Curse

Ctb · Nov 18, 2008, 07:49 PM // 19:49

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By the way, clearly you don't know what you are talking about when it comes to computer programing. You really think all these updates where just a flip of the switch?

Go ahead, Brainiac. Explain what was so complicated about it. Point out where there was any big new programming work done instead of a few database changes, new scripts, and new graphics. I've only been a software engineer for nine years designing models for structural stress tests on new building materials, I'm sure I don't know what I'm talking about, so kindly enlighten me with your depth of knowledge oh anonymous guru of the internet. Maybe you'd also like to tell me what else I do and don't know oh masterful diviner of the TCP/IP packet. That's a neat trick you have there, being confident enough to make such resolute statements based only on a few bits of packet data that appeared in your browser.

I won't be holding my breath.

BrettM · Nov 18, 2008, 08:02 PM // 20:02

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Originally Posted by Sjeng

I agree. They haven't reduced the grind for faction at all. They introduced new and more ways to gain it, but doing every quest and every mission (NM and HM) won't get you close to maxing the title. Vanquishing all areas will help a bit, but you're still far from there. That means you're going to have to REDO missions/VQ's over and over again, which is grind imho.

Absolute truth in this.

I'm not going to get into the issue of retroactive book awards. I've only been playing for about 6-7 months, though I do have a couple of Protector titles so far. Getting the books for those would be nice, but I'm not going to obsess about it, since they would be a drop in the ocean compared to the points needed for the title. I just can't make myself care about the issue.

However, I am bothered by the non-reduction in grind except at the lower end of the title tracks.

With the new books and rewards, it appears that grind has been largely, or entirely, removed for reaching the highest normal-mode SS/LB rank and getting the HoM statue for allegiance rank 4. Basically any player should be able to get these now by just playing the game and doing all the side quests. Bravo, Anet! These are certainly steps in the right direction.

Maxing SS/LB in HM is pretty much break even. Same amount of grind, but with more options for doing it. A step in the right direction, but only a small one.

For the higher allegiance ranks, however, it appears that grind has actually increased for many players, and these ranks have been put further out of reach of the casual, or even semi-casual, player. Just about anyone could learn to do HFFF, but how many can do the 40-minute vanquishes that are being claimed on various threads? I certainly can't (though I'm improving with experience). My vanquishing time is closer to two hours right now for an area such as Fernwood, which is a rate of faction gain *far* below what HFFF would have given me. It also requires that I commit to spending the time to do a full mission in HM or a full vanquish to lock in any rewards. I can't spend the odd 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, accumulating a worthwhile bit of faction. And any disconnect can entirely blow a huge amount of effort. Basically one either has to fail less -- much less -- at HM play, or be prepared to spend an extra year or so maxing the title. (I'm sure this pleases some people.

)

I suppose shifting grind from low ranks to high ranks could be considered a "balancing", but I find this disappointing. At the very least I hope Anet will consider increasing the faction rewards for some of the repeatable quests to make them equivalent to the old HFFF in rate of faction gain. That way everyone still has at least the same chance they had before of maxing the title before the end of their natural lives. E.g., double the faction rewards for Duel of the Houses and Jade Arena, leaving the cash rewards alone. A good HM player can then max the title faster, but it won't be slower than before for everyone else.

Skye Marin · Nov 18, 2008, 08:35 PM // 20:35

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Originally Posted by BrettM

I can't spend the odd 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, accumulating a worthwhile bit of faction.

HFFF could get you ~10k an hour if you did it correctly, right?

If you play Fort Aspenwood, and fail, you still get ~1.5k faction (on either side, counting progress bonus and kills) for your efforts. If you win, you get over 2.5k, plus 10 Faction for each kill, which means ~3k faction.

If you win half the time, you'll get ~2.25k faction, and each round takes at most 10 minutes, which can be reduced by either the Luxons winning, or the Kurzicks running amber. An average game should last less than 8 minutes, but we add the 2 minutes back due to queuing, loading, and matchmaking.

This means, you can play about 5 or 6 matches in an hour, so at about 2k average per game if you win half the time, you meet what you could do with HFFF. And if you're a good player, you'll do better and earn more. And if you're not a good player, you have 7 teammates to work with. If you win over two thirds of your matches, you can easily get over 15k an hour. The numbers for JQ are about the same.

Now, if you don't like to PvP, that's fine, but you should know what FA is really considered PvP-lite, especially compared to the rougher PvP crowd. Best of all, it's much, much more fun than any amount of HFFF, at least in my opinion.

Fril Estelin · Nov 18, 2008, 09:05 PM // 21:05

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Originally Posted by DreamWind

Maybe...but if it is completely impossible they should just come out and say it is completely impossible. Instead we get "it would be bad for the economy" which tells me it is possible but they didn't want to do it.

If you knew programming, you'd know it's never "completely impossible", just too difficult/costly. You don't trust them on the economic explanation, I think we should simply keep asking them to release detailed information on this point.

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1st bold- <SNIP>

I started commenting on each point, but then realised it's utterly pointless. We have different interpretations, and that's fine. But IMHO you're reading too much behind her words.

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Grinding is not a choice for players who have already done the missions and want the reward! Meaning if they have already done the missions they now have to grind to get the reward as opposed to others who only have to go through once. See what I mean?

Of course I see what you mean, since I'm in agreement about RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO getting 2 books retroactively. But the important point here is that you're wrong that they have to grind, they simply have to redo the content, not grind it. No one is at the moment forcing them to do anything (if I were provocative, I'd say that some of the people criticising the update are the lazy ones, they want free stuff for no effort, but we'll never know who this is).

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why piss off those goal driven players by saying their previous accomplishments mean less than what others are doing now?

It only MEAN less for the people that judge their personal "accomplishments" by comparing their own rewards to those that other players get. If you look at the fun you had from the game, then this issue becomes less important (but I understand those that are talking of fairness from the start). Except if fun for you is dependent on others' fun.

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They didn't punish them directly, they punished them indirectly if they want the reward. See my previous paragraph.

Well, here, I disagree, it's those players that brought it onto themselves. It's the "want reward" philosophy that is wrong, I do not mean to say that rewards are bad/useless, simply that their priority is low.

I realise that people who are very critical of this update and vocally call for fairness try to look at the GW experience over the last 3 years as a consistent set of goals and rewards, without taking into account the evolution of the game. I mean that they are changing the personal value of their LG title at the light of what they think will be the value of players who haven't completed LG before. In RL, this kind of reasoning very rarely leads to fairness, as it often opens more doors for people to QQ/criticise.

What I probably mean is that feeling "punished" by such an update may be unfair to Anet who may have given each "clan" of the vast GW population a bit of something over the years. And as Bryant was telling you in the "GW downfall" thread, GW wasn't meant to be replayable, so people who did everything over and over again should not ask for more (they have the right to do so). As a criticism of Anet's lack of investment for the people that did all the content over and over again, all these comments seem fine, but not as a sole criticism of this update.

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If it was a very small minority then that would be an even more reason to implement it as the economy argument would go even farther out the window (although it is bad even if the majority is huge) and the whole population would not be affected whatsoever.

You're wrong: a minority asks for the retroactive rewards, but this may affect a lot of people (most of whom would not say anything).

This reminds me of the many many Guru threads that similarly attempted to prove or disprove that a "majority" of people were behind one side of the argument, while in the end (as darkNecrid very nicely explained) Anet is making a decision that will directly affect the game and community they manage. While we express our opinions on Guru, most of the GW population is either playing, or not, and that's what'll show whether Anet should do things differently.

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No I don't think they can reduce all grind in one update...but that was the major point of this update as has been stated by them. So why do something that takes away from the major point of the update? Doesn't it seem counterproductive?

No it doesn't if: 1) you look at it from the point of view of making more people playing, pugging and thus having fun; 2) as a (possible) first step in the "right" direction, something we'll only be able to assess when more is done in the future.

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Originally Posted by Ctb

Go ahead, Brainiac. Explain what was so complicated about it. Point out where there was any big new programming work done instead of a few database changes, new scripts, and new graphics.

Games are among the most complicated software in the world, even more complicated than OSs as they have to provide a "unified front" to the customer (they're single purpose mega-software). We're talking 1 to 10 MLOCs here, and you may be familiar with the fact that a small modification can require a lot of work from, for example, the linux kernel devs ML. But as you may know, size does not matter, what really matters is software complexity, which is extremely high in a videogame due to the numerous modules interacting in realtime.

Even if you leave aside the graphics and networks to concentrate on game mechanics, there's no way that you could look at an update of this size on a 3-year-old set of 3 campaigns and 1 extension with over a hundred updates by saying "it's just a DB update"! Do you honestly think that they simply had to change the myBigGWdatabase.data file, import the "Book" datastruct and call the "makeBook" procedure 6 times for each campaign?

MStarfire · Nov 18, 2008, 10:14 PM // 22:14

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Originally Posted by Abedeus

Incoherent bullshit

I love your posts. They make me laugh my ass off.

Fay Vert · Nov 18, 2008, 10:29 PM // 22:29

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Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Games are among the most complicated software in the world, even more complicated than OSs

What a stupid statement! You have absolutely no idea.

Why do we have to put up with the bloatware crud that is Windows, or the half-baked user hostile drivel that is Linux?

Games are kicked out in their hundreds every month, by companies with a tiny fraction of the resources available to OS dev teams. Every year there are quite a few major releases on the scale of GW.

I know which is the more complex and it sure isn't games, not by a very long way. Heck, half of games rely on the OS for much of their functionality!

Ctb · Nov 18, 2008, 11:00 PM // 23:00

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Games are among the most complicated software in the world

They didn't build a game, they updated one. Every piece of that update has already been implemented in the engine: faction rewards were already there, end-of-instance triggers for faction/gold rewards were already there, books were there from the BMP, item rewards already existed. This was not an addition to the game mechanics, it was not an upgrade to the AI, it was just a set of data changes. There is nothing in that update note that should have been a major programming project because every last bit of that framework has already been done before. Assuming a competent framework, I would budget most of the time for that change in testing, not development.

It was nothing more than a set of data updates to the existing programming. A major update is adding a whole new area to the game, implementing new AI, or changing an entire game mechanic. Regardless of the time required to implement that, none of that should have required substantial programming, as the bobblehead above seems to believe.

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What a stupid statement! You have absolutely no idea.

Another programming genius on the boards! What luck we have today, with all these savants on the board who know so much about programming that they can just so casually sling around these claims and be so confident in their assertions!

So, programming genius, how many interactive four dimensional physics models and hardware controllers have YOU programmed to know so much about this subject?

MStarfire · Nov 18, 2008, 11:11 PM // 23:11

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Originally Posted by Ctb

Shit tons of noob-slaying

You, sir, are amazing. You're a voice of indignant, self-righteous reason on a board otherwise full of start-raving idiots who never made much headway in English or Debate classes.

A11Eur0 · Nov 18, 2008, 11:16 PM // 23:16

Ctb...shut your cakehole. Seriously.

I'm no programmer but I can safely say that I KNOW that an update of such magnitude requires a lot of work, because so many things interlace and are affected by so many other things. If you change one thing without making sure its relationship with all those other things remains consistent, bugs happen and crap goes south.

As for making books retroactive...I can't see it being that difficult. They made the faction gain retroactive, they have the ability to make books retroactive as shown by the EOTN reputation points increase update which made all characters that have turned in previous books for the low amount of rep points able to fill out another book instantly for a price. They could have used pretty much the same code to do it here, just using different triggers. But they didn't. why? because that would have been a metric ass-load of money being dumped into the GW pool all at once, and people would know. All of a sudden there would be "WTB ecto" messages everywhere, prices would skyrocket on everything, and newer players who don't have legendary guardian characters would get the shaft, even for only a week or so.

Fril Estelin · Nov 18, 2008, 11:27 PM // 23:27

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Originally Posted by Ctb

They didn't build a game, they updated one. Every piece of that update has already been implemented in the engine: faction rewards were already there, end-of-instance triggers for faction/gold rewards were already there, books were there from the BMP, item rewards already existed. This was not an addition to the game mechanics, it was not an upgrade to the AI, it was just a set of data changes. There is nothing in that update note that should have been a major programming project because every last bit of that framework has already been done before.

There's absolutely no way you could know that, it's conjecture on your part, and IMHO bad conjecture, but I could be wrong since I'm also conjecturing. (in the end, we're going to have to throw our CVs into the discussion to weight opinions, and I'm sure that like me you won't do it)

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Assuming a competent framework, I would budget most of the time for that change in testing, not development.

You know as well as I do that competence at a given point does not leave to extensibility as a whole. Linux core devs are among the best ones in the world, yet they trash code all the time due to redesign, itself necessary due to core evolutions. Of course, this update has nothing "core" to it, it does work at the surface of GW1 code, but I'm arguing this surface is quite large. Videogames are well-known for being beasts difficult to control over their lifespan, due to the code complexity I mentioned before, and GW1 is so efficient (at all levels, ability to run on modest HW) that a tiny bit of EotN code which drives book-specific DB data will require new tubes in the code of the 3 campaigns. And these pipes can be ugly and convoluted due to architectural differences. Sure they didn't recode anything in the game engine, but this "game engine" looks like a Frankenstein (I even suggested once that it was the reason why they need to rework it in the context of GW2) with evolutions through the 4 volumes. You can easily imagine that it was not a simple matter of subclassing the generic GameEngine class and lead to many things scattered around the archictecture. So producing this update may have required looking a bit everywhere, changing stuff so that the pipes are reliable (thank you QA, never forget to thank these guys!).

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A major update is adding a whole new area to the game,

Nope, adding models is not "major" in the "core" sense, it's the (huge) business of world modelers, but it's done in parallel with other changes.

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Regardless of the time required to implement that, none of that should have required substantial programming, as the bobblehead above seems to believe.

I didn't even consider the fact that most of the programmers involved (Linsey programmed nothing, she said she's not a programmer on her wiki) were working on GW2, so it required going back to legacy code.

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hardware controllers

Nasty beasts these ones

.

fusa · Nov 18, 2008, 11:35 PM // 23:35

Alot of games similar to Guild Wars have a toolset for creating new areas, updating them etc. Adding a NPC, and a few items is trivial. Changing the rewards, etc of something already in place doesn't take a lot of work either. Much of the work that was done was probably calculaitng the rate they wanted the "grind" titles to be achievable, and fine tuning their adjustments. Also in testing for exploits and bugs.
BTW I have been programming probably longer than you have been alive, and have been involved in other online games development.

And, CTB, Fril Estelin do this please, you're nothing but idiotic trolls.

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Originally Posted by A11Eur0

Ctb...shut your cakehole. Seriously.

Snow Bunny · Nov 18, 2008, 11:37 PM // 23:37

...

Anet did an excellent thing with this update. They added a degree of variety to their game. They made actual gameplay more rewarding then microing heroes for 400+ hours.

Why are you all complaining?

IlikeGW · Nov 18, 2008, 11:40 PM // 23:40

It's a shame updates have come down to title trolls complaining from their dark basements about minute changes, and we don't get amazing stuff like another Sorrow's Furnace instead. How far can you fall Anet?

MStarfire · Nov 18, 2008, 11:42 PM // 23:42

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Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

...

Anet did an excellent thing with this update. They added a degree of variety to their game. They made actual gameplay more rewarding then microing heroes for 400+ hours.

Why are you all complaining?

They're complaining because they didn't get as large of a free reward as they think they're entitled to.

Oh and a few people are still talking about nonsense like the economy.

Lady Lozza · Nov 19, 2008, 12:27 AM // 00:27

Before I get started, just let me say I really love the update. I really, really do. I vanquished for the first time in a little while on the weekend and the rewards were fantastic.

Regardless of how much I love this update, I still wish the books were retroactive (once only) for those who have completed/protector/guardian on their characters, completely without the monetary reward. Get that - NO MONEY IS WANTED OR NEEDED.

I think it is clear to everyone that the books were designed to be retroactive, but that at some stage late in the process someone said "think of the economy" and that was that. Most players who wish for the books to be retroactive DON'T CARE ABOUT THE MONEY. They don't care about the xp. What they care about is the faction.

Anet said let's get rid of grind, but their method was simply to add new ways to get the points. I won't argue with this, in fact I rather like it. Did the trolls get that? I LIKE IT. However let's take a player with 8 character slots (so none bought). Let's say he/she has 8 PvE characters, and that he/she has been playing since release. Chances are that all 8 characters have protector titles, all or most of the characters have guardian titles, and at least 2 of them will have vanquisher titles.

WITHOUT REPEATING vanquishes and missions, such has VERY LIMITED methods of gaining faction. It is entirely possible that such a player has maybe r1 or r2 in the faction titles. Before you say, they can AB or FA or JQ, tell me is there anything else they can do to gain faction WITHOUT REPEATING things they have already done? This is what is at the heart of the matter. Some players view repetition as grind, regardless of what repetition it is. Thus for old, loyal players the grind has really not be changed at all. They still have to REPEAT things they have done to get decent rewards allowing them to advance to a reasonable level along the faction track.

But can't they do it with other characters, some of you might ask. Yes. But how much they can gain from these changes (SIN REPETITION) depends on how many characters they have and how many have done what. Let's take the example from before and look at Cantha. They have 4 characters who can vanquish for faction. I think someone worked out in another thread that it was a couple of hundred faction from vanquishing all the areas (for either faction). This gives them 4 x a couple of hundred faction. Let's say that gives them a total of a million plus (so a minimum of 250k for the total of each faction, per character). They can donate double, so 2 million for their faction of choice, still leaving them 8 million short.

If they REPEAT HM missions they can get 120k per book. 120k x 8 = 960k, double for donating makes 1.92mil. They get nearly 2 million if they repeat all the HM missions they have ALREADY DONE across 8 characters.

It has nothing to do with being lazy. It has nothing to do with being greedy, no one I know wants the money. It has everything to do with GRIND. With GRIND being a repetitive thing. With many people viewing grind as repeating anything, regardless of what it is. Yes they could always AB or FA or JQ, but what if they don't enjoy it? Who are you to tell them how to play the game?

As I said before, I really love the update. I think what they have done is great. (Although I still think kilroy needs to be fixed - but that's another story.) I won't go so far as to say it is a kick in the balls to older players, but it certainly places newer players ahead of older ones if no one repeats anything they have already done. It doesn't matter what way you choose to spin it, but if grind = repetition, repetition of anything, I think it is fair to say that older players with very little faction will be required to grind more than newer ones who have very little done. This is the issue at hand.

MStarfire · Nov 19, 2008, 12:42 AM // 00:42

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Originally Posted by Lady Lozza

If they REPEAT HM missions they can get 120k per book. 120k x 8 = 960k, double for donating makes 1.92mil. They get nearly 2 million if they repeat all the HM missions they have ALREADY DONE across 8 characters.

Incorrect. The faction reward for your book goes straight to your title. You do not get to spend it.

Lady Lozza · Nov 19, 2008, 12:54 AM // 00:54

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Originally Posted by MStarfire

Incorrect. The faction reward for your book goes straight to your title. You do not get to spend it.

My bad, I forgot that the book donation counted directly towards the title. Regardless, it is still nearly 1 million faction. It is a fairly large chunk when chasing a goal of 10 million without wanting to grind/repeat things. How many winning FA matches does this make at 2.5k a match? 400 I believe, unless my maths is wrong. How many Urgoz runs does this make? I'm not sure on the average faction in either NM or HM for this mission.

Remember that these players don't get access to the faction which new players would get vanquishing on their first two characters.

Master Ketsu · Nov 19, 2008, 01:01 AM // 01:01

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Originally Posted by Apollo Smile

With all the arguing in this thread, can we at least agree on the fact that its a step in the right direction and ArenaNet is trying? Every update this game has ever had has been complained about, but I am thankful to the small group of people who still work on GW1.

Its good that they are still updating at all, but this update is anything but a step in the right direction. This is a step in the direction of Anet basically giving up on fixing balance issues/PvP issues/other issues that unlike this update actually effect gameplay. No no...why on earth would they fix something that actually matters ? This update was nothing more then a shameless catering to bad players who are incapable of comprehending the difference between necessary grind and optional grind. Updates that cater to bad players are bad updates.

Ate of DK · Nov 19, 2008, 01:09 AM // 01:09

Retroactive would be very nice. No gold rewards needed.
Like most I'm only interested in the extra allegence reward points.

But if they decide not to give them... I don't really care.

Tho, I think they are allready too late making the retroactive change since many people, including me, have allready replayed missions during the last week.

Ate

Skye Marin · Nov 19, 2008, 03:42 AM // 03:42

I can do without the books, but I would enjoy an NPC that gives a faction title-point reward to each character, past and future, that has earned the NM and HM titles. Just points, just under Factions. This would solve the retro-active issue plenty of folks have, and not trigger the dev's concern about the economy.

Either way, it's not a big deal to me as I don't have any drive to push either title beyond Rank 4. With the bonus towards SS for vanqs, getting the max Faction title is still easily takes 25 times more time/effort than maxing out SS. I'm glad that it's not as boring.