Curse

FlameoutAlchemist · Jun 19, 2007, 09:06 AM // 09:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silly Warrior

Keep in mind 1 new NPC in Lions, Kaineng, and Kamadan have come out of the blue, and they don't speak or do anything. These may serve for a new feature, update, event. Or maybe something we are not expecting!

You weren't the only one to notice this; There's a Ministry of Maintenance guy in KC that I almost made a wiki page on, but I couldn't find any sort of reference or function to him. What were the others?

Etta · Jun 19, 2007, 09:12 AM // 09:12

If I'm Anet, I'll be doing this:

all day long, and move to Tahiti.

Cassandra · Jun 19, 2007, 10:44 AM // 10:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlameoutAlchemist

You weren't the only one to notice this; There's a Ministry of Maintenance guy in KC that I almost made a wiki page on, but I couldn't find any sort of reference or function to him. What were the others?

I think the new NPCs may be linked to the "gamble on ATS winners" feature promised in january, march, may, now august (check the new page on Tournament Rules on gw.com)

Evilsod · Jun 19, 2007, 11:51 AM // 11:51

Christ we're not back to the Anet fanboys whining about how programming is hard are we... they're paid to do it! ITS THEIR JOB!

And yes, my question is what have they been doing with the last 2 months they've been 'balancing' these skills?
Nobody wanted an auto-targetting system... now its been implemented it still looks like nobody wants it.
They updated all the Xunlai Agents... why? We've had 1 single upgrade to them since the release of GW, now every single outpost has a dedicated upgrade agent? What the hell? Even if this means we have a few storage updates on the horizon i hardly see how giving every town a dedicated NPC for it should've been high on the priorities list.

These skills show a distinct lack of balance. It took the community a whole of 5 minutes to figure out that There's Nothing to Fear was extremely overpowered. There is no way in hell the team responsible for skill balancing could've been that oblivious...

As for the things that came out of the blue. I know Anet don't tell us everything... if you want to learn more, read the CR thread. But my point is why didn't Gaile mention to us that these PvE Sunspear skills maybe, just maybe... weren't all based on the Sunspear title?

Now it seems they're just panicing about it. These were meant to be PvE only skills. Skills that should be very good as normal skills but not completely stomp on elites. Intensity has gone from been powerful since its abused with the other PvE skills to been completely useless.

They seem to be winging these PvE skills now... they don't have a clue what they want from them.

ForgeWhelp · Jun 19, 2007, 12:11 PM // 12:11

A comment on programming/coding. Yes it's their job, but it's still not as simple as you all would like to believe. As a progammer you try and make a guess as to how long something will take and decide if it's worth working on. If you have 2 project and you determine that tehy might take 8 hours each. Well one might only take 4 hours as it was much simply than guess or it simply worked the 1st time. The other may take 40 hours due to any number issues that can arise.

And then there's the whole 10 hours invested and then being pulled off of that project only to be told to work on it again a couple weeks later and having to spend a couple hours to figure out where you were in the process.

Perhaps many of the crappy updates are things that were ideas or things they might want to implement in GW2 that were easy to code, where the things that people want may take much longer to implement successfully.

Who knows, but get off the programmers back, just because they get paid to do doesn't mean that it's the simple 'would you like fries with that?' type of job.

sorry, as an ex-programmer I had to comment.

freekedoutfish · Jun 19, 2007, 12:21 PM // 12:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsod

.....

Its a double edged sword for Anet though. If they had continued to pro-long the sunspear skills, then players would continue to winge...

"Where are our skills? you prommised us skills!"

...then they rush them together and bang them out to keep people happy, and they get...

"What are these? we dont like these!"

Anet cant win, what ever they do. It happened with hard mode! Players winged they wanted the game to be hard and heard about this hard mode option. They then winged about when is it being released! They wanted it now!! now!! NOW!!!

The minute they released it, the players all winged it was rubbish and refused to use it!

The same can be said for heroes! Players wanted better AI and the ability to control their henches. They wanted them and winged that Anet was doing nothing about it. Then we get NF and heroes and guess what!

"Heroes are ruining the game. Heroes are the end of PUGs!! Get rid of Heroes!!"

Players are like children. They want their changes NOW, but when Anet rushes them out and gives them these updates......they winge they dont like them.

Kids in a candy store:

"Mammy, I want those sweets!! NOW!! NOW!! NOW!!!!!"

Mother gives the kid the sweets!:

"I dont like them..... *cries*!!"

Sound familiar?

baz777 · Jun 19, 2007, 12:32 PM // 12:32

Actually I feel sorry for the Anet development team!

They must have got rather thirsty while the tea boy was making these PVE skills up

Engel the Fallen · Jun 19, 2007, 12:41 PM // 12:41

ANET failed because they never listened or only selectively.

People wanted skill balance, instead we get random buffs quarterly and nerfs. 20 or so skills changed every four months is not active balancing.

People wanted the NPC's to be smarter, but just attack and activate things faster, while being at higher levels.

As for the skills the gap from when they were announced, to now was a long time to make 20 PVE skills. Well only 10, but they went for 20, and even then some of the ten they said would appear were broken from the start.

Granted it may not be just ANET's fault as their are Alpha testers, but somewhere there is a breakdown. It could be the team basically abandoning the games as soon as they are released as was the split team policy. As soon as factions started, more and more problems came up than, and fixes were farther and farther away.

There is a design fault and a balance fault and everyone in the game knows that the design is just getting weird and random at this point, and balance is out of the question. Not to mention the game did a total 180 from what it is being projected as on even the official web page.

TedTheDead · Jun 19, 2007, 01:15 PM // 13:15

OH NOEZ! The PvE-only skills that are only usable on monsters were not perfect!!!!

Honestly I do feel that the skills were not very balanced at release, but as its been pointed out: would it have mattered? Seriously you can not appease a large portion of the community here, its not worth trying.

That all said, in response to the question. What have they been doing? Probably adding the skills. Not being sarcastic, but honestly think about it. The skills are tied to a title, not an attribute. That could have been really easy to do, or really hard. I get paid to write code as well, and I can say I would give my clients an atomic elbow if they treated me like garbage like 99% of the users on these boards have confused themselves into thinking they have the right to do.

Anyways...Then they had to update the Hero Skill trainers to provide the new skills. They also updated the Skill Trainers with the ability to turn Skill Points into Hero Skill points to get them.

They then, while abrupt and unknown, added in Faction PvE only skills and did what I think was the best part of the update in changing the blessing to give faction from kills.

All of these could have been trivial to do, or very hard depending on how they wrote the software in the first place. I would bet on a combination. Also remember that ANet already has our money. We paid for what came with the box and limitless access to their servers. 10% of the updates they release are fixing errors/bugs/exploits, which we also paid for. The other 90% is in large part free stuff that for the most part I am happy for.

Im not a fanboy for ANet, I could complain all day about their horrid "fix" to SR, or how I can no longer farm with my eyes closed using Stoneflesh Aura, how I 100% believe something is wrong with HM drops, how loot scaling is a flawed concept, and how I dont get the option to run a healer monk in RA/TA/AB/etc because its not feasable. BUT AS FOR THIS UPDATE....Im at a loss as to whats there to complain about.

XvArchonvX · Jun 19, 2007, 01:20 PM // 13:20

Wow, I can't believe that there's actually a thread like this. A-net is currently working on an expansion AND a COMPLETELY NEW GAME. At the same time as this, they are still running the current GW with updates such as the large one that came last Friday. I think it's pretty obvious that A-net is very busy if not the busiest they've ever been.

Yes, the sunspear skills were delayed, but when they came out, we were given twice as many skills since we got Lux/Kurz skills also. Let me ask you, which should a-net delay, a full release of an expansion and/or new game or a few PvE skills???

As for the comparison of TNTF and Intensity, I think it's pretty obvious. Elementalists are already the kings of PvE and don't need any new uber skills to prove such. Seriously, when's the last time you saw an Ele have trouble finding a group? PvE Paragons on the other hand have been getting slapped around by the nerf bat as a result of PvP, so they get a better skill.

I have to admit that overall, I'm almost ashamed to consider myself part of the GW community. Lately there has been little but flames coming to A-net because some people feel that they know enough about the game to dictate what it should be like for EVERYONE else. Considering that the game is played on so many countries and by such a diverse group of people (yes there are actually people that play GW and don't post on GWGuru! *GASP* I know!!). The arrogance, immaturity, and downright disrespectfulness that the community has been showing in these forums over the past few months is really making me sick.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsod

Christ we're not back to the Anet fanboys whining about how programming is hard are we... they're paid to do it! ITS THEIR JOB!

Being employed doesn't make you less than human. Since when did getting a paycheck make you any less deserving of common courtesy than anyone else? Should I show up at your work and take a piss on your face then tell you that it's ok because you're getting payed???

lyra_song · Jun 19, 2007, 01:25 PM // 13:25

Hopefully when GWEN comes out, things will resume to some semblance of normalcy....

Come on Anet, you guys need to get more people.

Gli · Jun 19, 2007, 01:40 PM // 13:40

What's with all the yabbering about programmers? Sure, programming takes time, duh. The question is, what have the game designers been doing? Not putting a lot of thought in these skills if you ask me. Some were so obviously out of whack on release, a blind bat could've spotted it. How long does it take to see that skills like "There's Nothing to Fear!" are rather incredible overpowered on practically any profession if it's based on a title?

Series · Jun 19, 2007, 01:43 PM // 13:43

Hey mods, can we get a /close on this bitchfest?

Evilsod · Jun 19, 2007, 01:44 PM // 13:44

*notices the GW2/GWEN excuse card coming into play again*

Anet seem to have an infinite amount of those recently... if things suck or are too slow, blame GW2/GWEN! Its funny that Anet stretching themselves too thinly is actually becoming a valid excuse in the community.

freekedoutfish · Jun 19, 2007, 01:45 PM // 13:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

Hopefully when GWEN comes out, things will resume to some semblance of normalcy....

Come on Anet, you guys need to get more people.

I'm sure Anet would employ more staff if they could afford to and felt they needed to. But even they have to work to a budget and have to spend their time and money carefully.

Call me an AnetFanBoy, but I think they have done am amazing job in 2 years.

In terms of those new skills they added, I got "intensity" at the weekend and I thought it was great! I didnt get it and think "OMG, this is way too overpowered, Anet you idiots!" I just thought "cool.. this will come in handy!"

Some people take this game far tooo seriously! Just enjoy the new skills and stop being so childish.

«Ripskin · Jun 19, 2007, 01:48 PM // 13:48

In all my time playing games.. I have NEVER seen such a huge pack of whiners.

If you don't like the game stop playing it! God it's just that easy!

Didn't your parents ever tell you that if you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all? Well I guess I'm breaking that rule but someone needs to say it!

Inde · Jun 19, 2007, 01:50 PM // 13:50

I think we all ready have enough threads complaining about these issues. Closed.