The majority of the community sucks (or does it?)

[Reverend Dr]

I'm not sure what your point you are trying to make. Starting PvP regardless of whether or not you have done any PvE is just flat out shitty. This was what lost a whole market of gamers at release and this is what is holding much of any new blood from entering into PvP.

Really I haven't heard many people wanting PvE and PvP more intermingled. For years all I could hear were people begging for a pure PvE/PvP split. So again, I am not sure what kind of point you are trying to make.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

To the op - this is why the community sucks - they are children.

And if they see too many people having the titles they have, they cry and whine.

Any intelligent person knows that in a non changing world like guild wars more and more people will attain those titles.

The balance people talk in here is nothing more than "Too many people are at the high end. We cannot have that because I dona 't feel special anymore".

/slap Bad!

Reread this please:

Originally Posted by Me from earlier

Before I'm done, I want you to go through my posts and count the number of times I stated "I don't care about the rewards".

Got it? Good, now you can stop saying stupid crap like this:

Thank you.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

Now, 2 years later, the guildwarsguru community decides all the evils of gw is cry of pain, even though cry of pain exists in the exact same state for 2 years. It actually existed before ursan.

The large and general consensus here is that PvE skills have always been harmful to the game. It's not often discussed here because everything that's been said has been said to death. Then someone like you comes along.

We're not trying to looking for something new to rally against. It's just that what's been said has been said, and ANet doesn't want to do anything about it. It's quite upsetting.

Also: How come you've ignored DreamWind and I's posts from earlier that were in direct response to yours?

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

The large and general consensus here is that PvE skills have always been harmful to the game. It's not often discussed here because everything that's been said has been said to death. Then someone like you comes along.

I think PvE-only skills are bad to the game too, not as much because of their effects, but because they require no attribute allocation and some not even require a specific profession. I just disagree, especially by the reasons given in this thread, that removing them will fix anything. I actually believe that just removing them will make the game worse, if only for the fact that making the game harder (and I don't see harder as a synonym of skillful) will cause frustration to some type of players, making them leave and giving a reputation of a desert to the game.

Additionally, you and others, grossly exaggerates the power of PvE-only skills, calling them auto-wins, when not all of them are or not even some of them are so, in all circumstances, and clearly 3 PvE-only sills won't make the game a auto-win for players that play alone, neither will 6 of the said PvE-only skills for players that play in duos.

24 or 36 of those, supported by a conset, on the other hand, will certainly change the game.

In another thread, regarding the balancing of Cry of Pain and shadow form, TAM alliance (I believe) showed that consets are actually the main power behind the unbelievable times full guild teams can get these days in elite areas in HM, by doing the deep hm in like 26 minutes (if I'm not mistaken) without Shadow form or obsidian flesh tank and not using any PvE-only skills at all.

I think, as I said multiple times in this thread, what they should have done was split the skills in PvE from the PvP because the stats in both games are quite different.

I also dislike monster only skills and environmental skills - those are just retarded ways of making monsters artificially harder.

We're not trying to looking for something new to rally against. It's just that what's been said has been said, and ANet doesn't want to do anything about it. It's quite upsetting.

I already said that either GW need a big revamp or it needs a new start. A big revamp is economically unattractive because GW way of making money, stand alone expansions, in a game like this, where the levels are capped, only adds more and more of the same content (most RPG add more and more of the same content too, but at least it gives you the sense you are progressing and not "ok lets do the noob missions of the new campaign").

If you were a designer from Guild Wars, what would you introduce for a new expansion?
Remember that you need to make money for more content, for servers and PvP tournaments.

It is my opinion, even if they fixed most of the design problems, they couldn't turn the game in to a profitable 6 months expansion release, without removing level cap and such.

There is only so much you can do to make the mobs stronger - C'mon, Mallyx is ridiculous! No conditions, no hexes, no enchantments... Retarded way of making a monster more challenging, if you ask me, much more related to figure a solution than any skill by the part of the player.

By skill, in GW, I consider the ability of a player to manage his resources (health, adrenaline, energy, etc), the ability to recognize what is the biggest threat to your team strategy (if you use a physical team, skills that shut physical characters down are a big threat, for example) and the enemy vulnerabilities and how to surpass their defenses.

The more the AI play and react different to players, the more those players will exploit inherent disadvantages of the AI programming over game mechanics, since the AI doesn't obey those mechanics.

Maybe, that single fact, that AI doesn't obey the game mechanics, is the main factor players don't have to learn them to beat the AI.

The other solution Anet have is completely disregard PvE, and make a PvP only game.

Instead of adding PvE campaigns for the players unlock stuff for PvP, they can instead create several types of PvP that will introduce the new players to the game.

I for example suggested in this thread, Random GvG, where players would be given a random build and a random team. Those teams would follow a pre-built template: 2 Monks, 1 or 2 warriors, 1 mesmer and so on, to give the team coherence instead of what you get in RA . I would select random GvG and I would be placed, for example, as the monk, with all items and build already given to me.

The question is if that kind of game would be profitable.

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

/slap Bad!

Reread this please:

First, I'm not talking just to you.

Second, you didn't answer my question, about if the only way for you to accept challenge is being rewarded for it afterward.

That seemed not a stupid question, but a pertinent one, since you say that not using PvE-only skills and consumables by your own will isn't a valid way to increase challenge, but that if Anet removes the PvE-only skills and consumables, the game will be challenging once again.

Also: How come you've ignored DreamWind and I's posts from earlier that were in direct response to yours?

I believe these forums are a place of freedom of speech (freedom encompasses rules too).

As so, I can disregard whoever I feel like (and in a thread like this, that once you return to it you have like 2-3 pages of huge posts it's quite easy to do so unintentionally or even deliberately to avoid turning this thread in a dialogue) , the same way you can disregard my post or my points, as you and Dreamwind like to do to my points when they don't please you.

More, I'm not going to discuss game design with someone that compares the use of a nuclear device on a human population with killing a monster, to give me a lecture on moral standards. Those individuals are so set on their beliefs, that I better not waste my time arguing with them.

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

I answered your question in post #612.

You forgetting about the accumulative side effect of always analyzing all your impulses. Humans have quite an ingrained ability for violence and stupidity, so while games could indeed create a stimulus for thinking your impulses, games are also a nice place to get rid of residual violence and stupidity accumulated during day life. Turning games into places where you need to carefully consider all the consequences of their actions, creating an additional place where those violent and stupid impulses are created and stored, might not be a wise solutions.

It might be better having a person with god mode and 10 million damage attacks kill all the mobs of GW and then some more, draining all those violent impulses to controllable levels, than risking the collapse of a fellow human being impulse control system while he is in a public place surrounded by other human beings, after spending a night consider the most efficient way to chop down a huge purple gorilla to pieces.


One of these days I will have to hear your opinion about the influence of sexual urges and impulses regarding the obsession of acquiring quite ugly items, but viewed by the general populace as desirable, turning everyone in the same indistinguishable entities and if people like to express their individuality or are just slaves of pack mentality.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

I think PvE-only skills are bad to the game too, not as much because of their effects, but because they require no attribute allocation and some not even require a specific profession. I just disagree, especially by the reasons given in this thread, that removing them will fix anything. I actually believe that just removing them will make the game worse, if only for the fact that making the game harder (and I don't see harder as a synonym of skillful) will cause frustration to some type of players, making them leave and giving a reputation of a desert to the game.

I agree that outright removing them would indeed be bad for the game. Balancing them wouldn't.

The PvE skills simply need to be put on a level that places them more in line with the rest of the skills. Sure there are still plenty of skills in PvE that don't see much use, but you fix what's breaking the game first, not later.

Consets are a different beast altogether, and will require a different form of fixing.

I'd understand more if all of these changes were all just to "make more monies", but there are a few things that many seem to forget:
1. Even though these days it's becoming more and more accessible, WoW garnered such a *huge* and active playerbase while only a few got to get even a glimpse of the best content.
2. Pissing off those who know a lot about the game is a very risky decision, one that ANet's found fit to follow with in Guild Wars.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

That seemed not a stupid question, but a pertinent one, since you say that not using PvE-only skills and consumables by your own will isn't a valid way to increase challenge, but that if Anet removes the PvE-only skills and consumables, the game will be challenging once again.

I'll copy it from an earlier post:

Originally Posted by Bryant

That's what a good challenge is: Having to give it your best and while *using* the best you can find.

When you have to shelve some of those things, what using the best erases from the challenge, when you have to not do it to your best abilities, it just proves what you're doing is not difficult. Players don't like having to bring challenge upon themselves.

You wouldn't have to have asked that if you weren't ignoring me.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

I agree that outright removing them would indeed be bad for the game. Balancing them wouldn't.

The PvE skills simply need to be put on a level that places them more in line with the rest of the skills. Sure there are still plenty of skills in PvE that don't see much use, but you fix what's breaking the game first, not later.

Consets are a different beast altogether, and will require a different form of fixing.

This is a much more interesting base for understanding than "remove all the PvE-only skills and all the consumables approach".

I will still disagree if the only or main reason is to improve player skill. If it is for the reason of allowing other skills to be comparable, then I will agree. But I would like to see the skills that were changed due to PvP reasons reverted at the same time.

I'd understand more if all of these changes were all just to "make more monies", but there are a few things that many seem to forget:
1. Even though these days it's becoming more and more accessible, WoW garnered such a *huge* and active playerbase while only a few got to get even a glimpse of the best content.
2. Pissing off those who know a lot about the game is a very risky decision, one that ANet's found fit to follow with in Guild Wars.

WoW is so successful because you can find in the box the Blizzard logo.
And while you can find threads like these and even much less polite towards Blizzard than those you find in here towards Anet, Blizzard is a name that gives till this day guarantee of return in fun for the money you invest.

If WoW was released by someone else, first it wouldn't be so good, second it wouldn't be able to attract such a larger player base that wouldn't even consider a MMORPG in other circumstances.

I'll copy it from an earlier post:
You wouldn't have to have asked that if you weren't ignoring me.

Different way of facing it - I'm more for the "if i can do it while blinded and manacled I will do it in any circumstance" type of person.

And against static AI sooner or later the challenge just disappear, unless they keep making your skills less effective or buffing the AI. Against a fellow human, both players will learn as they play, sometimes one will be the better one, either because he is just better or because he learns faster, sometime the other will be better, til they both reach their maximum possible potential. Then, there is always tricks (legal ones) and cunning.

Originally Posted by Reverend Dr

I'm not sure what your point you are trying to make. Starting PvP regardless of whether or not you have done any PvE is just flat out shitty. This was what lost a whole market of gamers at release and this is what is holding much of any new blood from entering into PvP.

I agree. I could have been interested in PvP (mostly when I started, but I had to play PvE and there were no heroes at the time), and I sometimes do arenas and stuff mostly while waiting for GF to show up. But there is no way I'm going to get involved in GvG - takes too much time either to start a GvG team from scratch or to find one accepting new players and willing to train them... and then the schedules for organized team play.

But on the other hand there could exist other intermediate steps between arenas/HA and fully organized GvG.

Really I haven't heard many people wanting PvE and PvP more intermingled. For years all I could hear were people begging for a pure PvE/PvP split. So again, I am not sure what kind of point you are trying to make.

Some of the arguments presented in this thread and in others to remove PvE-only skills and consumables, is based on the fact that people don't move from PvE to PvP because they don't learn enough in PvE due to said PvE-skills and consumables.

I think that people really wanting to do PvP either have moved to it or are prevented by the huge commitment (in time) required to move from arenas to GvG.

I guess there is HA, but its mostly played with FOTM builds.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

This is a much more interesting base for understanding than "remove all the PvE-only skills and all the consumables approach".

I will still disagree if the only or main reason is to improve player skill. If it is for the reason of allowing other skills to be comparable, then I will agree. But I would like to see the skills that were changed due to PvP reasons reverted at the same time.

Player skill still needs to be paid attention to. Most developers would much rather prefer *not* to have a completely mindless playerbase.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

WoW is so successful because you can find in the box the Blizzard logo.
And while you can find threads like these and even much less polite towards Blizzard than those you find in here towards Anet, Blizzard is a name that gives till this day guarantee of return in fun for the money you invest.

I wouldn't say that to those at 80.

I stated, either here or in another thread, that there has constantly been an influx of problems at endgame, and it's always pissing off quite a chunk of the minority of players.

We won't see much affect on the game as a whole, though, since it's those just wanting to jump in, play, and see the world that are going to bring the most bucks (i.e. the casuals).

Originally Posted by Improvavel

Different way of facing it - I'm more for the "if i can do it while blinded and manacled I will do it in any circumstance" type of person.

And against static AI sooner or later the challenge just disappear, unless they keep making your skills less effective or buffing the AI. Against a fellow human, both players will learn as they play, sometimes one will be the better one, either because he is just better or because he learns faster, sometime the other will be better, til they both reach their maximum possible potential. Then, there is always tricks (legal ones) and cunning.

Precisely...which is why you don't make it easier.

Challenge when going against an AI never lasts very long, and that's why you have to maintain it as much as possible - hence why what ANet has done has been largely harmful.

If ANet wanted to better benefit those who wanted to play through the content, the best way they could've done that was through implementing an easier difficulty.

Difficulty is a very interesting thing, and for many players it's not something that can just be "made up". It's not so simple as just making it yourself. That's why developers introduce difficulty settings, for both extremes: ones for people who find the game too hard, ones for people who find the game too easy. People can't make their game "harder" anymore than people can make their game "easier": while it is indeed to make tasks more "challenging", it's not in the same degree that so many other players want to experience it.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Player skill still needs to be paid attention to. Most developers would much rather prefer *not* to have a completely mindless playerbase.

I reckon they prefer to have a large player base, mindless or otherwise.

But that is beside the point. Skill versus AI is complicated since AI is predictable and do not obey completely to game mechanics.

Do you consider good body blocking skill? Because it can be the difference between a wipe and a wash, but in the end it is just stupid AI path finding, unable to sidestep.

I wouldn't say that to those at 80.

I stated, either here or in another thread, that there has constantly been an influx of problems at endgame, and it's always pissing off quite a chunk of the minority of players.

We won't see much affect on the game as a whole, though, since it's those just wanting to jump in, play, and see the world that are going to bring the most bucks (i.e. the casuals).

People will never be happy. Starcraft and Warcraft III are probable considered the most balanced RTS in the market. If you look at their forums you would believe otherwise.

Precisely...which is why you don't make it easier.

Challenge when going against an AI never lasts very long, and that's why you have to maintain it as much as possible - hence why what ANet has done has been largely harmful.

But are you saying that because it isn't challenging for you anymore or because it was never challenging?

You never thought/think HM was harder than NM, never took/don't take additional precautions in HM compared to NM?

Or it is just the case it isn't challenging anymore to you because the AI reached the its limits versus you, and you require Ultra HM?

And then in a given set of time you require Super Ultra HM?

And so on so forth till the AI is just unbeatable by you?

And looking back you will see it is the same stupid AI but attacking 500 times faster, dealing 10 million damage per attack, taking 0 damage from your attacks, while having 100000 health?

Isn't nerfing (or balancing them if you prefer) the skills pretty much the same as adding another difficulty level?

Isn't what PvP is all about? Giving you an everlasting challenge by pairing you against other people that don't need to be buffed to beat you?

Isn't that why PvP games have a lot more replaying value?

[Master Fuhon]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

You forgetting about the accumulative side effect of always analyzing all your impulses. Humans have quite an ingrained ability for violence and stupidity, so while games could indeed create a stimulus for thinking your impulses...

Ignorance we have. Violence we learn, even stumble upon accidentally, because we do kill living things to eat. In regards to easy, monotonous activity, the particular responses to impulse that can be checked in game are: threat of competition, failure, power over others, etc. I certainly take a break from the game world whenever I dislike my response to one of those. But you can check your responses to impulse within any relationship involving competition and power, and you can understand reactions to failure at any time also.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

games are also a nice place to get rid of residual violence and stupidity accumulated during day life. Turning games into places where you need to carefully consider all the consequences of their actions, creating an additional place where those violent and stupid impulses are created and stored, might not be a wise solutions.

Again, this is a multiplayer game. Saying people can activate either violent, perverted, or other types of urges safely in this environment wouldn't be a good idea. Environments where people don't have control over themselves and act poorly upon those urges are isolated on purpose (jails, mental hospitals).

Originally Posted by Improvavel

It might be better having a person with god mode and 10 million damage attacks kill all the mobs of GW and then some more, draining all those violent impulses to controllable levels, than risking the collapse of a fellow human being impulse control system while he is in a public place surrounded by other human beings, after spending a night consider the most efficient way to chop down a huge purple gorilla to pieces.

The hydraulic theory of emotion has already been proven false. People do not store things up like a bottle and then release them to prevent a future blow-up. The act of replaying an emotion strengthens a brain circuit that makes a person more likely to follow that neural pathway in the future. Releasing your anger makes you an angrier person. The proper way to regulate is to take what triggers the anger (anger is the response) and learn a different response in place of it, and to try not to activate the poor response.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

One of these days I will have to hear your opinion about the influence of sexual urges and impulses regarding the obsession of acquiring quite ugly items,

I'm assuming you are refering to Freud's theories of people acting on sexual impulses. He's very likely wrong about that; however no one has truly gone to the extent of trying to understand human motivations to be able to thoroughly refute his theory. He tried to do too much for his time, and he's currently very harmful because his ideas went so mainstream before they were properly analyzed. His celebrity from understanding the unconcious helped to spread all his ideas, but not all of them have the same factual value. No one source can be perfect on everything; "it take a village to raise a child" because the child needs to learn from many people to turn out right.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

but viewed by the general populace as desirable, turning everyone in the same indistinguishable entities and if people like to express their individuality or are just slaves of pack mentality.

I think it was Gigashadow who came across this: people need to have something rare and special, and it's a unique identity that they need. I can't explain things like polygamy because I don't know them well enough, but a person usually accepts being part of the pack when they give up hope on being unique. When the game imposes increasing uniformity (same armor, same titles, same weapons), the need for identity is infringed upon and it comes out in other ways. However, after a certain point it's just too much infringement on that need and so the people will leave.

I have greater questions about the human desire to masquerade under a false identity. To me it's either enjoyment of the illusion of identity or the illusion of power. But it's not truly an illusion in my mind; it seems like the power and the identity are actually competed for, and the person who doesn't have the capability to earn them wins through stealing. It's a pretty powerful crisis to have someone else pretending to be you, hence the bad players need to seek out their own unique identities with what they are good at instead of seeking to 'steal' from the good players.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

Again, this is a multiplayer game. Saying people can activate either violent, perverted, or other types of urges safely in this environment wouldn't be a good idea. Environments where people don't have control over themselves and act poorly upon those urges are isolated on purpose (jails, mental hospitals).

You don't have to control yourself when facing non-existing entities.

The hydraulic theory of emotion has already been proven false. People do not store things up like a bottle and then release them to prevent a future blow-up. The act of replaying an emotion strengthens a brain circuit that makes a person more likely to follow that neural pathway in the future. Releasing your anger makes you an angrier person. The proper way to regulate is to take what triggers the anger (anger is the response) and learn a different response in place of it, and to try not to activate the poor response.

Regardless of people being bottles or not, and the theory being wrong or not, we are constantly faced with situations where people lose control.

Never facing the capability for anger or violence and learning how you react, may not let you know what trigger that emotion in the first place and how to subdue it or use it for your own profit.

Controlled environments or virtual environments seem a much more interesting place to learn about each one dark side - and all of us have one, our brain is built like an expanding city, each layer on top of the previous one, and deep buried in it, there's a reptilian brain responsible for our most primitive emotions.

The training of a human into a soldier (and sure, some of them are sociopaths) or martial arts is based on training the person to use its emotions in a controlled way, not denying them, and that doesn't have to turn a person into a violent uncontrolled one. If the training is adequate its quite the opposite - you get a human that is capable of violence in the situation society demands and a peaceful person in all other circumstances.

I'm assuming you are refering to Freud's theories of people acting on sexual impulses. He's very likely wrong about that; however no one has truly gone to the extent of trying to understand human motivations to be able to thoroughly refute his theory. He tried to do too much for his time, and he's currently very harmful because his ideas went so mainstream before they were properly analyzed. His celebrity from understanding the unconcious helped to spread all his ideas, but not all of them have the same factual value. No one source can be perfect on everything; "it take a village to raise a child" because the child needs to learn from many people to turn out right.

Not really. I was just pulling your leg to see what you came with. Concerning people psychology, I prefer to search for answers in the past and see how could the evolution of our species benefit by a given response, by a given behavior, and which of those are side products.

Sorry for using you.

[snaek]

Originally Posted by improvavel

I will still disagree if the only or main reason is to improve player skill. If it is for the reason of allowing other skills to be comparable, then I will agree.

they go hand in hand. does a balanced game not make for a suitable learning environment, moreso than a broken game?

we want a balanced game--this will come with numerous amount of benefits.
i don't know how many times i must stress the importance of balance in this thread.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

I reckon they prefer to have a large player base, mindless or otherwise.

But that is beside the point. Skill versus AI is complicated since AI is predictable and do not obey completely to game mechanics.

Do you consider good body blocking skill? Because it can be the difference between a wipe and a wash, but in the end it is just stupid AI path finding, unable to sidestep.

You don't have to make the game easier to flock more players. Countless good games have proved that: if the game is good, it will do well, it *will* do amazingly. For a game to be more largely successful, you provide accessibility *and* difficulty for *both* ends of the playerbase.

Easy and Hard modes, Casual and Nightmare settings, these things are key to success. You don't make just an Easy game. You don't make just a Hard game. There are consequences following both paths if you solely go down to one.

Case in point? Right now. Many experienced ticked at what ANet has done, some selfish and others less so. There's nothing wrong at all with ANet wanting to cater more to casual players, but they went in the opposite way of accomplishing that.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

People will never be happy. Starcraft and Warcraft III are probable considered the most balanced RTS in the market. If you look at their forums you would believe otherwise.

It depends on why they're unhappy.

If you get a person complaining about having to adapt to a new strategy, that's a completely personal problem.

But if you get a person who lists some horrible issues that aren't subjective and *do* cause problems to a game, that's something entirely different.

It's true that not everyone's going to be happy. You just have to listen to why they're not happy. Someone being unhappy because it takes so long to get a set of Obsidian Armor isn't the same thing as someone being unhappy because the meta has been the same thing for months on end, or because one race in a strategy game is better than all the others.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

But are you saying that because it isn't challenging for you anymore or because it was never challenging?

You never thought/think HM was harder than NM, never took/don't take additional precautions in HM compared to NM?

Or it is just the case it isn't challenging anymore to you because the AI reached the its limits versus you, and you require Ultra HM?

And then in a given set of time you require Super Ultra HM?

And so on so forth till the AI is just unbeatable by you?

And looking back you will see it is the same stupid AI but attacking 500 times faster, dealing 10 million damage per attack, taking 0 damage from your attacks, while having 100000 health?

Isn't nerfing (or balancing them if you prefer) the skills pretty much the same as adding another difficulty level?

Starting at the very top of the quote: Neither of those. It's because the content in itself is no longer as challenging. Of course it wasn't easy off the start: going through earlier in my career as my character was highly enlightening. Indeed I reached that peak, but it's not me we're talking about here.

The only problem in reaching your peak of skill in a gaming career is how long it took you to do it, the shorter the more worse off. Your "peak" is decided when you're able to beat the hardest content the game can offer.

With all the new tools ANet has added, that "peak" is much more easily reached, and I consider that a huge problem.

For other players who have spent a lot of time to be successful in the game, it may come off as a slap in the face. Some are pretty upset to have spent so much time learning how to play their class only to have ANet release additions that make all of that training non-required.

I wouldn't say "just go play PvP" as a solution to the problem, either. I'd want to maintain integrity, longevity and substance to the PvE setting as much as possible. You can't just bork up PvE as much as you want and just use the phrase "go against other players for a challenge" as an excuse.

[Grj]

I edited this and reposted this, it got lost in the sea of quote wars

So some people in this thread are on a futile crusade to force players to raise their skill by nerfing those overpowered PvE skills, you do realise these players will just move onto another game or stop playing, right?

Look at most of the game, people use the tried and tested or a variation of "tank and spank" build which is in all some cases just as skill-less and mind numbing as ursan was, it just takes longer to do what you're doing.

Its hilarious how when a "elite" area get donimated by a overpowered skills/builds people come to this fourm and start the calls for nerfs yet a smite/600 can run just about any dungeon in EOTN and the community is completely fine with that?

Don't even get me started on the UW speed clear, can anyone say loot scailing for end game chests? It completely fine to farm an "elite" area end game chest in 10-20mins?

People want shadow form nerf because of the damage its doing to the game, the 55/invimonk back in it day im sure done so much more damage to the game but that was accepted? I remember seeing some of the threads asking for this build to be nerfed, people trolled and dismissed it so people just got on with it, again why do people care now?

I also remember not being able to find groups because the 55/invimonk was the "new thing" and i was told to suck it up, now why are things so different?


By the comminity allowing some these changes to take place (for ex the 55/invimonk) the community paved the way for what was to come, yeah its kinda the dev's fault for bringing this type of stuff into the game but damn people look in the mirror.

Where was you people when these builds where hitting their prime?, i guess you where too busy playing the game or abusing the hell out of these builds.

Its amazing now all these talks are happening now, finally give a dam now you've finished what you wanted to do in game ro you've got nothing better to do?


The community comes across a hyporcrite picking and chosing what they want changed when other issues just as bad go by unnoticed, its so smells of them having their own agenda.

[Rocky Raccoon]

Originally Posted by Grj

The community comes across a hypocrite picking and choosing what they want changed when other issues just as bad go by unnoticed, its so smells of them having their own agenda.

I agree. You never saw threads like this when the game was newer. Now that some people have done all there is to do(I am am not one, because I must suck at the game), the game needs to be changed to satisfy them. As much as they must love this game. they find it hard to move on to another. GW is pretty much in a holding pattern until GW2 is ready, we must accept it for what it is or find something new to play.

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

I believe these forums are a place of freedom of speech (freedom encompasses rules too).

As so, I can disregard whoever I feel like....

More, I'm not going to discuss game design with someone that compares the use of a nuclear device on a human population with killing a monster, to give me a lecture on moral standards. Those individuals are so set on their beliefs, that I better not waste my time arguing with them.

LoL...you have got to be kidding me. The Africa thing was just an example explaining how you aren't caring about what happens to other people in this game if it doesn't affect you. You don't care why other people paid for this game as long as it doesn't affect you.

Why can't you just admit to everybody here that you don't care whatsoever about the health of the game, but only the health of your game. Anybody who says a 10 billion damage skill or god mode in this game would be ok is clearly somebody we better not waste our time arguing with (although I continue to do so out of boredom).

[kostolomac]

Originally Posted by snaek

they go hand in hand. does a balanced game not make for a suitable learning environment, moreso than a broken game?

we want a balanced game--this will come with numerous amount of benefits.
i don't know how many times i must stress the importance of balance in this thread.

Can you give your definition of a balanced game?
I'll give you mine: a balanced game offers the same options/tools to all sides, their choice of tools and how they use them decides who wins. By that definition Guild Wars would be very easy (look at proph, it's easy even without pve skills and cons), the only way to make the game harder is to break the balance.
It seems to me that you are thinking that a hard game=balanced game which is far from the truth in player vs AI games.

[zwei2stein]

Originally Posted by kostolomac

Can you give your definition of a balanced game?
I'll give you mine: a balanced game offers the same options/tools to all sides, their choice of tools and how they use them decides who wins. By that definition Guild Wars would be very easy (look at proph, it's easy even without pve skills and cons), the only way to make the game harder is to break the balance.
It seems to me that you are thinking that a hard game=balanced game which is far from the truth in player vs AI games.

Look at teambuilds that AI is using in Prophecies. They are joke. Mursaat for example:

Air ele without Blind and no energy management. Doing little damage.
Mesmer that does no do like ... anything. Little damage, Interrupt that is on 20 second recharge. Stance that is part vulnerability
Necromancer that fancies degen and has suicidal tendencies remedied only by copious amount of lifestealing and single spell that actually does some damage
Monk that never heard of good prot, but is fond of spending 15 energy on removing conditions and is desperately pushing bars up with orison.
Hammer warrior that never uses his elite until he selfenergydenials himself with wild blow and then cant use followup.
Ranger with zero interrupts, zero conditions which has essentially no elite skill.

Not even using secondaries.

They are weak, but not because AI is overly dumb. It is because it was neutered.

(PS: AI using "balanced stuff" does not necessarily has to win by immediately wiping party while suffering no losses. It can win by attrition - one or two deaths per group can easily get most of teams to high enough DP to eventually crack down under pressure. That is not that hard to achieve with equal tools.)

[4thVariety]

A Deconstruction of Balance


Diagram 1, a normal game. (e.g. sports games, racing games, fighting games, fps)


(1) Red is the learning curve of the player. The more time he spends, the higher the graph gets, indicating his getting better at the game. At some point he will stop to grow better.

(2) Blue is the difficulty curve of the game. It starts out well below the ability of the player to instantly grasp the game. Sometimes it can unexpectedly get too hard (3) and exceed the player's skill. Then hew will be stuck, unless his red curve goes over the blue one. We have all been there in GW at some point and a guild of group of Pugs was helping us over the hump.

(4) Is endgamish content, the player is good, the game keeps demanding 90% of his ability, so on a bad day he will fail, staying concentrated will make him win. At this moment you will have the feeling of balance, even if it is an illusion.

(5) at some point the game moves to its final level of difficulty. If it "outranks" the player he will have to abandon the game. Many people do not finish the games they buy, often for that reason. Over time people might even get accustomed to that (not in diagram) and then complete the game at will. Be it Guild Wars or Ninja Gaiden, you then farm enemies at will for loot. The feeling of balance is shattered again, just like I once though fighting the Mursaat was tough.



Diagram 2, an MMO game:


Red is once more the amount of skill asked from the player. Take Diablo, all they ask you to aim your left mouse at an enemy and click it. There are no intricate combos like in Street Fighter that hinge on perfect execution of multiple consecutive inputs. Many MMOs will not challenge you, the red line indicating the amount of dexterity and mental quickness you need to bring to the table equals close to zero. Can't risk scaring off people after subscribing for two months by making the game harder to play.

The blue line is the difficulty. With your input skills largely removed from the equation, it's all a matter of mathematics now. Statistics decide the battle, with the eventual diceroll for some more randomness.

The green line is the power curve of the player. While he is not asked to perform better, his stats simply increase. More time spent equals more power. You either grind some more if you hit a bump (Diablo) or the enemies' statistics are dynamically calculated to be conveniently well below your level (Sacred 2). The increasing distance between the red line and the blue line is the perceived illusion of grandeur. The fake equal distance between the red line and the blue line is mistaken for balance.


Too many people mistake GW for a game that is like games in diagram 2. They are used to winning with no effort and GW never challenge this belief by giving a proper tutorial for that reality. Since 99% of GW's direct competitors are THAT different we, as a community, will struggle with an influx of players who are accustomed to like games the way they are in diagram 2.

If you look at the origins of ArenaNet as a bunch of guys who left Blizzard (or to be more precise it is heavily indicated they left the WoW project before it went public), you can see where the designers of GW and the designers of WoW had their falling out. The result were two games. One according to diagram 1 (GW) and one more according to diagram 2 (WoW, although I simplified it a bit much I guess)

Press release of said events:
http://www.arenanet.com/press/trifor...d_programmers/


For PvP I need no graph:

Build construction, build execution, opponent's build execution, tactics.

Those are the factors determining every PvP. Amount of grind for stats and loot is removed from the equation. If you loose you can:
a. blame your lousy execution
b. admit the enemy was better
c. blame your lousy skillbar
d. blame your strategy
e. blame something that is not you

At least 50% of people will loose any PvP encounter. Most people think of a tournament as one big encounter, so 80% of those will loose. Most of them will have answer "e" as their reason for loosing. The result are complaints about anything. The server lag, the cheaters, the boobs on the own team, the skills not being balanced.

The lack of perceived balance is a natural phenomenon and result of the amount of people ending their GW encounters with a perceived loss.

[Master Fuhon]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

Controlled environments or virtual environments seem a much more interesting place to learn about each one dark side - and all of us have one, our brain is built like an expanding city, each layer on top of the previous one, and deep buried in it, there's a reptilian brain responsible for our most primitive emotions.

The human “dark side” is achieved by surrendering control of the conscious mind back towards becoming more unaware of oneself. Cruel or stupid actions are the responses of a weak and ignorant animal, not of a more powerful being that has control of itself. To be human is to have a greater degree of control over the conscious, not to be subject to automated response by an inability to control oneself. Most people are wrong because they do not have control over their own thoughts; anyone can put a thought in their head and convince them it is their own.

As far as exploring the dark side goes, there is a philosophical analogy of ‘selling one’s soul to a devil’ that refers to that concept. It refers to making a long term sacrifice to achieve a supposed short term benefit; a benefit which ends up harming you. The way the story goes, the man sells it and immediately regrets the decision, after which he has to work many times harder just to get it back. Once you relinquish an important part of your consciousness you very likely won’t be able to discover it back, so it doesn’t really matter whether you believe something or someone is keeping it from you. But as far as the story being untrue, if you relinquished your consciousness, you’d be lucky just to remember that you did so because you could have given up those memories.

So it sounds like a dangerous idea to be undertaken without thorough consideration (strikes me as terrible initially, reminds me of motivations for LSD/drug experiments done on patients). Sounds like this theory could backfire based on humanity regressing as a whole back in the direction we have already worked hard to move away from and repeating an endless loop (you did say you prefer answers from the past). One might not need to explore forgotten animal side too much; an animal side still remains. One already needs to explore the non-animal side to gain the tools to cope with still being part animal. Light side, human strengths, whatever terminology anyone uses. If you are heading in the other direction it’s extinction you’ll find (or reasons for extinction maybe). I would rather find someone already doing it than create another.

But thanks for telling me that you feel games can do this, because I recognize that is a possible harmful side effect of the positive human interaction that could be possible. Other people are probably the most powerful reminders that one is regressing backwards.

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

The lack of perceived balance is a natural phenomenon and result of the amount of people ending their GW encounters with a perceived loss.

I like statistics, but there's also a non-subjective definition of balance that refers to build viability. So, at times I defend excuse #e, and you can check the pvp forums at any time to see the accumulation of knowledge base towards forming that argument. Hypothetically, if I play a one monk backline, yes I am demonstrating a poor grasp of working game mechanics, but I may also be recognizing that I don't have two good monks on my team so it would be harder to win in that manner. Excuse #e encompasses a complaint that the game does not specifically support certain talents that players would have.

I think you might agree with the reasoning that the separate excuse #e always works. Whenever you fail at anything, it is because the activity was not centered around your skillset and talents. So if you take the lazy route out, you can always blame that activity.

However, I can remind you that things have been 'shaken up' in this game as they might be in any online game, and some people are not making an excuse but pointing out that someone has changed design to their detriment. In that case, they are the smart ones for being self-aware enough to notice the outside changes, not the ignorant ones.

But on the topic of teaching, they might just need better coping tools to dealing with forced transitions.

[FreeFalling]

Oh my goodness. I just kinda stumbled apon this thread. I really really enjoyed the reads I got. There are many many good points brought up. After reading through many of the posts all I have to say is. I am off to play my necro this thread has really inspired me. I feel for a few of the posts because. I am a casual player. I used to put in alot more time into this game (but that was way back when it was proph only.) I have had many people say I am an excellent player (I kindly disagreed with them.) I think it is all a matter of view really. There are many things that I have done that you guys might say (nice wow he's a good player.) But there are many things that I havn't done so others would probably say (what a noob.) I think it all matters on the situation. On how you meet the "noob" player. For example: I have beaten proph many many times. Other players have not. So when I jump into a party I of course have a general idea of what I plan to do (If I don't I whip out wiki for help or reminds on how to do some thing better.) There are those players who have never beaten proph so they would get confused or lost. So some people might call them a noob for that. But turn it around if I went to some sort of pvp. They might be more apt to be better then me because I am a pvp noob (Pvp has changed so much and I don't have as much time as I used too.) I have no idea if I am repeating someone and please excuse me if I am there were 11 pages it was just too long. But the various situations that you meet people in can sway your opinion of them (so don't be so quick to judge.)

PS: Hopefully I didn't just speew bleh out on to this thread. I never was good at explaining my views on things so sry.

[4thVariety]

Choosing eight skills is an elemental part of the game experience. So much that the attribute refund points were removed in a patch to even play more to that gameplay.

But for this selection of skills be meaningful, the choice has to make an impact in the match. Therefore we need good skills and bad skills. If they were all the same, their selection would no longer be of any meaning. We would be back at Diablo, where you just pack it all into one skill and keep spamming that. One is as good as the next really with minor differences so late in the game that 95% of players will never notice.

Players can sort of skip this phase and adapt a build from another player. if he is #1 with this build, then I can be #1 with this build is the argument. Just like evolution, the community is a big DNA computer, which over time gravitates heavily towards one direction from time to time [DNA did the same with Dinosaurs as top species on the planet, later mammals took over].

The consensus of a skill's superiority and the training most people put into it, leads to an imbalance in build distribution. Not a bad thing, but usually that's when Izzy shuffles it up a bit and rightfully so. More than nerfing a skill, he is giving the "selection of skills gameplay" back its meaningful part in the overall match. Searing Flame was originally considered too strong, got nerfed, look where it is today.

As I said: Skill Selection, Skill Execution, Tactics
Those are the big three things you have control over. Sometimes you might be so good in one department that it compensates for shortcomings in the other two. But that is part of the successful whole as well. We should not prefer one factor over the other when we want to know who is the best. As an online game we thrive on people being the underdog and winning by using the one strength they got. Too balanced and the same guys will win over and over, frustrating all other people out of existence. That's why each factor is allowed to be strong, but no single factor is allowed to get too strong.