Anyone else think PvE (as it is now) discourages unique builds?

The Gothic games are Hardcore, too hardcore for some, I have finished the first 2 and really enjoyed them, some have said Gothic is like Marmite, you either love or hate it.
As for DS2, well thats a hack and slash fix, Looking forward to the new morrowind as it simply looks realm but so does Gothic 3.
Found a quick fix though, its a independant dev game, called Fate, it brings back fond memories of Diablo, is prettier than diablo, and actually has a bit more depth, but the gameplay is very similar, its $15 dollars / £11 and is only available through the web. You can see a review on Gamespot.com if you want to check it out. Its a must for Diablo fans.

I realize this is an old thread and all, but I have to agree in some ways. I think a lot of the thoughts of exploring and grouping up comes from not wanting to hear others critique your build or this and that... anyway, my ranger/warrior seems to never get a group for missions. I'm almost always shot down or told to go build something else. So, I ended up soloing the missions (with henchies). To me, a quick and easy Henchie/Pet command ui would fix a lot of problems I have had going through.

Pulling with AI is impossible. Humans know to stay put when someone is pulling. AI enjoy causing chaos and making me panic as they run forward...

The dis-enchant problems also give me a headache. I read some one talk about throwing the economy out of whack. Well, I for one never buy from another player since I'm never sure they got the goods "fairly" or cause they used a uber build/bot... or whatever. I figure I will get my own stuff and play through the game.

A few rl friends and I do team up now and then and the game is more fun with others... but then, being rl friends, they are more accepting to an unusual build.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

I kinda agree with the original poster as well.

GW is a fun game to a point for PVE, but does get boring as there is no reward for exploring. Sure you can wander around and get off the beaten path in certain places, but to do so means nothing.

GW was my first real online game and I started for the PVE, got bored with it and after a while started doing PVP, which is also fun for a while, however THAT gets boring too. Not to mention all the idiots you have to put up with. When you first start you're called a fcking newb, then when you get good, people get pissed cause they lose! It's a no win no win situation.

I then did a few GVG matches and while fun was such a hassle getting guildies together at one time wasn't worth it either.

So my solution was to just stop playing the game for a few months. And this solved my problem for the time being. I started again last week and it's been a lot of fun just roaming around, joining pickup groups and helping people out.

But I do think more attention should be given the the PVE part of the game.

You mean the HENCHMEN won't do that. Because monster mobs will ALWAYS work together unless they were in a current battle with another mob. Approaching a mob with a full team automatically gets you a typical attack pattern: Monk>Casters>Tanks. The first thing mesmers in the mob do is cast cry of fustration, from there its either Empathy or Backfire. And right after is usually spirit shackles. Eles is usually a ward spell then the normal attack spells, Necros will cast Life syphon unless its a boss in which they will cast their specialized spells. With those certain attack patterns, you can develop your own strategies to beat them.

People forget that Guild Wars is all about skill. That was the way it was designed. You can't use the same strategy everywhere and expect to win every time. And if your build doesn't work well in one area, GUESS WHAT? ITs time to change it. The OP says that PvE doesn't allow for unique builds. That not entirely true. PvE as it stands discourages broken builds in certain areas. And In the ROF area not having the right skills will get you and your team killed. That was purposely done to give players a challenge.

I find it funny that people say that they nerfed AOE skills. What they actually did was fix the AI to respond to it. That forces you to come up with different strategies with those type of skills. But people don't see that. All they see is Anet nerfing and only nerfing. Which isn't true either.

Now what I do agree with is that Anet didn't design the areas with much exploration in mind. They set it up so that people could spend less time grinding and to get through the game quickly. Which is what they advertised. But if you knew that you wanted to explore, then you should have taken the LONG way. Most areas have a long way to get there.

I think part of the problem is it's hard for other people to understand someone else's build, when there's not a lot of indication of what the majority of the skills in the game actually do, without looking them up.

The obvious ones... tank, nuker, monk... have obvious effects. Now what do you tell people if you're using anything more complex than that? I see the same thing happening with PVP. Only builds that get posted to the net are "acceptable" because it's such a pain in the butt to deal with so many different combinations on the fly. I think as a result, there are TONS of skill combos that are extrordinarly not "accepted" yet, but work amazingly. It's one of the disappointing things about the community to me, creativity in game is basically frowned upon, and heavily promoted builds obsessed over.

That sucks. I love I.W. mesmers. I was thinking about making one of my own, but didnt for some reason. I've played with many IW mesmers and they rule. In my opinion IW is one of the best skills in the game.

This is among the most patently wrong statements I have ever heard. You should try playing in a UW Trapper group some time. I dont' have druid's armor, so my energy is at your "average" 40, but I've only got 3 regen ticks. Even better, the ONLY skills I'm really using are traps, which cost 10, 10, 15, and *25*. And you know what? We plan ahead for this, and take things that will actually help the group. After Quickening Zephire, Energizing Wind, Serpent's Quickness, and 97 points and a minor rune into Expertice, and suddenly that 25 cost Dust Trap (the most useful of all, IMO) comes down to a measly 7, and gets a great recharge time.

I've read most of your posts, and it just seems to me that you're unhappy because you can't just sit back and relax your way through a mission. If you wanna do that, take a level 20 back to The Great Northern Wall. Beyond that, find ways around the stuff that's bugging you. If your enchantments are getting stripped, then you should consider cover enchants or dropping them entirely.

Just a small note here: not only do I not feel the way I did when I wrote the topic-starter post, that post was made way back in LATE AUGUST and I haven't really played Guild Wars at all since around late October-early November. (OLD THREAD ALERT!) I frankly don't know how the game plays now. Haven't done so much as kill a devourer in about 2-3 months. I had no problem with the game overall by the time I took a break. I just needed one.

I'm about ready to start playing again. Expansion news + the Beta event has really gotten me back in the GW mood lately. Now I just need to clear out my busy schedule.

F.E.A.R.

I'de have to say the OP just doesn't think enough. If you want to avoid enchantment removal, take a cover enchantment.

My friend plays an E/W fire-sword-tactics user. I have a Monk/archer. Both do fine in PvE. You can play PvE with any build. I played the whole game through (beat the game) my first time as a smiting-hammer-heal warrior. I was using Orsion of Healing as a self-heal, too! That should tell you something.

Warning: didn't boher to read the second and third page

I'm sorry, but you take !!!!2!!!! cap sigs and you complain about not being effective in PvE???!!! WTF???

DUH!

I really am flabberghasted that you are surprised at that. I usually run builds where even one cap sig makes me a bit more innefective...which is NOT surprising, considering in PvE (and probably also PvP [unless you have some ubermonks on your side]) you've already lost two slots to res/selfheal...and then you remove TWO slots, leaving you to define your build with only 4 skills?

*sigh*

How can you be surprised that you're not effective that way?

And as for exploring...that's something I love to do aswell, and I have no complaints in that direction. Have you found the hunters in pre-searing who give you plain beer? Try going from kryta to maguma and seeing that temple surrounded by the moat, guarded by the bone dragons, hellhounds etc. Have you seen the numerous ruins and waterfalls dotting the landscape in WAY out of the way places? Did you find places like Fishermans haven or the Icetooth caves without downloading a map from the intarweb?

And as for PvE being build-limiting...absolutely not; it's the one place where you don't get your build dictated by the group you're running with. In PvP, you join a group and have to reskill to drapper, energy degen or whatever. In PvE, I've found mopst of the places with a pickupgroup, just by chatting in !all and saying 'hey, who wants to find ToA?' or 'who wants to go exploring?...lo-and behold, ten seconds later we have a group of all different builds and we're chopping up the landscape. I've met some great people that way, and that's also the way I really discovered that ranked PvP-ers are way-too-much-of-the-time arrogant idiots who have no conception of how damaging a mixed build beyond the mo-nuke-warrior can be. Do Galrath with a nec-mes-ele-mo group...simple strategy means you really don't need tanks AT ALL [although it does help ], and that transfers to PvP too.

[DISCLAIMER: I've done tombs and CA/TA too...not all PvP-ers are idiots; I recon any PvP-er reading forums isn't. The above is just a rant about what we've all noticed: PvP-ers who don't know the game that well but think they're uber leet having IWAY-ed themselves to r3, for example, and not understanding that someone who has done the game PvE understands his skillset better having hit thousands of mobs than a PvP-er who has just today made a mesmer for the third time...This bears repeating: I'm not slamming PvP [which I enjoy!], but rather bad PvP-ers (of which there are logically more than good PvP-ers, statistically)....I hope you get what I mean ]

So in conclusion, what it seems OP is driving at is that he can't solo PvE. Well, duh: PvE in GW is an online game, made to be played with a group of people. You want to solo explore? Play an offline RPG.

Well all I can say is you must be pretty lucky finding pickup groups that easily.

As I said earlier, I just came back to the game after about 3 months. Was playing last night and went to Dragons Lair just cause I remember that mission being pretty cool.

So I'm hanging around looking for a pickup group. There must have been 10 or 15 people looking for groups for the mission. Problem is seems like no one really wants to do it. I would see "LFG for mission" and I would whisper the person and lo and behold, get no response. I hung around there for a good 20 min. before I found someone to accept me into thier group. I finally find a group and start the mission, but someone forgots their cap, so back we go. Then we get to the first boss, and someone doesn't wait long enough to get the skill. OMFG! End of mission. Everyone blaming everyone else for not waiting.

So I'm just going to use hench from now on which I did last night. It's just not worth all the bullshit most of the time. Also I'm a R/Trapper which I love. However, try and get with a pickup group that will listen and understand that if they wait and let me lay some traps and draw the mobs it will be better for the group. Nope, they just barge ahead in front of the traps which of course does no good at all leaving me with very little energy to help out.

Bah! Guess I just need to find a better guild.

Screw cookie cutter and tanks nukers and whatever, I'm using a water ele, am i mad probably but it works, sure I cannot nuke but I can slow the gits down so I can spam off *another* aoe and watch them crawl slowly out of it. All the time while my mates are pummelling them

GW is as inventive as you want. "Necessity is the mother of invention" I needed to play a non nuker / spiker ele so I went water. And I made it work. its not broken ~ its just that its easier for ppl to play those accepted steriotypes.

So if people get the heads out of their .. pumpkins .. then we'd be better off. However I do think that what the game needs is some random-ness and some explorable areas a bit like the FOW repeatable missions except not as repeatable. and with no cost. for lower levels. becsue at lower levels all you do is try to get to a higher level....

I would have to say that GW itself allows for a person to play a wide variety of builds. GW players(the majority) on the other hand show very little creativity/imagination & impose thier limitations on others. GW players(again most of them) only want cookie cutter builds they read off some forum.

Are there any threads about exactly which skills henchies carry?

Many of them are obvious, but the complete list at every town isn't immediately apparent.

Ditto for exactly how they use them.

Guildwiki has some good info, but it seems incomplete.

What I find even moer fun is seeing all the posts here asking for help on builds. Within the replies to these posts you'll see "Just try it out" or "There's no bad build". Other such replies like that are all over; yet in other posts like this one, you will read posts about broken builds or such things.
It seems the GW community is split over this.

Does the game discourage unique builds? I think it is more the players. If each player were able to adapt themselves to any situation, then any build would work. Seems most people don't or aren't able to adapt and so force others to do so by stating "Build a x/x" or "Your build is broken".

Do I adapt? I try to. In fact I grouped with a E/Mo (smiter) and a N/R last night. We had a blast using the oddest assortment of skills I've yet seen. And thanks to the AoE (as it is now) foes did little but run toward us and then turn to flee as arrows peppered them.

As it stand, I still have a hard time finding PUGs (for missions) with my R/W and therefore am forced into solo with henchies...

I semi agree.

You dont "need" to stick to the favorate teams and builds through pvp. But they do work all the time. (granted players have a general understanding of what they need to do)

Id say mobs need to be as smart as this.
If you are evading, blocking or the damage towards you is being replenshed - switch targets or stop attacking.
If attacking or using a skill will hurt or disable me - stop attacking, kite and get support healing if possable.
If health is low - retreat and self heal or get support healing.

Then make mobs spawn in a variation of team set ups randomly in areas where possable. Give them dual professions. Spread them out across the landscape to make exploration less tedious. Reajust all skills to work optimally for PvP.
blame! all class should start to fit in a little better and all your enchantments can be safe to use. (to some degree)

I think us pve-ers finally just have to face facts. GW's is not a mmorpg, it doesn't have the quality pve features to keep many interested for long. Weapons stats are the same with little room for improvement on stats once you get the 15's and with collectors freely spread about these are easy to obtain, you can even buy a +15% sword now for 5 plat and a few resources. The skins are rather boring and stale and don't give much incentive to go out and explore/farm for any of them. Besides the drop rate being very pitiful poor now after so many nerfs to stop bots and ebayers, they've practially ruined the fun value for most of the rest of us that played the way it was intended, very sad really.

Other Mmorpgs when you kill a "boss" you get something nice and useful. GW's bosses, when you kill them you are lucky to get some coin, rarely anything of value and basically just makes pve a waste of time once you have completed the story.

Armor stats are the same no matter what they look like after you reach Droknar's Forge, they are just more expensive to craft vs letting them drop off a boss mob or something that would give more fun and reason to go adventuring instead of farming for ectos and shards. 15k armor is not better than 1500gp armor, fissure armor is no better than 1500gp armor. This is a big difference in real pve mmorpgs and GW's illusion of a pve game atmosphere.

Then to top it off they offer the complete skill set once you get to hell, no adventuring required, no reason to adventure, here you are all you need is plat, go farm and experience farming, and buy all your skills, am surprised they didn't add elites to the list, give it time they probably will.

This is the difference between a Diablo 2 and Dungeon Siege like game vs GW's. They had unique items and item "sets" to explore for. Every adventure through Diablo 2 always yielded very good quality items and of course the ability to level to 99. I'm rather bored of being level 20 since the first month I played the game over 7 months ago. The newness has gone and boredom and repetitiveness sets in.

All n all it was a good ruse to get people interested in the 1st edition, but, well as for myself it has no appeal for the 2nd edition. Farming just isn't the type of pve game I wanted to play and pvp is not my style of role playing at all.

It's expansions will make their way to the bargain bins at which time I might take a look at them for say $5, but, I won't be paying $30, $40 or $50 for anymore. Can't see spending anymore money on it since I can get a better experience and more fun value out of over 3000 mods of Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 is coming soon along with Oblivion, I will support them since I know I won't have to worry about nerfs to the game or item drops.

I dunno, the way the pve side of things stands atm, it makes for more unique builds.

Now that I finished the game, I can go back and pick missions I enjoyed and change my skill set to something completly insane, just to see if it'll work

Then again, maybe I'm just a slow learner, but its only now that I'm learning that certain skills exist and how nicely they fit into my skill bar.

And yes, the interupts in pve are annoying due to the fact that AI monsters can interupt a split second after you start casting, reminds me of the first aoe nerf and how monsters ran at the sight of you hitting an aoe skill, way before you finished casting it. Glad they updated that within half a day and made it more 'normal' now.

Too many mobs = too unrealistic (Serious Sam, anyone?). Where would you expect to see a desert crawling with hydras? And always in the same place? What I would like to see is tougher, random mobs and bosses to keep you on your toes and add more realism to the game. You know, like never the same game twice.

A few things:

1) I'm the OP.

2) Note that this thread was originally created in AUGUST 2005.

3) Note that the thread title says ".....as it is NOW...", meaning my opinion way back in AUGUST 2005.

4) Also note that my first word in my OP was "Currently...", meaning my opinion way back in AUGUST 2005.

5) Note that the game has changed a bit from those summer days. (Rememer when warriors sucked in PvP and Eles were the greatest things ever?)

6) Note that opinions can and do change over time. Note a post of mine in this thread from last night, which states as much:


Basically, when referring to 'the OP', you are referring to an opinion of mine that I had months ago. I cannot and will not be held liable for people holding a 5-MONTH OLD STATEMENT against me now.

Thank you.

You cant cover enchantment whe they use [Elite] Lingering Curse that remove them all The only cover enchantment was Spellbreaker

Without Reading, I'll give my gross personal opinion on PvE.

PvE is the one I can be unique in, PvP requires certain things cause you ogtta be rdy for more sutff - you cant get all funny in PvP and win. In PvE you know what skills the enmy uses so anything you use that can beat that is great.

I agree with the original post, however, it's almost impossible to counteract by Anet. It is in the nature of people to find what works best, and use it.

The enchantment stripping was done to reduce farming. It's not bad in my opinion - go into any PvP arena and there'll be a player stripping enchantments. That doesn't stop people from using them - you just have to be more sly about it. I think, perhaps, that the monsters need to be MORE difficult to kill, yet deal less damage overall. Perhaps add more healing monsters, and have them make use of more enchantments themselves. This will increase the roll of Mesmers/Necromancers stripping/interrupting features that are not in use. Mesmers are pretty much useless except in small groups against a healing boss, or as echo nukers. This will also downplay the roll of monks, elementalists, and warriors to a certain extent as healing and damage dealing and tanking will not be quite as necessary.

I'd love to see some quests that are IMPOSSIBLE to do without a mesmer to round out the group.

On a side note - I swear to god some monsters have 1235985798353426346 energy at their disposal - I've tried energy denial and they just cast away like nothing's happening.

All of the problems with Guild War's PvE can be traced to this single issue.

Guild Wars needs to decrease the NUMBER of enemies you fight, and increase the STRENGTH of the enemies you fight.
Insead of fighting two dozen weaker enemies, I'd rather fight a half dozen stronger enemies.
It's so simple. Have less monsters, and make them much stronger and thier mobs more diverse (multiple classes in each mob).

I'm sick of seeing my compass map coated with a hundred freaking red dots. The only reason PvE in GW can be hard on occation is because of the sheer number of enemies the game throws at you, almost never because any of the individual monsters are actually difficult. As a result, the wold of PvE in GW breaks down to nothing more than aggro management. As long as you don't aggro too much, PvE is easy.

What I dream of is Anet replacing all those massive mobs with smaller, more powerful boss-like mobs.
So instead of 50 tedious red dots on your compass map, there would be more like 8 or 10 red dots, and those red dots would all represent super powerful monsters (bosses, level 30's, something like that).

Decreased numbers, increased strength.

I'm a PVE player (doing some CA sometimes) and THIS IS WHY I love this game. Only thing should be more variety of skin, I agree.

UW is almost all small groups. You usually fight Aatxes in 2s and 3s, Dryders come in 3s. The only major exception is smites, which come in ~6s (although you often pull far more).

The problem with having small groups is that they're really easy to fight. With enough enchants, you can make your Warriors 100% invulnerable. If there are only a couple mobs, Mesmers can shut a mob down, Rangers can keep a mob blind and crippled, etc.

I think most players who want a better pve balance have a background in AD&D. What they really mean is: The game like it is now is too much based on fast reaction. This is arcade. AD&D players like to think over a situation. Even in the middle of a fight. There's no time for that. Using enchantments is no fun this way because every mob has a mesmer. Of course there are builds to counter mesmers, but those are purely based on superfast reactions: look when something is being cast and react! Its arcade... And the reason for that is simly pvp. THERE its fun to play this way!

So back to the OP: Being a pve player myself I agree. There is a huge and beautifull world, but there is nothing else to do but agro the same kind of mobs. I would like to role play much more. I would like to build a place of my own. Maps should have less monsers and more secrets. I would like to proceed to new maps without being forced into missions. I would like to play more quests instead. And of course the world should have been constructed to play solo. Joining parties is fun, but only with well known friends. So optional: yes. Forced: no!

Err, I did all the desert quests, coop and cie alone, with henchmen...

I don't see what you are FORCED to...

Wow you can get a group? Im suprised that others have broken through the tank-nuker-healer wall and accepted you in.

I'll invite anyone into my groups once we have two monks and a warrior. The only builds I frown upon are casters who melee. I usually play in FoW or UW when I do group PvE. Casters die in 1-2 hits against Aatxes. When we're facing 2-3 Aatxes and you insist on being in melee range, you're going to rack up a lot of DP. Beyond that, I have no problems inviting mesmers, rangers, and necromancers. It's first come, first serve in my groups.

This would soo be perfect. I love the battles that take longer than 30 seconds to be over. Especially some of the bosses. As a former EQ'er, I loved the battles in that game (hated the camping and raids though). A group would have to work together to beat the foes. Even a single foe would pose a threat to a good group. I wish we had some of that here... not all foes as some times the fast paced combat is fun...but you get what I am saying. Come on Anet, let us try this for a month or so... show us how diverse this streaming tech can be.

People got the idea of Guildwars being MMORPG because it's online. But it is not a MMORPG it's a CORPG.
If no one had that weird idea that items are absolutely needed, there wouldn't be bots and Arenanet wouldn't have needed to "nerf". So the one you need to blame for this is Human Stupidity and the "i need more money/item" idea people have stuck in their head... not Arenanet.

Usually at the end of the story, it's the end. There's a couple more thing to do in Guildwars though. They added the Titan's Quests, the Sorrow Furnace, Finishing all the bonuses of every missions, Getting every skills, Going to PvP!.. or you can do farming runs that a lot of people seem to enjoy. Saying the game is a waste because there's nothing to do after you complete the story, is the same as saying a book is a waste because there's nothing else to read once you finish it. MMORPG have endless gameplay because they make you pay monthly and the most you play, the most money they make. And those game usually don't have story.. Beside the little backgroud history they have on their webpage to put you in situation.

Instead of farming ectos and shards, you would farm armors.. what's the differense? The armor are not better.. Then why would you need it?

That's probably the reason why they didn't call it a MMORPG.

You have to go through a war with big monster burning down a whole country, travel through snow mountain and fight against xenophobe dwarves, travel from Kryta to the Maguuma Jungle to save some Chosen from the hands of the White Mantle, travel to the desert and pass the test of the gods to ascend, go into a dragon's lair which is hidden in a grain of sand, fight against some god like monsters to free your shining blades friends and fight those gods into the volcanic island before learning you were only a puppet and finally reach the end and getting all the skills. And you say there's no exploration or adventure? Of course if you took a taxi run you ruined it for yourself and you're the only one to blame. They added the skill NPC exactly because people didn't want to farm to get them. And you really don't need to farm to get all the skill you need to PvE.

Guildwars have unique items to find. But exactly like in Dungeon Siege, they are not needed to be effective. And of course there's lots of difference between Guildwars and every other games. The reason is other games aren't Guildwars. It's like saying you don't like basketball because they don't play it on ice and don't have goalers.

Guildwars is a competitive/cooperative RPG. If you could have level99 people with all the "farmed-2-years-for" items, it wouldn't be competitive or cooperative at all. It would just become a "my weapon shine more than yours so i can kill more monsters than you" game.

Seriously, if you farm in Guildwars, it's not because you have to but rather because you want to. And if you don't want to do PvP then you're only playing half of what Guildwars really is.

The problem is when people see "Online Game" they think it's like every other MMORPG where all you have to do is to level up and get items until the earth stop turning. If you reach the end and can't find anything interesting to do, do like with every other game. Stop and play something else. It's not like you must play because you pay monthly.

I played NWN last summer for the first time. I bought the game and the 2 expentions. When i was done with the story, i didn't go to bioware forum to cry that there's nothing else to do. I un-installed the game, went to BestBuy, bought Dungeon Siege 2 and played it. Once finished, i said "that game was hot!", deleted it and came back at playing Guildwars because i was missing it.

Complainers

Well said. Guild Wars' character progression is not about making numbers on your character sheet go up. What it is about is gaining new ways to play your character. Instead of getting Heal Rank 8, you get Divine Boon. Instead of getting a Weapon with 3 more Stamina, you get a Weapon that gives you 20% longer enchantments. Stats and levels are meaningless. Your level goes up by 1, mob levels go up by 1, the game is the same. More levels don't make the game any more fun, they just make it take longer to get to the challenging parts of the game. Guild Wars' rewards are supposed to be the play experience, not the items at the end. I actually do PvP and go to FoW/UW/SF because I find it fun, not because I want great loot. That's not something that I can say about many RPGs.

Factions will be great because it gives you a lot more things to do and a lot more ways to do those things.

If you don't feel that you can enjoy an RPG without getting lots of levels and uber loot, then go play WoW.

First of all, I didn't read everything in this thread it (don't intend to), so I won't know what had been cover or not.

PvE is one of the more discouraging part of the game, everyone must admit. I have never seen, "HEY! I love (insert explorable area name)!! Let's play inside that again next time!". The only reason people go into explorable area are for either farming, or something to do with skill gaining, or.... farming.

There are so far only ONE explorable area that I would like to visit more than 1 time. Majestic Rest. The bone dragon and monster layout are much more interesting than say... in the desert, 50 storm kin jump you, all of them use power drain, conjur phantasm, clumisness, etc.

Many of the PvE area lack variety in monsters, therefore it lack variety in build players can use. For example, if the area is packed with ranger and ranger alone, then anyone who bring a fire/water/air elementalist is an idiot (ranger got high elemental resistance). While this area would encourage millions of warriors to farm it. I believe this is the main problem.

Player would start saying "omg! you are not an echo nuker!? F**Kin n00bs" *kick*, because echo nuker being the most effective way of killing in that area.

The game is balanced, but not balanced on every explorable area.

In other games like PSO ep2 (phantasy star online), I would say stuffs like "I love playing in seabed", for those tricky sinow and fast action. In GW currently, the monsters are really boring.

I think the best way to make PvE more entertaining is to put skills that players don't have with majority of the monsters out there. Like the bone dragon's roar, fire djin's flame, lich's teleport, etc. Instead of having the minotaur slowly run to you to start hitting you, give them something that would run players over (maybe even propell the players aside) or things alike. Something more dramatic.

Oh yea, and Anet had always said "we care for both part of the game". They certainly can't live up to that if half of their game is pretty boring. Ok, maybe 1/4+ (some mission are just a drag, quite boring) of their game is boring (1/2 of gw=pvp, 1/2 of gw=pve, 1/2 of pve=missions/explorable). If one want to say "Anet just make explorable for people to run through the game", in that sense, yea pve explorable are SUPPOSE to be boring.

It soooooooooooooo much depends on what you want out of this game, what your playing style is, and what kind of player you are.

I don't PvP of GvG. I am a PVE purist. And there are many like me out there. I love the PVE part of this game, am still playing it every night, and am playing the same missions and areas over and over again. Not only for farming. I don't farm at all except for searching for green items and of course ectos, shards and other nice drops when in UW and FOW.

So all you people who assume that "PVE is only for unlocking skills" and "the PVE part of GW stinks and no one likes it", well, you are generalizing falsely.

I can understand that many would find this particular PVE not to their liking, everyone has their own tastes. I can understand people finding it boring after some time, but hey, every game will get that way after playing it repeatedly.

Regarding builds: I for one try to experiment as much as I can. I don't listen to what everyone thinks I should bring along for a particular mission or area. But then again, I generally play with friends, or groups consisting mostly of friends, and we all understand that we all should have the freedom to experiment with our builds. If anyone tells you what you should take as skills, well, that should be accepted as a suggestion. But if it is a demand, well, then you just find a new group.

The only two points regarding builds that I find frustrating are 1) there are so many good skills for each primary profession that I never seem to be able to use the secondary profession for any of my characters and 2) since the ability to "rebirth" a party member seems so overly important, most of my character's secondary class is monk, where because of 1) I set 0 points on monk attributes and just take rebirth as the only monk skill. I find that a bit of a shame: I have lots of fun and variety with my builds when I stick to my primary profession, but it would be nice if I could find more reason to use the secondary profession more fully.

I think a definite problem is that Anet has set the game up so that PVE lovers and PVE haters naturally come into contact with each other. What I mean is that players who only want to advance their new characters to the high level area, for example to unlock skills, need somehow to interact with the PVE portion of this game. By rights, they need to play out the missions and quests to get their characters from pre-seering to the ring of fire islands. But what these people do instead is they get run. Or rush through the game in some other manner. And the problem with this is that it makes it extremely hard for PVE lovers like myself to find other PVE lovers for PUG groups to do the missions and quests with. Running is so common these days, that even PVE players begin to assume that the only way to get from one point to another is to be run. Or PVE players become like me - I am so pessimistic about getting a PUG group together to do lower level missions or to travel in the desert or around Droks, that I don't even try to find a PUG group. I go either with friends or with henchies. And that is really a shame, because about 99% of my enjoyment of this game is the human interaction that you get in a "good" PUG group. Perhaps it would have been better to let people unlock their skills for PVP without having to do the PVE. In my mind it would also be better if the game was changed so that running was actually impossible (how about if dead party members do not get transported along with the runner?).

I think that Diablo II really didn't give players any options for different builds, which was frustrating.

[Instead of farming ectos and shards, you would farm armors.. what's the differense? The armor are not better.. Then why would you need it?]

And that is the $64 statement, there's no incentive to farm for anything once you've finished the story. THere's NOTHING BETTER than 1500gp armor from Droknars, this is the drive of mmorpgs this is what keeps people coming back for more, this is why WOW is so popular.

Every expansion of EQ always provided better armor and better weapons over the previous version and in many of them expecially the SECOND expansion allowed for continuance of levels from 50 to 60. This game stops you at 20 and is going to keep you at 20 and just give you more SKILLS? lol big flippin deal, there's already too many skills and not enough skill slots to use them. Even in EQ during play in the middle of battle even; you could CHANGE OUT Spells, can you do that in GW's? Nope you can't.

There's also no "player crafters" in this game of any sense. You gather some resources and you trade them in for another item, that's not crafting. That's not fun. Trading in 5 wood and 20gp for a parchment isn't near the fun of crafting a spell in the likes of EQ2, or crafting 100 sow potions a day (Spirit of Wolf makes you run faster in the game) and selling them all in that one day is elating....there's no PIZAZZ to this game as far as props and no spiffs whatsoever. It's merely just a hack n slash for what? No one NEEDS 15k armor or Fissure armor. Personally a goal must be something I NEED to enhance myself, not just to make my cartoon LOOK different or pretty. I want better stats, skills set in armor so that it ADDS another skill to your skill bar if you have armor with a skill slot opening on it. You know like in Diablo 2 where you could put in runes and gems and the horadric cube, that cube alone gave hours and hours of fun just "crafting" things out of it. Turning crappy things into better things.

These are not just my own feelings, but, feelings of many others some after only a few WEEKS of play, others a couple of months. If you're not into PVP this game grows old and boring pretty fast, the zones are too linear and "don't respawn" (which they should imho), they could add some incentive to help others out and fillout groups quicker if they would give "everyone" Mission experience no matter how many times they do the same mission. If you go back through a mission like say Thirsty River (one of my favorites for awhile) you don't get any mission experience for completing it again. So, why should I go back through it again if I'm not going to reap the rewards others are getting?

It's pretty obvious that this game is pretty much PVP based. There is a PVE story to play like a Diablo 2 or a Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights true, but, just like those games, once the story is completed there's no real reason to continue playing them unless you just like to "farm for items". Farming is like "work". I'd much prefer another adventure, mission something inline like LDON of EQ where there's ALWAYS a NEW MISSION (random mission) to be given time after time after time. Sorry, but, Sorrows Furnace missions don't quite hit the spot. One scene with 5 samey missions. LDON had 5 SCENES with 8 different settings and 5 different mission types.

And yes I know these mmorpgs cost if not $15 a month then quite near it and basically you "Get What You PAY For", I'm seeing that now after playing GW's off and on for 7 months. I got $50 out of the game, but, then again that's 3 to 4 months of a pay to play like EQ game, not so sure the savings are really there when I find myself bored more than I'm having fun.

[/quote]I played NWN last summer for the first time. I bought the game and the 2 expentions. When i was done with the story, i didn't go to bioware forum to cry that there's nothing else to do[/quote]

Lol if that's all you did with NWN's then you missed over 3000 variants of it because there are excellent mods out there with NEW adventures and NEW stories and 100's and 100's and 100's of hours of RPG experiences vs once you finish the story of GW's there's only 100's and 100's of hours of "grinding" out skill points or farming.

Well, I think you need a true MMORPG like EQ and all...

Guildwars is NOT level based, is NOT item based, and that's why I love it...
I understand some people don't like this, as it's not like the old MMORPG standards...

And I hope it will stay the same, as I m having lot of fun with it. This game style is rather unique, I don't want to play another WOW like...

Sure there are some things to improve, but the "NOT level based, NOT item based" will stay, as Gaile said we will have new set of weapons armors in extensions but NEVER more powerful...