's a good idea, unfortunately, it requires triple the amount of time spent in PvE to unlock things via faction.

Also, can we please cut it with the "Everyone wants unlocks so they can be #1?" argument? People are more interested in having a full set of tools available to them so they can build as they see fit. Furthermore, unlocking is a small slice of the pie that is the current issues in PvP.

Except a lot of skill issues aren't new; they were pointed out in beta by testers. Furthermore, a lot of the alpha didn't quit, they were booted from testing by A.Net, many after replying to an email that asked them if they wished to continue testing.

Please, point out to me where the bashing in this thread exists, as it was started as a civil list of complaints, and pretty much has maintained civility throughout. But then again, I'm starting to believe that anytime someone posts a complaint about GW, its immediately labeled 'bashing' and subjected to a barrage of flames.

Try not to sound like a troll yourself, as that above paragraph is the most trollish statement in this thread. Thanks for bringing it down to the level we're all used to.

And free content? Forgive me that I'm not jumping up and down for two new Explorable Areas that people will tear apart and cover every inch of in three days. Are they pretty? Hell yes. Are they necessary? No. Fix what you have first before you start bringing in the new.

The only goal isn't to unlock everything. The desire with unlocks is primarily to have all the tools available so to be able to play how you desire. How much fun do you think it is for members of a guild to be told that they can't participate in a GvG or a Tombs run because they don't have the right skills to fulfill a role in the teams build? I'd imagine not very. I play in a Guild with several of my closest friends, some of whom I've known for more than half my life. I don't want to have to do that to them, and I shouldn't have to just to be competitive.

Bottom line: It isn't having fun if you're so tightly constrained on what you can and can't do.

Lastly, you completely ignored the fact that this thread is also centered on PvP balance issues, not just unlocks, which are actually even more key.
The better PvP is balanced, and the more accessible the tools are to participate in it, the moe people will participate and have fun. Top guilds aren't interesting in hogging it all for themselves, they WANT other people to take a crack at it, that's how you generate good competition and how everyone enjoys themselves. Now, I'm certainly not a member of a top guild, but I feel that anything that breaks down entry barriers to PvP for PvE players is a good thing, and -All- of these suggestions certainly will help in doing that.

well I did love you guys in the first few weeks of the game, Dac. It was sure nice to see america own

But heres what I really gotta say:

Played 900 Hours
1/3 of All Runes Unlocked
~300 Skills Unlocked
2 Characters beat the game
6 PvE Chars made
3 Deleted

And my point is, I see other people with lower times have more, and some with higher times have less. I personally dont think it matters what your age is, its more on the ammount of time you litterally spent on trying to unlock. My warrior has 11029 deaths from pvping all day, [random arenas suck, mainly because nobody wants to work together and doesnt bring any form of ressurection and theres about 1 monk per 10 groups, but its the only way for a warrior to get a party within 30 mins] so I havent spent much time on unlocking things. I've been content with a near-fully unlocked Warrior and Monk. And thats all I can do. I have only a few skills from other classes. The only other builds I can actually do is a IW warrior, Summoner and a Water Elem. Otherwise I dont even have enough skills to make a good build...

Just my 2cents... but shouldn't we see what they release before we tear apart the release before it's released, releasing anger on a non-released release?




I'm very sorry about that.

To be fair, grabbing the skills shouldn't take that much time. Assuming you have 3 PVE characters, which means you divide the 6 professions into primary and secondary, you should have roughly 70-80% of the skills if not all of them by the end of 2-3 months depending on how much you play. This applies to players that are competitive though on PVP.

I think that while PVP needs improvement, I have never been really supportive of the grind or UAS. Grind is scalable, you compare this game to any other rpg, it's grind is too small to be called grind. You compare it to a PVP game like counter strike or starcraft, the grind is enourmous. But heck, the grind shouldn't be there, why? Because the grind should've been fun in the first place. Upping the faction is up to Anet, I think tombs and arena give too little in comparison to GvG, which can net you up to 500 even in a couple of minutes if your lucky. But the main thing is, make PVE replayable. Rather then just let the damn ship sink, just fix it. Everyone talks about not wanting to play the game three times. I'm one of those people who have beat the game three times, did all that crap that I don't want to do over and over. So I'm in a sense a sucker, but I still think it's not too late to fix PVE and PVP.

As far as PVP goes, I don't believe anyone can disagree when I say tombs is somewhat in shambles. While people claim Spirit Spam is unbeatable, other trends had that example too. What makes Spirit Spam different though, is that it's defensive based, not offensive based like Air or Smite. If Anet wasn't lazy and truely just being cautious, then they'd wait til August at most before putting in some improvement. NR isn't that lame, and isn't even "abused" by most teams, though it's still overpowered in a sense because teams will still make their build around it. For tombs? NR has no real advantage other then what we know as a global rend, which might be a bit too powerful. But it has no more advantage for tombs then it does for gvg. Fertile Seasons though, is the big problem. If no one can counter this by the time August rolls around, it should at least be confirmed by Anet that this is being looked at and a solution is coming up asap. But most importantly, things like a web profile, in-depth statistics, more PVP ladders such as one for tombs, one for a CTF, one for gvg, stuff like that which would make PVP more variable and more replayable. GvG is still the best and many still believe it can give some decent action, despite all the limited action we already see. It's ridiculous how the competition arenas haven't been given any specific reward, or how there isn't more things to do in PVP. The game is meant for ALL players, hardcore, super casual, casual, you name it. What good is it if your only generally accepted quality PVP is something that requires a good amount of thinking and time and people to be on? While I won't assume how Anet is losing customers, I personally know at least 50 people who left this game because of it. That's 50 people from my end alone who won't buy the expansion.

PVE wise, the game is truely in shambles. No ones giving a damn about it as far as PVP players go, but the fact is, the core design wants PVP to rely on PVE, and PVE to rely on PVP to a certain extent. Alot of players rather just shove them seperately, but Anets already gone this far, their not going to revamp the game just for a gamble. But what I haven't seen is replayability. Anet's doing the exact same thing most MMORPGs do, release more content. What happens to the OLD content? Well, no one gives a damn. Let's extrapolate if this continues to happen for a year or two. What will happen to all those missions, the world, and all the "old pve parts"? They'd be thrown away, or ignored by most players. Seriously, who the hell plays thunderhead keep just for fun? Fact is, almost all of the PVE missions blow in the long run. And since Anet wants the game to be PVE and PVP, they better make PVE replayable. Where is all the "advantages of instance"? Where is the "streaming tech" that allowed the damn fireworks to go off during the end of beta? This is the stuff that people want, maybe a 1 week mission where you get a instance copy of Lions Arch getting invaded, instant fun for awhile. Work with the stuff you have, because content also means quality, not quantity. And right now, PVE content lacks quality.

Xellos... how exactly would something like the PvE world as it is become "replayable"? I think I need to better understand what you're asking for, if that's ok.

nice post

and I agree with you...

I have offered suggestions in the past, replayable PVE maps..

For instance

Defend the Temple : It is basically the entrance to tombs with harder and harder mobs coming. For instance your team of 8 must guard a King, and monsters attack, after 15 minutes if you still live you get some cool drops and finish the mission.

But the replayability is the randomization. RNG (random number generators) used to create monsters so they are not stagnat and boring.

Currently every single monster is specifically placed on the map and most missions play the same way everytime, no randomness. This predictability creates repitition.

They need NON Linear maps (non storyline), much like FOW and UW but with randomness implemented.

Along with MINI gamish PVE maps with objectives and strategies with a lil RNG thrown in. For instance

Defend the temple : defend for 15 minutes

Caravan : Escort a caravan across a map with random events, and random difficulty (aka one time it can be moderate, the next time insane)

Assault: Assault an enemy base to get at some rare runes, RNG creates random events.

This is the kind of thing they need, but they are not creative or daring at all..

They need to start pushing the envolope instead of turning into a crappy EQ.

Lots of people call me a harsh critic or a crybaby. But all I want is a quality game :\ I am not an "anti rpg" PVP freak. I enjoy RPGs such as Fallout 2, Planescape torment etc.

the RPG currently in GW consists of going through the same hurdle over and over to compete a mission..

how many times can you fight, 2 warrior 1 monk, 1 ranger, monster group till you realize, I want something exciting!

that is why we like PVP :\


everone says "be happy with what you get, feel glad arena.net made a game"

and I personally think its a crummy attitude that kills the potential of GW :\

It really is a shame every thread you can make about suggestions, about changes is met with "LIKE THE GAME THE WAY IT IS OR LEAVE"



It is called feedback and suggestions, it is why I used to be in the closed alpha.

It is not playing "designer".

just a small random thought

perhaps after you did a quest you might get a different version of it or a totally different quest and when you did it the next time (all with different secondaries maybe) the same changes

just a bit of variety pehaps?

edit

god i hate fast typers whose hands dont hurt

okay for once you and I agree That would be nice. I have been thinking along those lines too. Maybe that is why I love going to fissure and UW....Those kinds of quests would be nice. More quests outside of towns, things that prevent people from mapping back for the reward. maybe some with time limits have to save the caravan before it gets overrun...stochastically driven events....

Besides examples GHM posted, why don't you just think about anything that could make the current PVE replayable. It's a general concept, and I'm not going to get into specifics unless I get paid. I'm not ensign, I won't do detailed work and give them blueprints ^_^ the game engines limited I know that, but that's where improvisation is. Guild Wars is a fake rpg, period. You can't defend that statement based on how the engine works on bumpmapping/railpathing etc etc. All the amazing promises like destroyable enviroment or multiple ways of finishing a mission are either impossible to do or require many many months to work on. That's why the game's not really respected by most of the outside online gaming community. If you aren't hypnotized, looking at it from a outsiders POV, you can easily tell the pixels in WoW are real, and GW is just carbon copies bumpmapped to hell. Abeit a very well bump map, but none the less unbreakable making it less fun.

The real thing I'd really be curious about is whether or not Anet plays their own games. Sure Gaile Gray plays, but she has that reputation of ahem, not being very fair in beta testing, and she's near 100% PVE. I want to know if the dev team has anyone as zealous as guys like Bill Roper then, and actually compete in PVP or take part in the game world. No IGNs needed, just a yes or no whether or not the game has been seen from a players view. If their hiring players to give input, clearly your workers plain suck. Guys like Ensign, Ace, Rex, even I could do a hundred times better just by sleeping in half the day. Perspective and Perception is key, which is what Anet might be lacking.

Hum.... beside "your analogy falls short", I have not seen a real rebutal of why it falls short.

Even playing field? Hey, you can give access to all the skills to beginners, that's not going to help them a bit! Rather the opposite! Chances are, with all skills available, a real beginner will build something even worse than the prebuild.

Skill comes with time, I don't believe there is a single skilled player with only 15 skills... To be skilled you got to play, and while playing you unlock "ingame skills".
Also, I think someone who has played hundred of hours of PvE or PvP with a pre build will kick any beginner with access to all the skills.

Let's face it; just like in TW, whether you got everything handed to you (TW style), or you got to unlock skills/units 5GW style), chances are you'll need hundred of hours of battles to be competitive.

I'd not say the best players were mad; they just thought they were game designers... Being a tester just mean that; you test what developpers want you to test, and you leave it there. If they want your opinion during a test, they'll ask for it, otherwise don't assume they want to hear about it: what they want to hear about is; "is that change working as designed", and that's it. Humility and literacy are testers most needed quality.
Testers that think they are designers are only going to be frustrated.

By the way, I don't believe 95% of PvPers are leaving. Not a second. How do you back up that number?

Louis,

Okay I will address one point I have knowledege of.

the first build somoeone makes, will usually be pretty bad. This is why they need UAS, so they can switch up and Learn what each and every skill does over time. It does increase the speed at which you learn skills when you have access to all of them.

I actually have firsthand experience, going from a limited set to Unlock all, (Alpha testing) and learned so much so fast it was ridiculous. I literraly have knowledge and almost memorization of each and every skill, effects and all.

I can back it up by linking to www.guild-hall.net and check the PVP is dead and Rebuttal to Arena.net thread.

Also view some of the polls.

Also you learn so much faster when you can change your build, most people will hear about "air spiker build is fun and good", but will now have to start a new elementalist to start getting those skills.

Quick change allows quick learning.

Also with access to all skills the best players can actually post templates for new players to try. I have posted templates before but no one can actually run the build :\

Really I think the best option would be to slash the faction cost down a bit and up some of the rewards for non-GvG play. Probably a good compromise would be doubling arena awards and making the HoH rewards triple what they are currently. Along with that probably halving most of the costs and reducing elite costs to a thid would be enough.

Realistically I don't think you ever would need to shoot for having all the skills unlocked as a PvPer. Rather, you would want a bank with enough points to buy a new build outright. Discounting runes/mods, this currently requires about (1k * 7 + 3k) 10,000 faction points. That represents about 30 or so guild matches in the worst case. Which I think we all agree is too much. Modifying it as I proposed would drop it to (.5k * 7 + 1k) 4.5k. Which is a more reasonable 12-13 matches or less depending on rewards. Now the bulk of those skills, if you were simply going for unlocks, would be non-elites and the many could be gotten by LA, which is a pretty short commitment, even doing it with 3 characters to get the basic skills for all 6 classes. Also, the numbers above are dependent on a player not having ANY of the skills unlocked. Over time the cost would drop down signifigantly as the player fills out the normal skills. Even just grinding the normal skills out isn't too horrendous. With SoCs and just buying skills I think a player can get the bulk on non-elites by Sanctum Cay. I think that would be a fairly reasonable tweak, at least for unlocks. If need be the numbers could be tweaked somewhat, but I donno that as drastic a reduction as 1/10 is needed.

Actually, the stuff GHM mentioned hit like a meteor of common sense... those would be awesome ideas if implemented. Great fun, too... the added unknown factor would indeed be a nice boost. Sounds like something we'd definitely have to wait for a full expansion to see implemented though... the coding sounds pretty heavy.

Imagine NPCs found outside of towns that give assorted highly difficult quests, spawn randomly on the entire map, and may not even be where you found them origininally? Heh heh... turn off the guide arrow for these ones... Something like "Tepid Chillybuns killed my entire family, avange me!", where TC could also spawn randomly anywhere on the map (you just stumble across him, and only if you have the quest), get a superior rune (for example) by killing him, and if you happen to find the guy that gave you the quest your reward could be to unlock any unlocked skill (for your professions).

OK, now I'm thinking outside the box.

This is not necessarily bad.

yah for good guilds the requirement for skill unlocks isnt as bad they will win more, more faction, and usually have alpha players that know good builds from bad.

I think new players really need the acces to more skills to catch up with alpha players instead of becoming fustrated.

With access to skills they can actually learn to play, and with easy access to skills it will not be so bad if 2-3 of them dont play that much, because they can save up a pool of 8-12 factions worth of skills to unload if needed...

but for all this to happen Faction needs to drop A LOT more then you would imagine.

6 skills an hour on average is very conservative

I think my 25x 15x and 10x where pretty accurate though to rejuvinate PVP.

But I would also like to see some changes to PVE skill acquisition... so no one is left behind.

and also an addition of replayable PVE maps like outlined above along with changes to PVP maps...


A.net needs to realize they need to address these concerns, and that making a good expansion is not just enough, they need to help out with the original game a little more ;\.

we have been asking for a guild training or intra scrimmage training ground for a long long time... maybe A.net will do it sometime..

I won't say much, except that the former Alpha testers know damn well what A.net is working on, and part of their frustration is that they know and can't say anything and A.net chooses to not release to the masses what is being worked on, which is their choice.

And before you say anything, I don't participate in PvP right now for my own reasons, not because it's broken or everyone uses the same skills, but because even after almost 1000 hrs over 7 characters with 2 having completed the game on 2 accounts I don't have the skills I want. Now you're going to say, I'm contradicting myself, let me explain, the reason I don't have the skills I want is not because it's a hassle or lack of skill points (I have enough of those), or exp(ditto), it's because I choose at the moment to not take my time to acquire them. When I'm good and ready to get the skills I want, then I will go out and get them. As for Runes, mods, max dam weapons, etc., if I find them, I find them, to me they aren't that important, but then our guild isn't interested in being #1, just to have fun and compete(which we could do now if we wanted).

You people should listen to Alex. Clearly hardly any of you are or can.

Why should they stop working on alot of projects so that 100 out of 400,000 people can have their cake and eat it too? The impatience doesn't make sence. If you don't want to grind so that you can have an endless expirimentation rate for builds then don't.

Just buy the skills you want and read the describtions for others. Want that skill? Go out and get it. Want that rune? Go out and get it.

You don't need every single one. In time things may come around to allow you to UAS faster. Untill then why don't you set the game down and go grind kills or exp in another game? You don't really need to play the same game day in and day out for three months.

Don't have another game? Do PvP. You don't need every skill or rune unlocked to keep up well in PvP. The trends are relavent and cost effective enough, aren't they?

Forgive me if i read this and get that you are becoming disinterested in playing the game. Wanting something, but unwilling to spend the time to aquire it, seems to indicate a problem outside the point of the issue. Opening up by suggesting an underlying frustration didnt help either.

The fixes we are asking can happen in litterally 2 hours of work by one person.

This is fact, it is just changing of variables. The reason it is not implemented is because A.net does not care.

Reading a description and knowing how a skill actually works is very different. For instance Channeling says it steals energy but infact only drains it.

we havent just set the game down, a lot of players have thrown the game away, we obviously do not want this to happen

We would go out and get it, but it takes an hour about per skill, endless rezoning to get an elite, and hours of PVP for an elite or even for a normal skill.

There is timeframes, and there are reasonable timeframes.

There timeframe is telling someone to swim to hawaii, It is possible, but the time is forever.

We are mainly the PVP crowd, we are getting tired of not having the ability to play with builds we want, we are tired of losing to teams with builds we can not counter, we are tired of not being able to play mesmer because we havent beaten the game with one. We want some flexibility and variance in our gameplay, not playing the same premade Over and over and over.

We want to see things besides AIR, SMITE, and SPIRIT, in tombs.

Also I have heard numerous complaints from PVE players...

how long does it take to get one Ecto?

How many times do you have to go through UW and FOW to get a 15k armor set now?

How much choice do you really have at beginning levels for character uniqueness? When 50% of the skills are only available after lvl 20?

To be fair, in a released software product, there is never a 2 hour change. Things need to be authorized, coded, merged into the existing code base, tested, tested some more, verified, and then patched in. So even if the 'coded' part is short, the other parts may or may not be. Also, when dealing with things like balance its likely that design decisions are what would take even more time. Should faction be reduced by a factor of 2-4 times as I proposed, or 10-25 times like you proposed? Deciding things like that take time. And rushing things out willy nilly has the potential to make things far worse. Also, it takes far less time than that to get skills, and I would even agree that skill unlocking is currently still a PITA. A good FoW run is worth a pretty healthy chunk of exp for SPs, all the normal skills are purchasable through a skill merchant, and most elites aren't terribly difficult to get, though some are a pain. Also, to be fair, you almost never need all skills unlocked, so some can be fairly safely discarded if need be.

The PvE complaints about Ecto are pretty baseless IMO. Its something to strive for that has no effect on actual gameplay mechanics. So who really cares how long it takes to get 15 ecto. Its purely a vanity item, offering no power advantage. Its a way to have the 'lotto' like effect of items in a more traditional way without having said items effect PvP. And actually I think most of the non-elite skills are available before 20, its just they aren't all purchasable. Some require a SoC to grab. But I'm not totally sure on that since I don't think anyone has taken the time to chart pre-Ascension boss skills.

One complaint in PvE that may be valid is the ease in which one classes skills (Monk) allows you to farm. Also, the main storyline sucks, but then again so do seemingly most action-adventure type games D2, I'm looking at you.

Lots of them play. I only know of two that take part in competitive PvP. Although one of them quit because they hated the grind. The other one... don't really see him around much either.

Wow... I have to say I was very pleasently surprised to log on this morning and find this topic. After yesterday's ugly flamewar, I was afraid a positive discussion was impossible. Thanks for sticking up for the community.

Skimming through most of the stuff here, I think the number one point that has to be made is that the PvEers need to be a bit more understanding of what's going on in the PvP community. After seeing all the comments, and skimming the threads at Guild-Hall, I think it's fair to say we are not just dealing with "100 spoiled children". These are some deep seeded and long standing disputes that the PvP community has. And why is a faster unlocking system a threat to PvE players? I used to think so... but I stopped and asked myself, why? I don't have to use it. Let them play their way, and I'll play mine. So give them more faction (one possibility), I don't see how PvE players could have a problem with that.

Monitoring by ANet definately needs to be increased though. I liken the PvP in this game a lot to a card game like Magic. Skills are like cards. If a skill is overpowering and unbalanced, the governing body needs to be monitoring and make adjustments as needed. This "hands off" approach by ANet is doing the game no favors. Unforseen combos always creep up, and when they do they need to be addressed. No one can catch everything.

Finally, how about some more play modes for PvP? The sky is the limit there and for some reason ANet is content to putter down the beach like the Wright Brothers. My favorite pure PvP game is UT2004... talk about play modes, you name it they got it. There's no reason ANet couldn't broaden the options for PvP experiences.

As a programmer, let me tell you that what often seems simple changes can take a couple weeks to implement, even if the overall coding is a few minutes. Far too many projects have taken longer to document than to code. Then there's unit testing, systems testing, integration testing, migration from (at the minimum) development to test to production... there's finding who has time available to work on that piece and assigning it to them (which means it's another thing on their plate, not the only thing...)

I know it sounds like removing a zero, please believe that it isn't.

You think it takes only 2 hours to fix things that people from both realms of extreme PvE and PvP, have been whining about for the past 3 months and to get it in the exact way that EVERYONE wants?

15k armor is not necisary. It's just there to waste your money. That's why they call it a "Gold Sink" becuase it's like buying a sink made of gold for your kitchen or bathroom. There's no point to it.

They can't just make these things appear out of thin air. Only the most extreme PvPers (The ones who actually through their games away and gave Anet 50$ for something they didn't like) want AUS or USA or UAS or whatever. It takes some time deciding and confirming with the company to see what gets put in and taken out of the game.

Just becuase BF 1942 Pirates Mod takes 2 hours for the modder to fix a bug where if you slash an ammo kit in a ship too many times it sinks doesn't mean major corporations work that way too. Not everyone works out of their garage.

its not that easy, you can't just type in variable XX = 1000, and itll be done. no, you have to remake a huge part of the game.

Replayability sucks in PVE, that is a fact. Currently your best way to farm skill points if you don't farm faction is to go UW/FoW followed by farming dessert/southern shiverpeaks. How is that fun? Your FARMING. Hell if there was a way to make it so that a lvl 20 can go in The Great Northern Wall and gain a decent amount of EXP, that makes it much more fun. Replayability folks, not more crap content that gets shoved aside in a couple of months.

As for people leaving, stop argueing about facts and what not. The fact is, looking at the guild vs guild LADDER, nearly 90% of the first page-second pagers are identical players and such. The GvG scene isn't dead, but it isn't thriving either. Rank 1 is dead, Sissy Boys is now Bravo Squad, War Machine isn't exactly active, Thunder Catz and Team Union are active ( YAY!!! ), Limit Break and Limit Break War are the same obviously; so one of them is dead, Ward vs Noobz is aliveish, Nu is dead, and who the heck is Toon Town again? (great game!) p0 and n0 and SNA don't exactly move alot, and we can't even factor in the koreans. So just doing random counts, 8/20 guilds are either smurfed or dead on the first page. While that isn't WOAH WE ARE SCREWED, it's a significant amount which indicates something is wrong. It's almost as bad as that time in Wc3 where Showtime took all 3 number one spots in Asia. Except that time, there was actually alot of players and competition!

That's not what he suggests. He suggests a simple change they can implement to improve the game for many people, whilst not taking anything away from the rest, and this change could be implemented in under two hours.

The term 'gold sink' is used for cases where they have ways of draining (sink) money (gold) from the economy to combat inflation.
And sure, getting Fissure armour is a challenge, and I sort of agree it should be stupidly difficult to get, as a true PvE grinding reward. But it is most certainly grind, and coming from a company that claims to work against grind that's sort of odd.

I don't think you comprehend what's at play really. The most vocal PvP'ers want a change, they want to see progress. As it has been said, UAS is NOT the focus of this thread in the first place, but people seem to love bringing it up as a straw man argument as to why PvP'ers can be ignored for being unreasonable. The call for UAS is a manifestation of a dissatisfaction among PvP'ers, which signifies a larger underlying problem: forced grind, 'preparing to have fun'.

A BF 1942 Pirates Mod modder has nothing to lose. ArenaNet has customers to lose, if anything they should be more anxious to address issues. The problem is identifying and acknowledging those issues, and if you don't take your userbase seriously, that's going to be pretty damn hard. Look at how fast something like the Augury Rock exploit was fixed: if need be, patches can most certainly come out fast.

Everyone would be please if A.net told us what they were working on so we actually knew what was being done, but remember, it is their choice on what they tell the community. Most business do not announce works in progress in the event that things don't pan out and they never come to fruition(vaporware anyone). I belive this is the case here with balance issues, that and changing one skill cascades down to many other skills so that you have more than one thing to work on, not exactly a speedy process, considering the code that needs to be changed, debugged, tested, changed again, and repeat until it's reasonably certain you have the effect that you want without screwing up something else.


Work interupted this post so it is now out of order.

Most likely I worded my post incorrectly, I'm not a great wordsmith so what I intend to say doesn't always translate onto paper. Disinterested, no, far from it, I just started my 7th character a couple of days ago, trying something different. I still log on and play for 2 -3 hours almost every night. Reread my post, I'm not frustrated, it's the hardcore PvP(and former Alpha) players that are frustrated, they have that right, but they also know the NDA doesn't end when you leave/end your time in testing. Unfortunately they don't appear to be creative enough to say something without really saying something, which I do all of the time to my guild, it drives them nuts. And I'm not unwilling to spend the time to acquire things, it's not on my agenda right now, if I feel like capping an Elite or some other skill not offered via a quest or purchase then I go out and get it, but right now I have more fun helping some people that I've met in-game, and that is what this game is about: fun(which you can have doing PvP too).

Anet adresses issues again and again, yet no one listens. The improvement they want doesn't come in 3 weeks? They leave the game. I played a game where we waited for new updates for 4 months and more. What did we get? Poetry contests with no adressing at all the real issues. If I got through that I can get through 2 weeks of no update. So can you.

What I'm trying to get at with the Pirate's mod is that major corperations DO NOT work like: "Hey... LETS CHANGE STUFF! I READ A GOOD SUGGESTION ON A FORUM!! Some guy said that we should bring the cost of elite spells to 300 faction!!"

Like I said, not all players want all skills unlocked. Alot of players don't really care; I don't. What I'm saying is:

_~_~_~_Just wait for Anet to make their move. They'll decide what's best for their game, not Standard Ai, not Sissy Boys, not Baron Von LAIntDis1. _~_~_~_

Augury Rock was an exploit. PvP/PvE "grind" is not. There wouldn't need to be any "Hey... Would it be a good idea to take away this exploit that can give players 1 million exp per hour?"

By the way, I know that not all PvPers want UAS, but I was talking about the most extreme PvPers, wasn't I? I'de look in the mirror before calling someone a fanatic of anything. I PvP just as much as I PvE.

I'm not saying that there are no problems! I'm saying that untill they are fixed there is NO POINT COMPLAINING ABOUT IT; It's not going to get done faster. less spam on the forums.

are you allowed under the NDA to hint if you have a vague possible opinion that the middle of the road (pve leaning) casual gamer might like what is on the horizion?

if the question is to direct i truly will understand but a hint would be nice

thank you for helping the newcomers

2 days, give or take a couple hours. That is how long it took them to notice, fix, and implement a patch to an obvious and serious bug in the game. That is a far cry from the 10 minutes (or two hours, it depends on which day of the week) someone else is saying.

Lets look at a very simplified process of changing just one variable in the game. Lets just say the amount of faction you get for a kill is going to be changed. At the moment it is 2 (I think). First you have to have a meeting to decide if this is the right course of action, the possible outcomes of changing it, deciding the team who is going to work on it, ect ect. If anyone has ever been to a business meeting for any large corporation, they know this could take all morning in itself. Then the team has to pull out the documentation and go through it finding out exactly where it was implemented in the code, and the exact variable that needs to be changed. Lets assume you have the same team that incorporated faction in the first place (very lucky you are then) to speed up this process. Lets also assume that it is exactly that, changing one variable in the class named faction for simplicity's sake. You go into the code and change that variable. You compile the code, and for more simplicity, you have very good programmers who made no mistakes in this entire process. Now you have to upload it to your test servers and test every instance where that variable came up (ie tombs, GvG, all of the arenas). Assuming no errors you now have to upload it to the live servers and you now get 5 faction a kill instead of 2.

That is a perfect world scenario. That is an entire 8-12 hour day, with multiple people involved, just to change a single variable. We won't even go over how extremely cost inefficient that is.

But hey, Guild-Hall can do it in 10 minutes. You have to wonder why he isn't making 6 figures working for NCSoft as a Lead Designer.

He's stating that the actual programming work will take 2 hours, and if we do indeed assume that it requires rewriting a single initialisation value (no half-decent programmer would ever hardcode such a value inside a faction class, if ArenaNet programmers do that they certainly have bigger problems than dissatisfied PvP'ers), it could even take as little as 10 minutes, granting some time for a server reboot incase such an update could not be streamed.

Yes, taking the decision to do this takes time - it requires said meetings, analysis of how it will affect play across the entire userbase, not just the ones requesting this change. But ArenaNet was informed that faction was an insufficient measure the moment the alpha testers were presented with it, so we can assume a significant portion of preliminary analysis and discussions have currently already taken place. Alpha testers are there to test new devices and give their opinions on it, and considering the eventual faction points update that was released, their efforts don't seem to have been taken very seriously.

Sagius, I will respect the request of the OP and avoid flaming you.

yeah I agree, they do read alpha tester and general player feedback... but they will also not take it serious and brush it off for a multitude of false reasons :\ You can hear this echoed in alex's post on the front page