Stop Nerfing solo builds - nerf the reason for soloing

If this is the attitude A.Net/NCSoft take, they might as well file for bankruptcy and fold the business.

A.Net/NCSoft sold a product to me, therefore, it their fudiciary obligation to honor.

Additionally, it also gives me the right ensure that the product I'm receiving is to my satisfaction.

But, again, I digress...

(I'll stop responding to irrelevant posts.)

It's known that the vast majority of the gw community beleived that the monk 105 build was overpowered. Its the same reason president bush is president as sad as it may be. Like the government Anet does what the MAJORITY of the community wants. Also lets not forget this isn't a 'pay monthly' game, so they arn't nearly as obligated.

[QUOTE=Lu Cheng Ying]

Additionally, it also gives me the right ensure that the product I'm receiving is to my satisfaction.

QUOTE]

that is a very interesting statement.

how in the past have you *ensured* that a companies game lives up to your satisifaction?

there are many games i have purchased that were fun but could have been better but.............i have not tried to have them remake part of it just for my satisifaction

when you were BUYING black dye at 40 plat i was SELLING it to the trader for 26 plat each and i got all 6 from drops so no cost to me

the reason runes were going so high is hoarders like you so i have no sympathy at all

You can simply run the exact same monk build, and add the ER (since the change I have yet to attempt with an ele, as mine was deleted following unlocking ele skills) as your elite, the darkness will drain true, but you have essence and balth to keep feeding it back. Also it can just as easily be prot spirit. Infact you could pretty much run the exact same monk build with an ele. It would jst take a little longer.

Not like this build was all powerful to start with anyway, any kind of degen could stop it cold, why make it totally useless ?

Maybe should have named it "Almost Invinci Monk"

/signed

/signed ... nerfing sucks =D

Good farming area.. -NERFED
Good build you finally create.. -NERFED SKILLS

Those people in towns that go.. "HEY WHERE DOES EVERYBODY FARM?!?" or... "WHATS A GOOD PLACE TO FARM" someone tells that person... then that person tells another.. then it goes on and on and on.. until A.net finally catches up with them.. and nerfs that area..
_==LATER ON==_

Nearly, 80% of our main nerfing areas get nerfed =/

Thats just a big bummer... -_-

I too am completely irritated, and I have been saying the same god damn argument over and over again as FatherNurgle and Lu Cheng Ying. It's outrageous. First off, if you're solo-ing you shouldn't be able to get dyes, gold, or purple items because you're not playing the game how it's made and it just promotes warriors as builds and the invinci monk. There are so many f'kin imbalances it has made me want to quit, but since THEY have WASTED MY TIME and then later expect me to go through the whole f'king game again with 2 other characters to waste my time just to get some skills. If this game was truly based on skill, once we got to the desert and got the professions we should be able to get the skill points from level 20 quite fast so we don't have to waste our time going through this game again. I mean that would be great right there. It's just that they've screwed this game up so bad and no one's doing anything about it. It's completely inferiating... Ergh! I could go on and on about how the stores are useless pieces of shit that need to be fixed and so on, but Anet is lazy and sht heads because they've already gotten all the money they will ever need out of us, so they think that it's alright to just sell expensive games that are pieces of garbage.

Also, they work so hard on taking out bots by taking any good areas in the game and in doing so they've also made this game need bots even more. We farm because we're unhappy, and we're unhappy because we farm. They bot because we need money, we need money because of bot -nerfs.

A.Net would rather pout and demand their way is brilliant rather than changing anything, and just hammer the square into the circle hole by "tweaking" the game until there's nothing left to play.

/signed

and maybe alot of people should telling everyone there farming spots.... then they dont end up gettin nerfed as quickly or not at alll

I have said all along that I wish for A.Net/NCSoft to exercise restraint and employ imagination when they do make a change. Make sure the change is absolutely necessary and make sure that once the change is made, it does not render other aspects of the game obsolete. (I won't reitirate this obsolescence as I have already explained elsewhere.)

Why do I see the nerfing of the monk build unnecessary? Because it is public domain. If a person chooses not to use something that is public domain to the individual's advantage, that is a choice they have made! A.Net/NCSoft should not step in to make this choice for everyone. If anything, the Droknar run has more "detrimental" effect to the game than this "invincimonk" build (or microscopically, Protective Bond).

--Gaile of A.Net/NCSoft

If this is the case, has A.Net/NCSoft gone flippant mad? I did not use an "exploit" or introduced an external program into the process to achieve my goal. I stayed within the confines of the game. If this is the nature of the future to come with this game then, sadly there is no reason to play it because if I become innovative, I'll just get trumped by the flippant behaviors of A.Net/NCSoft.

I request that A.Net/NCSoft take every complaint with a grain of salt and thoroughly evaluate the situation before formulating a conclussion.

To me, the solutions provided to Protective Bond (or the "invincimonk") were rushed and totally lack provocative thought.

Is it conceivable that this is what they did, or is the more likely answer that they didn't do this because you can't happen to be wrong?

Boo f'in hoo

Bonettis defence

Now get the hell over it.

Father Nurgle please dont invest in anything, ever. I saw this whole thing coming, and if youre as thick as to buy black dye at 40k, you deserve to get hit like that.

Father Nurgle please dont invest in anything, ever. I saw this whole thing coming, and if youre as thick as to buy black dye at 40k, you deserve to get hit like that.

Father Nurgle please dont invest in anything, ever. I saw this whole thing coming, and if youre as thick as to buy black dye at 40k, you deserve to get hit like that.

Btw the patch was to change stuff for pvp, and nothing was against farming. If youre complaining about prot bond, you suck and have no brains (or youre lazy).

Oh and anet has nothing with farming. The frog even said so.

And about the thing with the black dye and runes and whatever else you bought in anticipation...LOL~! Go quit GW like you threaten to please.

After reading into the 2nd & 3rd page into the topic, ALL of those ppl have forgotten the purpose of the topic is "Stop Nerfing solo builds - nerf the reason for soloing"
The reason for soloing. Quick mental poll, how many of you unlocked EVERYTHING within 1 to 2 player throughs without farming and playing normally (normally being playing with full or near full parties, completing anything that can be completed). I'm fair certain the result will be a very small number of you, if not zero, compared to the size of the gw community.
Another thing, people are forgetting that this game is built for PvP. PvP. Not PvE. PvE is merely a stepping-stone to prepare you for PvP. Contradiction: how are you suppost to be prepared character-wise, if you have not unlocked the items and whatnot you want to use for PvP?
Personally, I have 500 hours clocked and through PvE only, I have not come nearly as close to unlocking anything and everything I want to use for PvP. Of course, I've factioned several things, but that process is almost slower than today's rate of unlocking and drops and whatnot.
What's the blunt solution? Make "rare" things (aka anything unlockable) drop freely from the sky, in that within 2-3 play throughs, you'll unlock everything you want or need for PvP.

/signed

I dont even play GW anymore because I have already done everything. Only thing thats left is to enjoy farming on my own, which I can no longer do anymore as my w/mo. ANet either seem to make mobs stronger (Golems at Perdition Rock) or give them devastating mesmer spells (Griffons at Snake Dance), give them disenchant spells or group the mobs with other disenchant mobs (Golems at Perdy., and Mantle at Riverside), or just completely nerf any chance of a good drop (Ettins/Tengu at Kryta [Runes]), and I do not do PvP because there is no point as I believe it is unfair to allow people to use third party programs (TS) which allows them to gain an advantage over people who do not want to use it, when there should be a built in comms system like in HL. Until they stop caring about this PvP rubbish (PvPX. Pff, what a joke) and start caring about PvE players more, then I will not be playing at all untl something is done and I cannot see us ever having a PvEX (high chance of purples/gold and quadruple exp everywhere).

mmm , the way i see it , this is meant to play as team work , and is not for ebay kind of players.
have fun instead of making gold , .. IMO
im not an mmo expert


PvEX (high chance of purples/gold and quadruple exp everywhere).

/signed

I think Anet should just go ahead and cut to the chase and do away with the PvE aspect of the game. Thats what it looks like they are trying to do. I am tired of everything changing becasue PvP peolpe bitch and complain that they cant deal with this or that. I am tired of wasting my time getting items, that by the following Wendsday they are useless and/or worthless because Anet doesnt have anyone on staff with an Accounting or Buisness degree to understand even the simple basics of supply and demand.

Let the people play damnit! This is ridiculous. If you wanted a PvP game why the hell didnt you just stick with that than piss off the people that enjoy or dont mind the "grind" that much?

Plain and simple Anet(Anti-farm net)=Asshats

/signed

GEE, I guess being able to sit in a spot indefinately being hit by 4 lvl 20+ axates which hit for only 2 damage each was perfectly planned into the game.
/sacasm

...
By the way, Don't move, but move foward.
How can you exercise retraint and employ imagination at the same time?

Nobody needs anything really, aside from the basic necessities.
The keyword is "want".
People want anything and everything. Its just a human "flaw".
First rule of economics - using limited resources to satisfy unlimited wants as best as possible.

And to all those who say something along the lines of "soloing isn't the way the game is meant to be played", seriously, who's dictating how we should play the game?
Not me, not Anet, and most definitely not you.
If Anet was hell bent on people playing the way you reasoned (i.e. not solo), they could very simply implement a minimum party rule when you leave a town (this idea is not mine, read it somewhere before).

Soloing is part of the game. So is playing in a party. Its up to the player to decide how they want to play it.

Yes I would say it was.
Otherwise, why in the world would there a focus item that reduces health (50 for that matter, equivalent to 2 and a half levels)?
Who in their right mind would ever want to use something like that?
I guess Anet wanted to see if people were creative enough.
Perhaps what they didn't see was people exploiting, for lack of a better word, the invinci-monk build.
And really, I don't understand why they nerfed the build.
Everyone could do it. No wait, let me think. Yup. Everyone could do it.
Who's stopping you from doing it?
The high prices of items would drop once everybody realised that they could do it too, and prices would return to normal (i.e. nothing more than 100k, an assumption since thats the maximum amount you can carry with you).

The people who whine about prices and stuff are just too lazy to make the build but yet WANT the best stuff, the rarest stuff etc etc. Yeah I was too lazy too. Thats why I don't have a monk. I'd just prefer to buy stuff off them for cheap and resell.

Think about it. Pre-patch scenario:
Average price for sword pommel of fortitude +20 was about 500g or 1k at the most.
Average price for sword pommel of fortitude +30 was about 130k or so.
If you're lazy to farm and whine about the price, does +10 health really make that much of a difference?
If your health ever went down to 10, you'd probably be dead before you even saw it hit that low. Yes, there are exceptions, but very very seldom.
Get a collector's sword, slap in a +20 health pommel, and you're good to go. Sure, you're disadvantaged, but not to an extreme level.
Same goes for runes. Major Vigor cost like 2-3k (can't really remember) whereas Superior Vigor cost 32k or so. Thats a 9 health difference.

Whiners are probably the people who WANT, not need, the best but are too lazy to do it. Or maybe just too busy to do it. Either way, you don't NEED it.

I personally use green items, cos they're cheap, and they serve the purpose. Sure I could use gold stuff to feel good. Whether I want to is another story.
Same for armor, I could use collector's armor which is almost free, but I prefer to use Grotto armor. Do they give me any extra protection? No. I just like it.

/rant

P.S. I don't PvP, so all this refers to PvE only. And don't tell me this game is not about PvE and its only about PvP. Thats just dumb. A simple but very fitting word.

I think the problem lies in that they are focusing on what is messing up the PVP side by nerfing the PVE side. Why are they making lomar's pass harder? Because people run there at level 9, get drok armor, max damage weapons and run back to ascalon city arena and fight with it, owning everyone who's not stacked like they are.

This has nothing to do with being able to get run to Droks, grab some armor, (be it collectors, or getting all the way to grotto or citadel) and play through the rest of your game with some seriously kick ass armor. It has nothing to do with spending hours outside the arenas trying to unlock runes for your PVP characters.

Farming is about cash. Everyone says "Why do you need money? I've never needed money"
I'll tell you why I want money:

I have 4 characters, 3 are level 20 ascended, one is brand new, replacing a level 20 ascended that I grew tired of.

The new character will no doubt have armour, and hopfully good armour sooner than later.

This is Drok scar pattern armor, 60 armor, +6 bonus energy:


It's not that hot. Attrcia deservers better.


Fissure of Woe Armor. How nice? Very nice.
Cost? Right now about 1.6 million gold bought.

"Go do the missions in FOW and UW to get your ecto and shards" Says A-net.

That'd be nice, however I can't take hench, and you've made it so hard to do UW now that I'd die even if I could take them. I cannot rely on the general moronic PUG which I find less effective than henchmen.
Word to your mother: I worked my way through Ice caves of sorrow and Iron mines with my 11th level ranger with only henchmen, then to Grotto.


Why else would I need money? skills. All my skills now cost 1 plat. If I want a new build, it can cost me more than black dye, or one ecto: 8k.

So, let's work out my figures, and look to solutions:

1.6 million gold x4 characters (I don't do PVP)
400 odd skill at 1 platinum each x4
100 platinum x 4 for a good weapon for each character, or a few interations of green weapons for differnt builds...

That's 8,400,000 gold over 4 characters.

If I play with a group? 200g - 1 plat/ 2 hours. Without a black dye drop or an inevitable Sup Absorption, that's thousands of hours of play to get ONE character just where I want it. Hundreds I'd understand however, that's not the way it is.

How to beat farming:

Scaled drops{as said above} so that teaming up is better. Increase gold drop rate by 1.5% each member above 2. Run with the idea from the chests where each time a monster is killed, it drops something different for everyone. Maybe a little gold, or an item, however worth your while to go in groups rather than solo.

Financial encouragement for doing missions and quests.

Seperate PVP Characters and PVE Characters. Still let PVE characters do GVG and HOH, however eliminate the ascalon arena, or filter non low level armor. Don't punish the PVE characters for the abuse of the armor, but encourage the PVPers to complete the game and play it properly or simply play PVP only.

Put the priests of balthazar back into the towns, and allow them to trade faction for items and skills for PVE characters. This will encourage players who play only PVE to do this, and stablize the economy a little further. This will also fix the problem with farming for upgrade components and runes. Say my warrior needs Sup Absoprtion! 85k? That's a lot of cash. Instead of farming for 22 hours (I make 1k/15 mins farming roughly) Rather than do that, I can spend 4 hours in the PVP arena, get some faction and an item that I really want. -That would make me happy as a player-.

Of course put restrictions on this. Don't let level 10 characters use this to unlock things in droks. Only allow characters who beat the game to use the Priests in Droknars. This alone will add emphasis to the need and desire to beat the game, instead of getting to Ember light camp, skill capping and saying forget it.

Thank you for reading this far.

Good night.

Guys, please rate this thread 5, as it increases the chances of someone looking at it.

Thanks

/signed

I couldn't have said it better myself.

/signed

mm sure i don't really like soloing but i agree with the better drops for groups

*bump*

/signed

Anet seems to be digging themselves in a hole here. Maybe they should take some of their economy equations and put them to work in the real world. They recently hit the 1 million mark of purchases world-wide. That's a lot of gamers that set up an account. There is no monthly fee. Let me say that again... There is NO monthly fee. So the only revenue comes from new purchases. Their only other way to make money is with the planned expansions. People need to be attatched to their accounts and characters long enough to have interest to purchase the expansions. Right now there is nothing attatching a player to his/her account when they get bored EXCEPTs the good weapons they are striving for or saving up to get the better looking armor. What would you do if you were them? Would you let the players accomplish these goals so they would get bored wondering "What else is there?" No, you start taking away the little things that make playing fun instead. That way they get bored quicker and finally just get fed up and buy WoW. Don't worry about the people that get bored after 600 hours of gameplay, two 14 year olds will buy the game the second the seasoned player quits. How much longer do you think that will provide revenue ANet? It's time to start thinking about us Guild Wars veterans who will be deciding whether or not to buy the expansion in the next 6 months. What are you going to do for US until then? Nerf the game some more? WAKE UP!

When we go farm, whether it be solo or with henchies it's like hitting a giant STFU button and it lets us REALLY enjoy the PvE section of the game. People just hang around towns complaining about pointless crap and bragging about being Godly when they can barely click a mouse button. The real reason people keep acting like smacktards in this game is that ANet KEEPS REWARDING THEM. I could give a crap about the "skill balancing" since nothing they've done to the skills has effected me (now I'm really getting into the complainers' mindset). But stop messing with the one thing in the game that I really truly enjoyed... farming. That's right, I like to farm. A LOT of people like to farm. The problem is that when a large group of people are happy with the way things are going, no one tends to speak out and demand changes... We can't be taken into account when they look at the big picture if we're not causing a fuss apparently.

There is one critical flaw in the way that suggestions are being taken. If you guys keep just skimming through other peoples' forums, you're going to see a lot of complaining going on. You're going to see A LOT of yelling and ranting. That's what people have been using forums for since the invention of BBS. All you end up seeing is an Extremely small section of gamers that have the free time to complain. The real players are too busy PLAYING the game for that. How about making a page on the Guild Wars Official website to post surveys for players to answer? Could you guys put down the nerf bat long enough to really make some contact with us and field us a few ideas once and a while? We would higly appreciate the chance to answer questions and make some suggestions when we don't have something to complain about.

We like your game, we play it a lot, we ALL have an opinion, not just the pompous bastards that like to ruin other peoples' fun. If you wanna know how people will respond to something, just ask. Don't just listen to a couple of loudmouths, ask the REAL players.

I agree completely to the fact that A-net needs to stop nerfing builds just because people complain about them. There is no reason to nerf these solo builds, as their main purpose is to farm and acquire items. Yet, A-net said that this game was not going to be focused on items, rather, skill was more involved. So how do they justify nerfing everythig to disrupt the flow of items into the economy?

A-net has no clue how to keep a game runnng, and how to keep the playerbase happy. Reading complaints everywhere to base their nerfs on is a pitiful way to keep a game on track. Complaints grow, and a-net thinks that they should nerf something because people are able to accomplish something by themself.
Sure, this game is team based, but we should have the option to fight things by ourselves, and throw out some elbow grease by ourselves, can't we?

A-net nerfing solo builds is basically them telling us not to go it alone, and that we should only play this game with other persons. They may not admit it, but subconsciously they are with the actions they have taken thus far.
They need to stop basing all of their nerfs on 'flavor of the month' builds, with them waiting for someone to come up with some ingenious build; only to be reduced to the flare spamming elementalist in Ring of Fire-the build becomes that pathetic.

Come on A-net, play the game, understand it, and gain a different viepoint other than the ones who start these rants about how much a build sucks and why they should nerf it because the person is too lazy to counter it, or come up with something more effective.

/signed

/unsigned.

I have this username for a reason. There are times when I can not stand other players. It's not just because they can't listen, don't agree, I just find it's too much hassle. However, nerfing solo builds is their descision. And I will still love to play the game.

I disagree with those bashing on ANet. They made the game. They have the right to do whatever they want to it. If people don't like it, stop playing it, or just live with it. Sorry, but it's true. And I'm sure they do hear people complaining about nerfing solo builds. But they have their reasons to do what they want to do.

Would be nice if they gave reasons.

/unsigned

PB had to be nerfed. It made smiting monks far too powerful in UW, something totally out of balance, and hence exploitable. I agree with the changes made by Anet to restore balance. There is room for more improvements.

You guys bitch as if Anet is the worst company ever. I guess you've never played another MMO.

If you tell me I'm a fanboy cus this game is free, go f*ck yourself. Ever try the economy in Diablo 2? SOJ ftw!

WoW has a continually degenerating economy. They are much much worse than us...

Then you can go on Ebay and search Everquest. Or Lineage 2. WTF?

To a degree I have to agree with the original idea. However, most of my agreement comes from my opinion that the economy is total bunk. When I see someone selling an item for over 100k then see them sell another item that isn't max by one point and getting not even half for it... come on... that's the epitome of the title "Gold Wars". On the other hand, finding gold items all the time would reduce the specialness of it, which would suck. Eh I'm stuck in the middle on this.

Aye, I agree

/signed

Yeah, that's one way of looking at it. A very narrow-minded, ignorant way of looking at it. No, protective bond did not have to be nerfed. It didn't even solve the percieved "problem". They still ended up having to put in enchantment removal monsters to keep people from solo-farming UW. So what did they gain by nerfing Protective Bond? Absolutely NOTHING. All they did was render a skill completely uselss. That's it. No ballancing, no fixing, nothing like that. And ballancing PvE is a totally different animal from PvP. In PvP, when things are out of ballance, the party on the underpowered side is directly affected by those who use the overpowered skills. The same is NOT true in PvE. If Mr. A makes a monk to solo-farm UW while Mr. B decides to use a more difficult Ranger build, Mr. A's monk does not make the farming any more difficult or less enjoyable for Mr. B.

I agree with the original poster, to some extent. I think they should have removed the need for farming, but my suggestion for how to do it is entirely different. In my opinion, all the best items (Fissure Armor, Runes, Weapons, etc.) should be rewards for quests, not random drops. This would make them rewards for skill rather than grinding or buying money off eBay.

you expect ANet to nerf your Ego? that is the only cause of your need to farm. you don't need uber gear.

(i spent half an hour writing a massive post on this subject which i lost to the ether)

invinci-monks took no skill. oh sure you say NOW that it did. at the time people put in the thread 'why i love the invince-monk' thread that they could go AFK for hours and mobs attacking them had no effect. that they could read a book while farming. skill? concentration?
try some builds that DO require skill and concentration.

also why do you need to farm if you have 40k for equipment before you can start farming? 40k will but you all the equipment you need.

Of course no one needs buttloads of gold to play effectively, but wanting something exerts far more pull. I admit, I'm a PvE'r. I want my characters to look good, I want them to be flashy. Showing off? That's exactly it. Contrary to most of your misbegotten stereotypes of WhammoN00bHarharIhavbestwepinansheeld, most players play to be able show off. Perhaps they may not show off actively, but passively.

Customization and personalization is one of the most effective ways to bring people into a gaming community.

If you really want farming to end, you can all suggest that ANet remove all parts of the game that include customization:
1) Make all armors look exactly the same, but keep the different attributes.
2) Make all weapons look the same.
3) Remove dyes from the game.
4) Give all weapons the same stats.

How many of you would still play? No farming, no screwed up markets. Oh wait, it would be screwed up - nevermind that. Whether you admit it or not, you will only spend your hard-earned gold (yes, hard-earned) on items that you like. Whether you like it because of its mods, or because of its looks, doesn't matter. Fact is, you spent money so you could customize.

So yes, if you want to get rid of farming, get rid of all incentive to farm. No customization! Hurray! You've gotten your wish, and a heck of a lot more baggage along with it.

Before any of you make any further replies, get this into your heads. Want is far more important than need. I would not play this game if my wants could not be met (either in a short amount of time, or after a great deal of time). Likewise, you would not play this game if your want of entertainment, or your wish to accomplish some goal in the game kept you going. No one needs to do anything, just want.

if you were to get the wish of 'no need to farm'.
there would be compaints FROM THE FARMING crowd along the lines of:

all my time and effort wasted, spent weeks doing such and such for my fissure armor and now nubs can get it after a weekends play.

if you want to customise your character oh so much then there is an almost infinite number of ways to get the money. try to expunge thoughts of invinci-monks from your minds. think of a new way. a way that (god forbid) requires skill.

getting fantastic items from quests won't work well IMO. it is impossible to create a quest that will not be either impossible or easy. once one person of each class has done them everyone will be able to do them. everyone will have everything and everyone will be happy. yes? no.

everyone will be the same. is that what you want?

ANet should allow greater depth of character individuality. this would minimise the need for over expensive armor to set yourself apart.