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

[kostolomac]

Originally Posted by snaek

the problem with gw is that because of the game it has become, it has attracted player-types of that which do not have (or want) to learn to a high degree. i think that is why people like bryant and dreamwind are receiving such flak--people have become accustomed and now desire this low-skill level type of game that reward with titles and items.

When I'm butchering thousands of monsters that are buffed to the moon and back, yes I would like a nice drop or maybe a title. Is that wrong?
No matter how you make it you can't learn much from pve because our enemies barely have any basic knowledge, increasing their numbers and stats won't improve them or us. AI enemies just use brute power, we just counter that and deal enough damage and we win. No matter how much ANET buffs them in numbers and stats the formula is the same, the execution is different.
However, if they made monsters to more resemble a pvp scenario, people will improve more even if the monsters are less difficult.
We want the majority to improve, don't we?


If ANET really wants people to improve they should balance out pvp rather than pve and then find a way to motivate people to play pvp (armor skins that can be acquired only through pvp would be a nice motivation).

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by snaek

the problem with gw is that because of the game it has become, it has attracted player-types of that which do not have (or want) to learn to a high degree. i think that is why people like bryant and dreamwind are receiving such flak--people have become accustomed and now desire this low-skill level type of game that reward with titles and items.

Yes kill the heretics! How dare they spoil such a good game!

They attacked Anet headquarters and forced to do all the changes just to annoy the "Truly skillful players!"


Pathetic.


-Remove PvE-only skills and consumable.
-People go back to tank and spank with obsidian flesh and shadow form.
-Nerf those!
-People will still tank and spank with defy pain or body block with protective spirit and shield of absorption.
-Nerf those too!
-People will tank and spank with smiting monks under spell breaker aura.
-Those need to be nerfed too!
-People will still use minions to block and wards and +armor skills.
-Nerf those too!
-...
-And remove heroes because they are imbalanced and henchmen too because player skill is measured by team skill and not individual skill!


I still want someone to explain me why if a human monk is pre-protting a human warrior that goes lure is good play, while if it is a human warrior clicking on the skills of his monk hero its noob overpowered player.

Originally Posted by Avarre

Suddenly, not only is the game extraordinarily easier, thanks to skills that were so broken they had to be prohibited from actual competitive play, and were designed with this in mind. Yes, I know a lot of players wanted these because balance was laughable in your newer elite PvE areas. That is the problem that needed addressing in the first place. If the PvE and PvP portions of your game were closer together, it would improve cohesion among your playerbase – letting them separate would kill PvP by creating huge barriers for new players to join in, and more importantly for some, it would remove the collateral damage of skill rebalancing.

See. Avarre is (or seems to be) a cleaver person.

As I've said the problem in the first place is the PvE mobs increasing power and then having to release first aid bandages.

You can't start by the PvE only skills and consumables. You need to do both at the same time.

[snaek]

@kostolomac
i'm not saying theres anything wrong with rewards. but rewarding farming/grinding/mindless gameplay is not the best move. not many people are transitioning to pvp because of this. theres just too many reasons and too many rewards to do low-level play instead. this is why we want to change the game to facilitate more skillful play. yes this could mean more incentive to transfer over to pvp, but also that skillfull high-end pve should not be neglected either.

Originally Posted by improvavel

Yes kill the heretics! How dare they spoil such a good game!

They attacked Anet headquarters and forced to do all the changes just to annoy the "Truly skillful players!"

why do you insist time after time that the only reason people do things is out of spite? i'm not sure if people have hurt you in the past, but there is no one trying to hurt anyone in this thread.

avarre stated one of the possible reasons that this happened, and that was that anet really just had very little understanding what they were doing. another possible reason was from a business standpoint, as it would bring in more customers and more money.

As I've said the problem in the first place is the PvE mobs increasing power and then having to release first aid bandages.

You can't start by the PvE only skills and consumables. You need to do both at the same time.

as have i and many others in this thread. i really don't know why you continue to argue? the problem is that avarre is being very generic, and we are being very specific. for some reason you cant see beyond the specifics and see the overall scheme of things that we want to basically: improve gw just the same as avarre does.

[zwei2stein]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

...
-People go back to tank and spank with obsidian flesh and shadow form.
-Nerf those!
-People will still tank and spank with defy pain or body block with protective spirit and shield of absorption.
-Nerf those too!
-People will tank and spank with smiting monks under spell breaker aura.
-Those need to be nerfed too!
-People will still use minions to block and wards and +armor skills.
-Nerf those too!
...

Tankway (non SF, non-cry) was never problem. Why?

Because it was quite inefficient and much more slower than "skilled-way"

So, playing "skilled-way" had point and it was quite desirable to things that way. While tankway was still there for people who just "wanted it done".

Btw: completelly agreed of PvP split. I was claiming for long time that PvP influence is what made GW PvE great. Shame that nerfs were so often "kill the skill forever" type that made people loathe PvP-based balances.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by snaek

as have i and many others in this thread. i really don't know why you continue to argue? the problem is that avarre is being very generic, and we are being very specific. for some reason you cant see beyond the specifics and see the overall scheme of things that we want to basically: improve gw just the same as avarre does.

I can say the same. Why are you arguing with me if I said from the beginning that the more the gap of power between human players and mobs the more people will exploit stuff? That PvE-only skills and consumables were introduced because some elite areas and HM mode areas are just ridiculous?

Then people like DreamWind comes and say anyone that doesn't play PvP sucks and is noob and shouldn't play this game and whatnot.

As I already said, countless times, PvE-only skills are a bad idea. But so are environmental effects and monster only skills.

DreamWind and Bryan say those things are fair because the AI is stupid.

I say the more powerful those things and the more the difference between the power of players and mobs are the more people will abuse AI coding flaws.

They say removing PvE-only skills and consumables should be done immediately.

I say it should be done along the revamp of the elite areas that are stupidly designed and probably watch at some skills that have been nerfed for PvP and aren't a problem in PvE.

That is the main difference snaek.

New players will be far (sometimes closer) from consumables and pve-only skills so removing those things for their benefit isn't important.

Veteran players will be only (or mostly) interested on doing stuff those stupid first aid bandages exist for.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Because it was quite inefficient and much more slower than "skilled-way"

So, playing "skilled-way" had point and it was quite desirable to things that way. While tankway was still there for people who just "wanted it done".

Btw: completelly agreed of PvP split. I was claiming for long time that PvP influence is what made GW PvE great. Shame that nerfs were so often "kill the skill forever" type that made people loathe PvP-based balances.

It wasn't always quite inefficient. It was actually the first team to finish DoA.

[snaek]

^as far as i can tell, im always the one who has to be defending my viewpoints, not the other way around.

and the main reason we were arguing in the first place, was that we wanted to balance the overpowered skills, but you wanted imabalanced overpowered skills to remain. not only did you want them to remain, but you also stated that you didn't mind if there were even more incredibly imbalanced overpowered skills than we have now.

now the main reason we emphasize priority of skill balance before revamping of areas/ai, is that we have to take it step by step. skills should be easier to code (since they do it all the while) and should come first. yes, we would like to see a complete revamp of gw...but you said it yourself, they don't have the resources to pull something like that off. skills are also universal, they can improve the whole game, whereas fixing one specific area will only fix that one specific area.

you told us to gimp ourselves if we don't find the game challenging enough. believe me, i have been there done that. so don't tell me that if we balance skills first and hm second, that hm will no longer be doable. we can bring life back into the "easier" areas first....uw, fow, sf, tombs... this will take time. like i said step-by-step, you can't expect everything all at once. even the skill balance itself will have to do skill by skill. you can't expect all skills to be balanced in one single update--its just unrealistic.

[glacialphoenix]

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Btw: completelly agreed of PvP split. I was claiming for long time that PvP influence is what made GW PvE great. Shame that nerfs were so often "kill the skill forever" type that made people loathe PvP-based balances.

It's kind of sad, I think having to split PvP/PvE skills was really rather inevitable. When you start pulling "kill the skill forever" over PvP - well, it gets reactions from the people who are actively involved in the scene. The people who aren't involved and won't ever be involved in the PvP scene are going to sit there and gape at the sudden change in skill functionality and wonder exactly why it happened. For them, "We had to bash this skill's head in with the nerfbat because it was overused in PvP" is not going to cut it.

I mean, yes, you can go on about how the smart player will realise that you need balance, etc, etc. Yeah. You need balance. That's not something you can argue with. But there's a bigger PvE playerbase than PvP playerbase (I should think) - and it's far, far easier to cater to both by making the PvP/PvE skill split. Which is what eventually happened.

[Ec]-[oMaN]

Fril, really for what you wish to happen will never manage to see light.

This thread the longer is gets reminds me of this episode on the Fifth Estate. Where you hope people will clean up their act by giving them a safe haven to continue on in their destruction.

You can not expect players to get better when the environment around them is encouraging non-skill full play. Just like trying to kick a drug habit is much less likely to occur if they are always surrounded by the drugs and encouraged to use them.

[Master Fuhon]

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Or we can actually make the community suck less, and not by refereing them to Guru threads and wikis that will teach them to mimic stuff? (note: some threads are pure brilliance as they actually teach you why you do things one way, and give you the skills to start learning by yourself, instead of the "read wiki and then come back") To which you responded by saying that the fact that Anet removed the need for skill make you care less or teaching: what about the actual players that will benefit from your knowlledge?

I do understand I'm on a very small group (mainly myself, group of 1) of people trying to get accross an utopic message of players taking the collective responsibility into their hands, and I'm facing the wall of "well not my job, and furthermore skill does not matter anymore according to Anet". But please don't bring back the old discussion on "Anet needs to bring back the need for skills and only then will I consider doing something", only to say that a group of people (I removed the name of quoted forumer to try to avoid pointing at anyone) did it to satisfy the Guru rules. So this thread is an artificial means to revive Avarre's thread at the expense of what the thread was actually trying to discuss (and I don't mean the thread title, I mean the OP and other explanation I gave later).

Maybe I won't get a reply to my post (another time) because I'm on the ignore list (or you're effectively being ignored me, like the point I was trying to make). Whatever GW2 brings, it won't change the community, that's the new scoop I can tell you about GW2!

You have the capacity to make someone suck less in general. You don’t have the capacity to determine where them sucking less will take them. No one knows where that will take them; whether they still play a game after they suck less is not anyone’s decision to make.

That’s where what Avarre said comes in, and I can’t say it better than how it was already said. People are going to outgrow things, and they’re going to realize certain things no longer fit them. And when they suck less, they might decide the game only fits people who suck. The suggestions to make the game fit growing people over sucky people are about the most useful things anyone could present to the company that's working on making another game.

Using the terminology in this thread when using the word "suck". Not using it to stir up an argument with someone who takes the label personally.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by snaek

^as far as i can tell, im always the one who has to be defending my viewpoints, not the other way around.

and the main reason we were arguing in the first place, was that we wanted to balance the overpowered skills, but you wanted imabalanced overpowered skills to remain. not only did you want them to remain, but you also stated that you didn't mind if there were even more incredibly imbalanced overpowered skills than we have now.

No.
I said you can balance overpowered skills. You just have to balance the other stuff at the same time.

And please don't take my remarks out of context. I said imbalanced skills don't affect my game or fun with it cause I can choose to not use it, while some other people insisted they couldn't have fun in the game anymore because of the imbalanced stuff but they have to use it to remain competitive.

now the main reason we emphasize priority of skill balance before revamping of areas/ai, is that we have to take it step by step. skills should be easier to code (since they do it all the while) and should come first. yes, we would like to see a complete revamp of gw...but you said it yourself, they don't have the resources to pull something like that off. skills are also universal, they can improve the whole game, whereas fixing one specific area will only fix that one specific area.

That is why we argue.

you told us to gimp ourselves if we don't find the game challenging enough. believe me, i have been there done that. so don't tell me that if we balance skills first and hm second, that hm will no longer be doable. we can bring life back into the "easier" areas first....uw, fow, sf, tombs... this will take time. like i said step-by-step, you can't expect everything all at once. even the skill balance itself will have to do skill by skill. you can't expect all skills to be balanced in one single update--its just unrealistic.

Again it makes no sense.
If the problem is pve-only skills and consumables you can stop using them.
If what you want is deny people the hard areas so easy areas get life back, then its stupid.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

..To which you responded by saying that the fact that Anet removed the need for skill make you care less or teaching: what about the actual players that will benefit from your knowlledge?

That's what I just said.

There is very, very little knowledge to give out that will actually benefit you. The rest gives you a higher chance of getting you killed. The players I have tried teaching that to didn't really appreciate that too much.

As Dreamwind said, there's very little reason to learn all of this stuff. When you get a game that doesn't get balanced you 1. learn the best build for your class, 2. get proper consets and PvE skills in the group, 3. kill healarz firsst!1

i.e. There's very little you have to learn to do these days. These days the "guide for success" wouldn't even fill up this post. You can't teach anything when there's little to teach.

Welcome to Guild Wars.

Originally Posted by snaek

and the main reason we were arguing in the first place, was that we wanted to balance the overpowered skills, but you wanted imabalanced overpowered skills to remain. not only did you want them to remain, but you also stated that you didn't mind if there were even more incredibly imbalanced overpowered skills than we have now.

now the main reason we emphasize priority of skill balance before revamping of areas/ai, is that we have to take it step by step. skills should be easier to code (since they do it all the while) and should come first. yes, we would like to see a complete revamp of gw...but you said it yourself, they don't have the resources to pull something like that off. skills are also universal, they can improve the whole game, whereas fixing one specific area will only fix that one specific area.

you told us to gimp ourselves if we don't find the game challenging enough. believe me, i have been there done that. so don't tell me that if we balance skills first and hm second, that hm will no longer be doable. we can bring life back into the "easier" areas first....uw, fow, sf, tombs... this will take time. like i said step-by-step, you can't expect everything all at once. even the skill balance itself will have to do skill by skill. you can't expect all skills to be balanced in one single update--its just unrealistic.

Sums up what I was going to say - save for one thing.

What exactly would you lose with PvE skills/consets being nerfed, Improvavel?

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

What exactly would you lose with PvE skills/consets being nerfed, Improvavel?

Nothing.
What would you gain other than limiting people options?
Nothing.

So if you don't lose anything or gain anything, why change?

You nerf what people abuse, they will abuse the next best thing, so no skill gained either way.

Originally Posted by kostolomac

When I'm butchering thousands of monsters that are buffed to the moon and back, yes I would like a nice drop or maybe a title. Is that wrong?
No matter how you make it you can't learn much from pve because our enemies barely have any basic knowledge, increasing their numbers and stats won't improve them or us. AI enemies just use brute power, we just counter that and deal enough damage and we win. No matter how much ANET buffs them in numbers and stats the formula is the same, the execution is different.
However, if they made monsters to more resemble a pvp scenario, people will improve more even if the monsters are less difficult.
We want the majority to improve, don't we?


If ANET really wants people to improve they should balance out pvp rather than pve and then find a way to motivate people to play pvp (armor skins that can be acquired only through pvp would be a nice motivation).

I believe in this.

I think the way you, bryan, want to tackle the problem will never succeed.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

So if you don't lose anything or gain anything, why change?

Understandable if we didn't lose something with the introduction of all this dumbing down (depth), and if we wouldn't gain anything by balancing them (depth).

Originally Posted by Improvavel

You nerf what people abuse, they will abuse the next best thing, so no skill gained either way.

Which is why I've stated repeatedly that balancing PvE skills/consumables is not going to be the "end all be all" of fixing PvE, rather they're amongst some of the biggest problems. Just because the game already has a few problems doesn't give any excuse to break it further.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

I think the way you, bryan, want to tackle the problem will never succeed.

Wow, I've just been told that balance isn't good for games.

[Improvavel]

What did we gain with tougher mobs, with higher stats and environmental effects (including HM environmental)?

More exploitation of AI.

Why are you so adamant on removing (or nerfing) consumables PvE-only skills and consumables, but have no word to demand better builds for the mobs?

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Wow, I've just been told that balance isn't good for games.

No. I just told you your "balancing" wont create a more skillful environment.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

What did we gain with tougher mobs, with higher stats and environmental effects (including HM environmental)?

More exploitation of AI.

Why are you so adamant on removing (or nerfing) consumables PvE-only skills and consumables, but have no word to demand better builds for the mobs?

You just pointed out another problem that needs fixing: exploiting the AI. See? Not everything is going to be solved. But the reason I haven't found the mobs too insane is because I've only had much difficulty with them when I started playing in HM. After that it was more or less a cakewalk with only a few speedbumps. The only problem is that some classes don't scale too well with the way the monsters are scaled.

In regards to "giving better builds to mobs", what can I say against that? If it makes the mobs more challenging and encourages more thought than why *not* do it?

Originally Posted by Improvavel

No. I just told you your "balancing" wont create a more skillful environment.

"Preventing the players from being as retarded as the AI won't encourage better play." Hm.

Edit: almost missed this, thanks Boko:

Originally Posted by Improvavel

What would you gain other than limiting people options?

A few overpowered facts doesn't limit options? That's the entire point of balancing: To broaden the choices, variety, options.

[boko]

Originally Posted by Improvavel

What would you gain other than limiting people options?
Nothing.

So if you don't lose anything or gain anything, why change?

Maybe, a better game? And who said anything about limiting people's options?
Balancing the game does not necessarily limit other people's option.

You say that the end game (e.g DoA) areas are horribly unbalanced and that is why we need PVE skills and consumables. Agreed. Then, maybe what Anet needs to do is to actually rebalance those areas which was very badly implemented in the 1st place. But instead, what Anet did, was to provide us with PVE skills and consumables, and tell us that now you can complete those areas now. Happy?

By removing/rebalancing PVE skills or consumables, maybe Anet can actually tackle the real root of the problem which is the design of those areas itself, so as to make it more on par with UW of FoW, or even The Deep, i.e more balanced where the Tank and Spank strategy is the NOT the only viable option. So, instead of buffing the mobs with overpowered skill, maybe buffing them with better AI/skillbars and team strategy would be better. Would that limit other people's option? No. But would it be more fun now? No. It's not gonna be magically be more fun again since there are many more factors which downgraded GW, but this is a step in the right direction.

[snaek]

Originally Posted by improvavel

That is why we argue.

why? because you can only deal in absolutes?

we want balance, you think we only want to nerf everything to oblivion.
while balance involves nerfs, it also involves buffs. directly and indirectly. it may seem like we want to remove options, but overall balance will provide more options.

we want depth, you think we want the whole game to be hard.
we want there to be hard areas yes, but we want there to be easy areas as well. you progress the levels as you get better and better. if theres only one defficulty level, theres very little room for progress and growth.

we want to reward skillful play and not mindless farming/grinding, you think we want to take away all the rewards from people.
if someone truly enjoys farming/grinding, they can continue to farm and grind to get rewards. but we believe in skill>time, the game should both facilitate and reward that, and currently they do not. currently there are hundreds of farming/grinding mmorpgs, gw does not need to try to compete with them. we are not trying to take away rewards or prevent people from getting them, we simply want to facilitate more options, specifically skillful ones, in obtaining them.

we want to bring back multiplayer into a multiplayer game, you think we want remove all singleplayer options.
again, you should be able to solo, but in the current state of gw, solo has become the dominant playstyle. i said in an earlier post that "gw can be played solo" with the emphasis on the word can, as in "gw can be played solo, but is meant to be played multiplayer." i would definitely would like to keep single player as an option, but please bring the emphasis back to multiplayer.


balance, depth, skill>time, multiplayer...i hope i didn't miss anything?


edit: boko makes a good point in that balancing skills allows the devs to better gauge how to balance the elite areas.

improvavel, change takes times. you can't expect everything all at once. i'll say it again, step by step.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by snaek

balance, depth, skill>time, multiplayer...i hope i didn't miss anything?

Skill isn't separated from time. Time gives experience.

Multiplayer - either people want to do it or they don't. If they don't and people can't anymore they will go away. If you can't find people to play with you maybe you should try harder. If you already can play with other people then I don't see any problem. And in my book 2,3,4 people is mutiplayer too.

Balance in PvE is between classes and options of playing. Not between mobs and players.

Depth is a very subjective and vague notion. What strikes me first as depth is options.

improvavel, change takes times. you can't expect everything all at once. i'll say it again, step by step.

Then why not start by balancing the elite areas first? Balance them and then get ride of the of the other stuff. Or actually, don't balance them - change them so mobs can beat you by having good builds instead of brute force.
Step by step.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by boko

Maybe, a better game? And who said anything about limiting people's options?
Balancing the game does not necessarily limit other people's option.

From the same Avarre.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10194416

Currently most of the duality tools are reserved to PvE-only skills. The regular skill options for this type of play have mostly been nerfed due to PvP concerns.

Mobs are stupid and dumb, but they have brute power.

Eliminate the tools for duality play and you return most of the time to trinity play.

Yes, PvE-only skills and consumables make the normal mode areas too easy, but new players won't have immediate access to them.

If need be, restrict PvE only skills to HM and GWEN (maybe the elite nm areas).

Otherwise all you get is Holy trinity - and again that was what a top GvG team came with to finish DoA.