Poll on the 10/10 and 10/11 Update

a quick look at your posting history shows why you are so upset.

most of your posts are

SELL/BUY (mostly sell)

PC (price checks)

COMPLAINTS ON THE UPDATE

i did like the post where you had to clean out your storage because you had no more room for all your gold items but you are still complaining.

one single auction has more nice golds than most people (myself included) will ever see but you complain

enjoy or find a better agricultural simulator....to each his/her own i guess

And you know what?

My only big sales have been a Malinon's shield for 80k, a holy rod for 150k+5 ectos and a chaos axe for 80k.

Almost every posted non-perfect item or upgrade have been sold to merchant or new players , because nobody want them. And what does this mean? Yeah, cheap items for new players and guildies. Farmers are only interested in perfect/cool looking weapons. The rest goes to merchants or newbies in ascalon for symbolic prices.

And my /age command says over 900 hours, 4 pve complete chars (one deleted).

Does this ruin the game balance in any way? 500 plats in 900 hours hurt your game experience? Tell me how, I'm curious.


Anyway, you are not answering my question. Do you think it's fair that conditions to buy fow armor or whatever change over time? Right now I'm able to buy 2/3 of a fow armor.
4 months ago the same gold amount was enough to buy a whole fow set, with something spare left.

You are just provoking without any constructive contribution.
Answer my questions please: how farmers are supposed to ruin the game balance for casual players?
Why do they deserve a nerf in every single update?
Why everyone should adopt the same identical play style (teamplay with idiotic pugs), with no rewards at all?
It's so hard to tolerate a different game style?

And find something better to do, instead of looking my forum history

I liked the update.

I think it definitely says something that they no longer have a suggestion function on the Guild Wars web site. To paraphrase 'we read these forums, here is a list post in on of these forums...' so here I am. I am hesitant to criticize, because so much of what makes this game fun and unique is the streaming updates and constant tweaks that the devs put so much effort into, but this update really just goes way overboard.
Nerfing the fire eles AoE spells does not reek of balance to me it reeks of nerf. Making the air spells do more damage or have an even higher armor penetration rate would have been an act of balancing. Giving minions, horrors, and fiends elementary skills or in some other way raising the damage done by necros would have been balancing. Raising the damage of Wastrel's Worry, EMPATHY, or any other number of mesmer skills would have been balancing. Balancing is usually a matter of give and take but this time it was all about take. Every job has a purpose now except the fire mage. Yes there are still good skills like Mark of Rodgort (which i was using anyways) but the heavy fast damage is gone now, as far as i was concerned that was the fire mages sole function. Inspiration mages have a function, minion masters have a function, why not fire eles?
I know it was mentioned earlier since I read all 28 pages before posting, but in some respects the enemies have a rather large advantage: They can ANTICIPATE AoE attacks in some instances, They know the exact boundaries of all AoE spells ie Maelstrom (invisible after initial crystal fall), Firestorm (before it falls), Meteor Shower (the easiest to see), etc, Their "advanced" AI eats up movement prediction processing to the point that they teleport.

Example: Knowing how severly the AoE spells were nerfed we actually physically surrounded the mursaat monk boss in the Ring of Fire Mission, it frickin' teleported back inside the compound in between the two mursaat towers.

There were many more things out there that NEEDED to be fixed that weren't addressed at all:
-Monk henches trying to be front line fighters.
-When I call a target to the henches if an enemy gets in between them and the intended target they just stand there.
-When I call a target after i have been killed the henches will ignore it and attack whatever is closest to them.
-Henches raise me when I will just be killed again in seconds both stacking DP and using up their res signet.
-There is no way currently for a guild to play against itself to work out strategy, and unique builds so they are forced to loose rank to gain experience with 8-man PvP. The spectator mode might be nice if it is ever implemented but there is no substitute for first hand experience.
-Invisible walls, obstacles, and such along with certain bridges most notoriously the one next to the skill vendor in Droknar's Forge that I get stuck on or repositioned by every time.
-Gold Salvage Items that do not give Superior Runes, Purple that do not give Major Runes, Gold and Purple Items that make no sense (bows w/smite requirement, swords w/ energy storage % chance for recharge...) *I killed stuff for an hour to get enough money drops to go back to town to get a key to get something no one will want to buy and the trader will give me less money back than i spent on the key* GOOD TIMES!
-Collectors w/armor rated lower than the town nearest to it.
-Drop rates for collectors items where the enemies that drop them are scarce to begin with... BLEACHED SHELLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Not having the enemies try to take out Visier Kilbrohn which makes it possible for the Sanctum Kay Mission to be run.
-Collectors in highly inappropriate areas ie the under-rated collector outside of Sanctum Kay right next to the over-rated crafter.
-Quests not following logical sequence ie Royal Papers->The Lost Princess
and so on...

Instead you work on lowering the farming ability of a select few. Tell me again how this enhances game play?

No I won't be quitting over this, but I'll definitely be taking lots of time off. Bottom line is for the money there is nothing better out there since MORPGs destroyed the market for solo games, and I really don't want to pay for a game I've already bought.

Don't know how i overlooked this one:
-No infused henches in Copperhammer Mines (which leads into Frozen Forest), and the first two Southern Shiverpeaks missions all of which have Mursaat in the area.

This probably isn't the thread to address them in then, as this is mainly feedback for the update. General rant threads go... wait, there isn't a general rant forum. You can, however, make constructive suggestions in Sardelac Sanitarium.
I'd love to see or have any of those items.

to answer your question they are still in the adjusting tuning stage and may still be doing that after chapter 2 comes out.

for an example of changing values consider faction for pvp rewards when it first came out.

after a while the value of faction got a boost negating a lot of work done before the boost.

after the 5x faction event they evaluated the data and put 5 times faction value back in as permanent making all the previous time spent worth only 20% of what it is worth now.

i predict things will shake out but i will not be over night or even really soon.

maybe by chapter 2 (or not)

He probably makes the best point in this thread. There are several things about this game that are really hurting gameplay, but instead of working on them, they bring out contraversial updates.

Overall, I am glad that my Mesmer has a job again, but I am still pissed that when we go clear the Forge in the Fissure, I hit those walls every time........ Updates are great, but I think A.Net does need to make some fixes to non-debateable problems that the game has before it makes any changes to the way the game plays.

Yes, updates to those would be great, but bringing up all those problems here is more or less hijacking the thread. All that really needs to be said is that Anet could focus on more pressing matters than AoE. Suggestions for other problems belong in the suggestion forum, not in the discussion forum.

And I still want a bow with Smiting requirement, as I know a Mo/R that could totally own with one of those. She'd get a kick out of it.

Mostly the update sucked... It's ok that the henchies move away from aoe spells and are a little smarter, but the enemy monsters running away from your aoe spells just wastes time then what's the point of firestorm or meteor storm in PVE then. (I didn't bother to read through the +20 pages)

People are still complaining about this? What's worse, a few people have compared it to the terrible, idiotic update to Star Wars Galaxies.

Obviously you've never played the demo of the Star Wars Galaxies game: They turned a great MMORPG into an Online Button Masher.

The Guild Wars Dev Team just made the monsters smarter. Hey, guys, what happens if someone casts Meteor Shower on you? Do you just stand in it and say "Oh well, fair is fair!"

The update released us from the old, mundane system of TNH (Tank, Nuker Healer)

It's just making the game less of a farmer's sweatshop and more a strategy game than ever before.

There will always be people in this game complaining becuase they can't get asmuch UBER LEETZ GOLDZORZ (which has no real use other than making yourself feel like you're better than other people) as they used to; we've seen it time and time again.

Thanks, Dev Team, for fixing the Ai.

Heh... guess if a bunch of monster is attacking your monks then do AOE... but now I'd rather used cheaper aoe skills (for dispersing monsters) because meteor storm would not have full effect. (lava font?)

Oh and to the guy who talked about the AI... It's unreal how monsters interrupt my spells *Exactly* the quarter second I cast them. (unreal reflexes) Oh I didn't like how they nerfed ether renewal (no more unlimited energy for me )

Real people do that too. If you're fighting a ranger spike group and the enemy is targeting you or sees the little thing over your head, don't expect that Res Signet you're using to get over 15% done before it gets interrupted :P

Atleast the AI does it when you first start, instead of wasting all that casting time.

since when? still works just fine for me. now it just barely fills your bar instead of giving you 50 more energy than you really needed.

the AI update is great glad they changed it. with change you must change too if you want to continue to play. pve should be a stepping stone to pvp instead of an entirely different system.

happy for the change. admit the AI still needs tweaks but that's ok at least i know they are on it. just fix my pet's AI damn it.

You know, from A.net's point of view, the persistent "threats" about boycotting the game because of the nerfing to AI exploits going on may be all good.

A bunch of the biggest complainers are the hardcore farmers who like that mindless button-mashing-for-gold "gameplay". If they leave, that's great. That means that A.net's servers will suffer from less bandwidth now that they've left, so A.net will be saving costs. They're not "losing money" from doing this because they've already gotten all the revenue they need from the players' inital purchases of the game. Nobody's paying monthly fees here. (Moreover, the inflation rate might be temporarily decreased as the active money supply drops).

These same players will not buy Chapter 2 of the expansion because they're frustrated with this? This defies some logic too. These farmers take pride in having a lot more gold than the average player (75% of all accounts have less than 20k gold) and these farmers have already invested a large number of hours to amass a gigantic amount of gold in their storage. They'll probably wind up coming back to buy Chapter 2 when it comes out to spend this gold and gloat in their superiority too.

It might just be win-win for the developers, so the raving efforts to revert the effects of the patch may be made in vain.

Ive had no problems with the patch

Ive never been one to mindlessly farm the same areas over and over using the same strategies over and over and over... just so I can find 1 item I can sell for insane amounts of gold(just so I can buy these things like FoW armor that you are actually supposed to work to get), cause I find that concept boring

all the items I get are through random playing of the game, I havent found anything too great... but hey I dont care I still have fun with the game going through helping people out in earlier areas, heck Ive even given away some decent items to new people just to make their travel through the game a little easier

I have an ele and have never used him to be "super elite uber-nuker" with the same skills as every single other ele in the game(I dont even have Meteor Shower bought), I have always been playing around with different combos of skills... hey the other skills are there so why not use them?

way I see it this patch keeps people from wanting to have the same parties and actually try to form some kind of strategy and actually play the damn game, yea sure you may find a new strategy and say "well why did they even bother putting this patch in when we found a new way of dealing with it", and that is because now you have to actually work to make make your money and Im sure if people find another build to abuse just so they can try to make insane amounts of money then that will get nerfed too

this game is supposed to be for everybody, but yet a casual player like me cant even get items he wants because of people who go out and farm constantly and get these good items and charge an arm and a leg for them?

This is not true. As it's been shown in interviews with the developers, Anet works around the idea that everyone has a place in Guild Wars. Be this PvE farmers, traders, PvPers, GvGers, etc.

However, their main job is to make farming harde. Whether it is farming for gold (AI improvement) or farming for fame (Skill's balancing). So that those who can achieve the goodies can really own something worthy.

Imagine everyone would have a perfect 15%>50% sundering fellblade of fortitude or rank9 (just to say a number).... the game would be worthless.

By the way, for those out ther who haven't noticed. This game is about farming. People farm fame, gold, items, faction. That's what it's all about.

Yes, the world of Tyria is in bad shape. But at least we're in the right way.

Prot bond has never been a PvP skill...

A few things here. Improved AoE is not an idiotic thing. One of the things that high-end PvErs complained a lot about was that our beloved NPC's Alesia and Lina would stand below that deadly AoE. And now fixed it because we asked for it! And btw, casual players don't specialize in AoE, only farmers do.

Are you really trying to understand?

My impression with the update: They lowered the intelligence of the henchmen to that of an average GW-noob (80% of all players).
While I never had any trouble to hench the Orozar quest, it's become a lot harder. I don't mind quests getting harder, but one quality in hench used to be, that they follow targets, which they don't do anymore. At least not as fast as they used to be.

aNet, if you want to make quests harder, don't make hench dumber!

And something I'd really like to see fixed is, that hench rez more intelligent.
Example: henching DefendDroknar.
I got into trouble and started running. Alesia bought the farm, but me and the rest of the hench got to safety.
Well almost, while attacking, I killed myself while using AuraOfTheLich.
The rest of the hench were able to kill the rest of the mobs.
Bottom line: I am dead, Alesia is dead.
Guess, what Lina was doing?
Running to me.
2nd toughts
Running to Alesia
2nd toughts
Running to me
2nd toughts
...

It's so annoying that hench monks will always try to rez fellow monks before they rez others, esp. when the fellow monk is behind enemy lines.

And what about that bonus-mission were you are not supposed to attack the guardians while awakening the druids with seeds?

A simple KOTOR-like strategy for hench would do it.

I beg to differ. AoE makes up for incompetence on the part of the parties formed as such. Noobs rushing into aggro, attacking the boss without taking out underlings, well of suffering or some other AoE used in a part of the field no one is fighting in, ad nauseum.
With AoE I can 70% of the time save my patchwork party's sorry ass without them even noticing.
I used to farm before the chest update, and yes wierd combo weapons may work for some, but standing around in one of the hub cities trying to hock them for hours because they are only worthwhile to one specific buyer is terribly lame IMO. The drops were never spectacular to begin with but I had fun with it, and the way I did it was the way I think they intended it to be done (sorta kinda). Human players I have seen generally follow directions much worse than henches, but I don't really solo per se. I usually have a party full of henches. With the exception of the deeper areas of the Southern Maguuma Jungle areas and most of Lornar's Pass I have mapped the game with my ele, I actually went and explored everything. With my ele i have done every quest, I even went back and did the two that the avatar of Dwayna gives out once I knew they existed. Anyhow once done with damn near everything what then? I'd like to learn to PvP but I don't want to lower my guild rank in the process. Long term goals? I honestly don't like how fissure armor looks on ele, necro, and war (3/4 of my characters). Is it really so wrong to find a place where you like to kill stuff and do it well? Is alienating fan base when the ring of fire island missions are usually empty anyways a good thing? I'm sure the 5 necros standing around shouting LFP might think otherwise.
Yes bringing up the other things wrong with the game may have been a bit off topic, but, as I stated, if they once had a suggestion box in their own website, it has since been removed. They have a list of fansite forums that they supposedly read. This one was near the top of the list.

My main problem is the bugs that came with this update that still havnt been fixed, ill probably die of old age before they fix the dang thing.

True, especially when the new update combines some old issues. For example, sometimes when my ranger shoots an Ignited Arrow to a group of monsters (5 or more), they ‘teleport’ and run all over the place, and it is very hard to lock on any specific target, because some of them have a ‘phantom’ image, when I click on them, they are ‘not there’, it is quite frustrated sometimes.

Hate the update? Don't lose any sleep over it. Love the update as it is? Too bad, because it's going to change again, and again, and again. Better hang on and enjoy the ride, because this beta baby is a work in progress.

This was a good update... at least in principle. I mean how can someone whine about fighting more intelligent foes? I sure won't. The problem here is that you don't get the feeling that monsters are truly more clever! I'm sure Anet will improve this in the coming weeks...

I liked the way it was but could deal with the way it is now if the AOE spells were not nerfed. my main character was an ele but they are not very useful without AOE, spiking is not as effective and i have a hard time finding a party. please change the update

You all complain now....just wait till they update so all mods carry rez signets. I mean they did said they want mobs to be smarter.

yay put rez sigs on every mob, Make the ai monks smarter. Make the ai mesmers interupt 1 sec casts. Make the necro's only go after warriors or rangers. Make the ele's coordinate spikes. Make the warriors switch to axe and all use eviscerate. Yea that would be great YESYESYESYESYES!!!

Okay i can understand some of the aoe to be "RUN LIKE HELL". the only thing that should be standing still when it begins to rain meteors on your head is the afk players. But others i cant understand. How do the mobs understand that the pain they suddenly begin to feel is linked to teh warrior hackign away at theyre buddy? and why do they think its smart to return to the fight wounded?

The ppl you should be cross with is the f****ing botters that this targets if no one used bots this update wouldnt have happend and we will all still be happy unfortuanly all theve done is made bots slower and doing it normally very very annoying and hard

Here's the deal.

We can an realize that now certain classes are useless, especially elementists, but I'm sure you've noticed that necromancers are now the bread and butter of the game. Do you think people playing necromancers were happy when they had nothing on a solo monk? Of course not. But now I have no problem soloing with my necro. Sure I can't solo the UW, but that instance should NEVER be able to be soloed. In fact, I think soloing is rather cheap and twinkish. The game is entirely based around team combat and that's what Anet is trying to accomplish. They aren't perfect. It's going to take some time, and I'm sure the next chapter of the game coming 1st quarter will fix a lot of the issues people are complaining about.

PS- People who CAN'T compromise with patches like this should NOT be playing MMORPGS. These types of games are fun because they make you actually think about strategy for more than 5 minutes. Me and two of my friends sat down and had a good time for hours trying to come up with new sweet builds after the patch....Nuff said...

too bad they can't adapt the AI of the enemies to the intelligence of team members who are currently in your party... anyone else ever end-up in a bad enough party in Sorrow's Furnace to make them consider givin' it all up and joining up with the Summit? If only...

I would sure hope it's been said before, but why does Orion still have Fire Storm in his skill bar? Rodgort's Invocation or Incendiary Bonds would be far superior.

Making foes more difficult is ok to a degree (as entropy so eloquently pointed out) but AI intelligence should have been increased across the board. Perfect Dark, an N64 game gave the option to play with and against AI in their multiplayer section. The AI, way back then, was far superior to Anet's Hench. Sure, GW is more complex, blah blah blah, but Perfect Dark is, what, FOUR years old? Has AI intelligence failed to advance in all that time?

The only advantage taking Hench has over human players is the ability to focus fire. Aarroe makes this point as well.

Ivoryspite makes a few good points mixed with ignorance. Sure, being able to solo the UW is a bit of an ego boost, but I agree it is a bit ridiculous. UW and FoW are supposed to be the two toughest places in the PvE game. They really shouldn't be solo'ed. (Note: Then there is the arguement that if someone can actually accomplish this, should Anet reward them with the nerf bat? But that's another topic.) Ivoryspite, elementalists are still very powerful. As you and your friend did, I spent a few hours rebuilding my UW/FoW build for my guild. I had JUST finished the latest one when Anet made the change...so yes, I was very frustrated. But I went back to the drawing board. Rodgort's Invocation, Incendiary Bonds, and Fireball are all great AoE instance fire skills (this is for the AoE fire eles who feel useless). Also, there's a nifty spell called Fevered Dreams {E} (mesmer) and another non-elite called Epidemic. Fevered Dreams spreads conditions to all nearby foes. Mark of Rodgort can keep a foe burning if you apply constant fire dmg (ie. warrior with fire upgrade). Add bleeding and deep wound to the foe and suddenly all nearby foes are suffering max health degen and have deep wound. I would argue that instead of making certain classes useless, that this update has increased the need to build a solid, rounded team.

Yoink, LOL, if only we could! But I suppose that's why we have PvP Still...fighting with the Summit to foil the fools. Priceless!

you are comparing the moronic AI needed to look good in a CONSOLE FPS with GW?

go back to perfect dark and enjoy the superior AI

this is a pure basic anti-farm patch. all the make-up with "improved ia" and stuff don't work with me.

it is both an anti botting patch and the answer to many posts to improve the moronic AI of the monsters.

also when they fix the AI so the monsters chase you around a corner instead of trying to shoot through a rock/wall cliff will start another round of crying that THIS IS ANTI FARMER bs

somehow some farmers equal anything that balances the game or levels out their farming hot spot as anti farming instead of anti botters who exploit that area 24/7/365/twice on sundays

To answer Ashika, yeah, Orion was still using firestorm the last I looked, which is why he is off my list until A-net reworks his build. My own nuker is running great after a few adjustments.

Of course my favorite it the Yo-Yo attack. I use ignite arrow, they all scatter, sice ignite arrow is no longer in the area, they come. I shoot them again, they run again, and while they are running back and forth,I pick them off one at a time. They're all dead before anyone has the brains to stay and duke it out.

The GWars team has fallen prey to 'The Everquest Syndrome'. This is when a group of developers become obsessed with implementing changes designed to disrupt the playstyle of the people who play their game, instead of coding changes that improve the game's playability. It took the EQ team years before they finally were able to admit that they'd alienated a huge percentage of their playerbase with this silliness, the question is, how long will it take the GWars team to stop hitting their players over the head and asking them to like it?

Yes, there are people who like this kind of company attitude. But if you read their posts closely, you'll discover that what they like is watching other players get screwed by these changes. Their joy disappears when their turn rolls around. And for those riding a high horse about the AoE nerf, your time -will- come around, look at the history of the last few months of patches if you don't believe me. Then see how happy you are.

I haven't been around for about 2 months or so, was waiting for the promised better drops to be implemented. Surprise, surprise, not a word about this on any of the patches, just more nerfs. Apparently the GWars teams just doesn't have any time to devote to something the players want, too busy figuring out which spells/skills/class to gimp next I guess. Well, you got me, my AoE-based elementalist is now useless. Tell me, just what do the programmers who spent their time writing and balancing the AoE spells think about you wasting all their time and effort? That's right, you didn't just hurt your playerbase, you did a number on your own team as well. Bravo.

Well, I'll do more than vote in a poll, I'll vote with my wallet: I'll never buy another game from this company until/unless it realizes that making the customer happy is job #1. I'm not going to hold my breath...

What is your evidence for that? The recent changes made MAKE SENSE. It is not realistic for henchmen or monsters to stay under a cascade of molten lava or smoke a joint while meteors rain down on them. After the modification, they stick around for a while but leg-it when things get a little dicey.

ArenaNet are trying to make GW as good as possible. Often when smoothing a rough edge off, something else gets slightly damaged. However I do not see the AoE-farming technique to be an integral part of the GW community. Those who found it to be the only reason to stick around should leave - indeed, I'll help you pack. The majority of us will not shed a single tear, as we are more interested in using the wide variety of skills available to create different experiences, rather than just defaulting to one set-up and expecting to have the world at our feet just because of that.

It's worth noting that the majority of people that are complaining are farmers. There is nothing wrong with farming, but it is a merely secondary aspect of the game. If that's all one thinks there is to GW, then IMHO the community could do without you.